Everyone has their own version of their ‘everything bucket’. It’s meant to be a place where you can store anything and everything.
Just like people are happy with throwing things in Yojimbo, which I’ve yet to try but I intend to in the future, I’m content with putting all my online reading materials into Instapaper.
Speaking of Instapaper, I can’t give it enough praise. The highest compliment I can give is it’s probably the first third-party app I’d install. There are strong competitions out there, most notably from Pocket and Readibility, but Instapaper has held its own and the service is just a delight from a reader’s point of view.
Though I haven’t been using Pocket much, I’m beginning to like it. Primarily, I’m using it for videos and image-heavy articles. For long-form reading, Instapaper is still by far the most obvious option for me.
Well, the idea behind Instapaper, and Pocket (Read it Later) alters the way we consume news in a positive manner which few have imagined. The idea itself is not novel, we longed for a service which can save the article we want and allows us to read them at a later time and date. It’s the execution that’s pulled off brilliantly.
Without the services of Instapaper and co, content consumption would probably be much less enjoyable. I would have to put up with sites having small fonts, bad typography, ads filling up the pages, pop-ups flashing and other factors that would have diluted the reading experience. If I dont have the time to read the articles on the spot, I’d have to find a way to locate it. Which means I’d have to email the link to myself, and when it arrives in the inbox I’ll have them dig out amongst the pile of never ending mails. Creating an email solely for the purpose of this might be an viable option, but we no longer have to go through this route when something as convenient as Instapaper is around.
Instapaper sometimes doesn’t render videos and images properly, but that’s of little concern to me. It’s suppose to be a collection point for all my links and articles. At the end of the day, when I’m back from the day’s work, I’d sit in my room and sort them out accordingly. If the articles are worth referencing, I’d archive them in Pinboard. If it’s some videos and images-centric sites I want to watch them regularly on the go, I’d file them in Pocket with the relevant tags.
It may seem strange I’m using Instapaper as my everything bucket, but that’s what I found to be the most comfortable. Over time, it has become a platform to collect items from all over the web, and from there, I’d decide what to do with them. It’s not meant to be a permanent storage point. To me, it’s like an inbox, where there’s a constant stream of incoming items. I’d read them, archive them, delete them, or leave them as it is for another day.