Instapaper’s success is mostly due to the ease of getting content into it. I can send items to Instapaper via a bookmarklet, Chrome Extension, Firefox Extension, NetNewsWire and even my iPhone’s Twitter client. Saving any webpage to Instapaper takes two seconds on a 3G connection and I can read the full webpage (text & images only) on my iPad later.

It’s difficult to write about Instapaper without sounding like a total fanboy, but it’s really incredible. It’s probably a good idea to explain how I use Instapaper throughout the day as part of my workflow. First, the app costs $4.99 as a universal app, which means you pay one price and it runs natively on both iPad and iPhone. This is a big deal as most developers will penalize or capitalize on users who own more than one type of device, but the developer feels $4.99 per user is a good price to pay. Of course, Instapaper is also web-based so, if you have an iPad with both Wi-Fi and 3G, the price of entry is free, but you won’t get the experience that’s offered from a native app.

My Instapaper Routine

I wake up at 7AM and grab my iPad and open my RSS app of choice, which at this time is Reeder. I expand the folder called “Tech News” and because a few of my favorite blogs truncate their feeds (only showing the first two lines of each post), I click on the ones that interest me and then click “Read it Later” and a small window shows up that says, “Sending to Instapaper” and after a second it’s done. I do this for about 45 items in the morning and especially for those feeds that are truncated. When in a rush, I’ll skip the iPad ritual and sit down at my iMac, open NetNewsWire and select a feed that’s also preview only and click Option+P and the post sends to Instapaper. The result is fast and painless…if only I could do this in batches by selecting multiple posts and sending them all to Instapaper.

Just before heading out to catch the bus, I open the Instapaper app on both my iPad and iPhone and in under a minute, all posts have downloaded to the device ready to be viewed on the bus, subway and train that I take to get to my work 20 miles south of San Francisco. Instapaper caches the text and images and sometimes advertisements (but not always) of every post I’ve marked to read later.

While on my way to work, I can click on a post, view it in portrait or landscape mode and adjust the font type, size and brightness to meet my preference. When the train goes in a tunnel, I can switch the text to white on black as to not disturb people sitting next to me with the ultra bright display. Once I arrive at work, I hit the sync button in Instapaper to make sure the cloud is up to date with what I’ve read, archived and even where I left off on an article prior to closing the app when I arrive at the office.

Instapaper stays in sync across all devices and with the website which makes consuming news on my time so much easier as it’s like a DVR for news reading and because the data is cached. It works great with my iPad Wi-Fi as I only have an Internet connection at home, work and sometimes at Starbucks where I stop to get a coffee before boarding the train.

During the Day

At work, I don’t have the luxury of slacking off and reading RSS feeds (which I subscribe to over 70 of). Instead, I see links posted in tweets by friends, articles in my RSS feed and miscellaneous stories or posts that I want to read where before I’d have to bookmark in Safari can finally be marked as “Read it Later” and available on my iPad for the commute home. I find myself really reading more content more attentively since I’m not rushing through a post in an effort to avoid getting caught slacking off by my boss and things I’d skip because they were too long fit perfectly in the long commute. The only downfall is that I might rush to catch the train home and forget to sync the iPad with Instapaper and I’m stuck with a blank screen for that long ride home. Oh well, there’s always a book waiting for me in iBooks.

Even for people who don’t have a long commute, Instapaper allows your to save posts just as I have and read those on your lunch break or at night before bed. Instead of emailing URLs to yourself or bookmarking them, you’re just opening Instapaper and reading clear crisp text content with no other web ads or ultra distracting elements like navigation bars or comments to distract you. From Instapaper, you can click a button and view the full article in the built-in web browser if you’re connected to the Internet.

Of course, if you like commenting on blogs, Instapaper isn’t for you. It’s just reading and it’s the best way to read blogs on the go and a perfect example of how good cloud based services can be if executed properly. If only Apple could manage iOS documents and other data using such a perfect way as Instapaper does, we’d be much happier mobile users. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a few unread posts to read from today that I must read.

It must be “beat up on Apple” week. Not only has the company come under fire for new license terms in the iPhone OS that appear to block Google’s AdMob service, but some are crying foul over a new feature in the latest version of Safari, known as “Reader,” which strips out advertising from web pages. The complaints over the licensing terms for the iPhone actually have some merit, but the howls of outrage over the Safari feature — which one commentator described as “dropping a nuclear bomb on the entire web economy” — border on the ridiculous.

Just to recap, the Reader feature (which is only available on certain web pages) is triggered by a small icon in the browser address bar, which when clicked pulls up a separate window within the Safari browser that contains just the text of the page, with graphics but without any advertising. This is the source of the outrage, as it’s seen by some as a dagger aimed directly at the heart of web publishers that rely on advertising. Wired magazine says the feature was designed to push publishers into designing apps instead of just letting readers browse their content, while Ars Technica calls it another “evil genius” plan from Apple.

The feature is hardly a brand-new Apple invention, however; it’s based on open-source code from a feature called Readability, which does exactly the same thing and is available for multiple browsers. And there are (and have been for some time) plenty of other services that do similar things: one popular one, called Instapaper, saves a version of a web page that can be viewed later without any images or advertising. Another very popular web extension or plugin, known as Ad Block, does exactly what it says on the package: blocks all advertising from every web page a user visits.

Do these extensions and plugins remove advertising? Yes, although in the case of Safari Reader, Readability and Instapaper, the user downloads the entire page and presumably sees the ads before they decide to implement the feature. So are they killing the advertising-based content business? Hardly. The fuss over the Safari feature seems particularly absurd, since the browser has less than 5 percent market share (although it is much higher on mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad, for obvious reasons). As for the new feature being a surreptitious attempt to push content companies to develop apps, that seems a little Machiavellian, even for Apple — especially since only a fraction of readers are ever going to use the Reader feature.

As a writer for The Guardian put it, the best thing about these kinds of features and plugins is they force media outlets to recognize just how broken the reader experience is on a lot of websites, with giant ads everywhere and other design choices that are made for purposes rather than readability. As he notes, if Safari Reader and other features like it do nothing else, perhaps they will remind content sites that appealing to readers should be their primary goal.

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Ihnatko describes how LongBox CEO Rant Hoseley dropped a very juicy hint at a recent convention:

Rantz spoke at the Long Beach Comic-Con last weekend, as part of an industry panel on the future of digital distribution. Referring to a future strategic partnership with an unnamed company, Rantz said “It seems like everything is going to go through as planned.” He identified the company only as one that “all of a sudden leaves us with a multinational launch with literally millions of installed users.”

That sounds a hell of a lot like access to the iTunes Store, either in the form of software in the App Store or readable content in a hypothetical “iTunes Newsstand.”

Ihnatko spoke with Rantz for an hour, relentlessly questioning him and expecting him to “stumble” over common issues that have kept the comic book industry from so far settling on a unified online sales and distribution platform. Apparently, Rantz didn’t stumble, but provided further tantalizing clues that something is afoot with our friends in Cupertino.

I’m pretty sure that Apple is entering into a formal alliance with LongBox. When I asked Hoseley about what kind of partnerships the company is forming, he spoke vaguely of what was taking up most of his time at the moment: a lengthy and complicated agreement with a seriously large company operating in the media space.

What follows is an explanation of further clues and detective work that convinced Ihnatko LongBox is working with Apple. It’s worth reading in full. However, he’s cautious, and warns against getting too excited too soon.

CEOs say a lot of things during these briefings and when you’re on the other end of the phone, you need to be cautious before passing along any speculation that makes the company look this good. Even on the record, a tissue-thin hint isn’t the same as an open confirmation.

So I’m wishing LongBox well. And I hope that this deal with Apple is, in fact, more than just a busload of wishful thinking from a comic book geek with a tech column. An alliance with Apple would benefit everybody in the comix [sic] industry. It would kickstart digital sales through a single, united storefront the same way that Apple’s alliance with record labels kicked off the digital music industry in 2003.

To be sure, LongBox will want to get its app onto as many platforms as possible. And there is no lack of choice. Amazon’s Kindle is in its second iteration and was recently made available outside America. Barnes & Noble’s brand spanking new Nook is making waves, too. And there are plenty more e-readers on the market, with more on the way.

Amazon's Kindle offers hundreds of thousands of titles, but ultimately, it's a one-trick pony

While devices like the Kindle have established online stores with hundreds of thousands of titles on offer, they remain single-purpose machines. Sure, most e-readers can store photos for viewing on their grayscale e-ink screens, and the Sony Reader even offers MP3 support to boot — but none of the readers on the market today can offer wider multimedia capabilities.

Apple’s fabled tablet is expected to ship with some flavor of the iPhone OS and feature a full color capacitive touch screen. But more importantly, it’s expected to make full use of the iTunes store and all that it makes available to its millions of active users. So add music, TV shows, movies, podcasts, games and apps to the yet-to-be-launched e-book category. That’s content that works across all your computers and your phone, too. None of the other e-readers on the market even come close to competing with that sort of functionality.

For that reason, I barely use my Sony Reader, and have bought only a handful of books for the thing and have resisted the (sometimes rather strong) temptation to buy a Kindle. And believe me, I’ve been tempted; I have long-harbored a quaint desire to sit in my conservatory on a sunny, peaceful weekend morning and enjoy a long, slow coffee while catching up on the news. But I want my reader to do much more that simple news feeds.

I haven’t made a serious effort to read comic books for a long time (years, in fact) but I used to love them. I don’t bother now because I don’t like reading them on my monitor and I don’t like buying the dead-tree editions (it’s a personal preference — I simply don’t like buying literature on pressed wood-pulp any more).

So I’m holding out for next year when the Tablet is released because I know that not only will I be able to fill it up with books, all my other content from iTunes will work on it, too. And when that happens, I might just start buying comic books again.

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iLounge’s source is said to be reliable, based on past information they provided that turned out to be accurate, detailing the iPod nano 5G, the iPhone 3GS, and the Chinese iPhone 3G. Not a bad track record. For that reason alone, don’t be too quick to judge some of the more incongruous parts of this report.

The device has gone through three distinct incarnations thus far, though the time line for development isn’t provided in detail. It currently sports a 10.7-inch screen, an improvement over the first prototype’s 7-incher. The tablet runs iPhone OS, which could come as a disappointment to graphics professionals and other business users.

Appearance-wise, the tablet is said to resembled an iPhone 3G, and have a curved back like said device. I assume that also means plastic casing, rather than metal. The display will operate at approximately five to six times the screen resolution (around 720p) and have seven times the touch-sensitive surface area. I’m wondering what kind of bezel a device this size will have to make it more usable while holding. It definitely won’t be a one-handed piece of hardware like the iPhone can be when necessary or convenient.

Two varieties of the new device will be released. One will feature built-in 3G networking, and the other will not. iLounge suggests thinking of one as a big-screen iPhone 3GS, and the other as a big iPod touch. They don’t say anything about it, but I wonder if this means that the 3G-enabled version will be able to make calls and have SIM card capabilities.

The purpose of the Apple tablet is said to be to expand upon the all-media concept of the iPhone and iPod touch, creating a slate-sized reader for e-books and magazines, in addition to video, audio, and gaming capabilities (though I’m finding it very hard to picture gaming on a device this size with on-screen controls without laying it on a flat surface). It’s not designed to compete with netbooks, then, but to operate as an extension of the iPod line.

The official announcement and unveiling of the device is said to be coming either on or before January 19, 2010, so start saving that pocket change. Prepare to possibly be disappointed, though, since it still has to receive final approval from Steve Jobs, something the source claims only has about an 80 percent chance of right now.

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Print media isn’t dead, it’s just slowly becoming digital media. Which I guess would mean that it’s dying. Regardless, it’s good news for those of us who actually like using our iPhones as e-readers. And it’s good news for Scroll Motion, a company responsible for bringing lots of best-sellers to the iPhone platform via its Iceberg Reader titles. Those titles, until now, have each been published as standalone apps, much to the consternation of me, and others who have to wade through the tangled mess that is the App Store to locate the few gems.

With the advent of iPhone OS 3.0, it will begin offering its titles via one, centralized app (something which, I should point out, Stanza was able to do just fine before 3.0) thanks to in-app purchasing. And though they already have about 500 titles on offer, they have bigger plans for the 3.0 Iceberg Reader software. 2,000 times bigger, give or take.

During its part at the WWDC keynote today, Scroll Motion revealed its upcoming Iceberg Reader app, which will take advantage of Apple’s new in-app purchasing to offer subscriptions to more than 50 major magazines, and, eventually, over a million books. That’s a lot of books. During the demo, the one they used to show how purchasing works was priced at $9.99, which is on par with many of its current standalone offerings. It is more expensive, however, than the average book I buy via the Stanza app, though you’re actually going through an external content provider for those transactions, whereas with Iceberg you’ll be able to just use your iTunes account.

Scroll Motion also showed off plans to offer text books for sale for students, and then proceeded to show how it might use copy/paste to plagiarize their betters. Or maybe use properly cited quotes, depending on their moral bent.

I’m not sure I’ll switch to Iceberg just because it enables in-app purchasing, especially if prices still favor Stanza, but the sheer volume of content it seems to be bringing to the platform definitely excites me as a reader. I want choices, and I want them in one place, easily accessible without a lot of switching stores and digging around as is currently the case with Stanza. Hopefully Amazon follows suit with its newly acquired property and answers Scroll Motion with as much content, and maybe more subscription offers. It could easily leverage its Kindle relationship to make that happen. Unfortunately, it will never give over purchasing control to Apple, so buying in-app will probably stay the exclusive province of independent operators like Scroll Motion.

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People who like to read books on their iPhones (including myself) will be pleased to hear that Amazon has grown tired of playing catch-up with Stanza on the platform and instead bought out the much smaller company behind the app, Lexcycle. The Stanza makers are reportedly “very excited” by the development, which is understandable considering the gobs of cash Amazon no doubt threw their way. I’d be jazzed, too.

While it looks like the Stanza devs will continue to work on the app under the Amazon banner, and they claim that no major changes to the app will result from the purchase, Amazon no doubt has big plans for the platform, which it will likely integrate with its existing iPhone app for Kindle titles. Hopefully they don’t just shut it down in favor of their own app, or rebrand it, because I think the Stanza name at this point has become a force to be reckoned with in the world of iPhone apps.

This is definitely a smart play for Amazon, no matter what route they choose to take. They’ve seen how successful the iPhone has been as an eBook reader, and they, like us, have no doubt seen the growing rumors that point towards a larger, tablet-type device coming out of Cupertino in the near future. Even though it’s unlikely that such a device will be marketed primarily as an eBook reader, if it runs iPhone OS and therefore supports app store programs, users will want to use it as one, regardless of whether or not it has e-ink capabilities. In other words, they’ve seen the writing on the wall, and they’ve obviously decided that if you can’t beat ‘em, it’s best to acquire a company already in that space and join ‘em. Good choice, Amazon.

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Google Reader has been my RSS reader of choice since I made the switch from Bloglines last year. This new skin makes the site seem brand new, and makes it even easier for Reader to stand alone as desktop app with Fluid or Prism. To set up Helvetireader with Fluid, create a new Site Specific Browser for Google Reader, then launch the newly created app. Next, click on the script menu item, and select “New Userscript”. If you have the Developer Tools installed, this will launch Dashcode and allow you to edit the userscript. Just paste in this:

// ==UserScript==
// @name        Helvetireader
// @description Helvetireader style for Google Reader
// @include     https://*.google.com/reader/view/*
// @include     http://*.google.com/reader/view/*
// @include     htt*://*.google.*/reader/view*
// @author      Helvetireader by Jon Hicks (http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk)
// ==/UserScript==

var cssNode = document.createElement('link');
cssNode.type = 'text/css';
cssNode.rel = 'stylesheet';
cssNode.href = 'http://www.helvetireader.com/css/helvetireader.css';
cssNode.media = 'screen';
cssNode.title = 'dynamicLoadedSheet';
document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(cssNode);

Save your script, and relaunch the Fluid Google Reader App. After a second, the CSS from Helvetireader will kick in, and you’ll have a brand new look and feel to Google Reader. The CSS is actually hosted on the helvetireader.com web site, so you won’t have to modify your settings as the code is updated. This script is just as easy to set up on Firefox or Opera, and can be used with Safari or Camino with a little tweaking. Hicks expects this theme to be used by 10 people at the most, I expect it will be much more popular than that.

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So how does it compare to Stanza? Would I recommend it? The answers, in my opinion, are that it doesn’t, and I wouldn’t. Not now, anyway. 

Classics primarily touts two things: special book cover art and a pseudo real-book page-turning experience. But the former could be more hindrance than help when you’ve got a lot of volumes, and the latter’s novelty wears off quickly, though it seems to be the primary reason Classics has received a lot of praise. 

Classics

The books’ cover art, sitting on virtual “shelves”, are lovely. And since there are only 12 they present no problems scrolling through them. But if you get 50 or so on this thing it’s likely to be an awkward list. Too bad we don’t know how quickly we’ll get that many, since it’s not under our control. Currently it’s a dozen, and we have to wait for more. I believe content should be a lot higher priority than that. 

When reading, the Classics page is quite nice. A very light beige background with dark brown text. It looks great. And yet I have to see the menu at the top of the page all the time. Why? Further, I have to see the iPhone’s info bar above that. Why? 

It’s kind of hard to get immersed in reading when you’re staring at two menus that painfully remind you you’re not in any kind of book. It’s also an issue because the screen is small, so why waste space showing items that aren’t necessary? 

I’d talk about the rest of Classics’ features, but it doesn’t have any. You can drag the books in the order you want (again, that’ll be a lot of fun when you have 50 of them) but that’s about it. No control over how the page looks or any other visual aspect of the program.

And no searching! How could they leave this out in an ereader? When you’re in Classics, forget about finding that quote you’re looking for. 

In short, version 1.0 of Classics is a one-trick pony consisting of a really cool page-turning interface. 

Stanza

Stanza lets you download public domain content directly to the iPhone. There are magazines, high school text books, Feedbooks.com content, and more.

But the biggest source is that you have all of Project Gutenberg to choose from. That’s 25,000+ books! You can browse these by several categories, such as author or subject, or even by popularity as shown below. Clearly, unlike Classics, content is front and center with Stanza. 

And so is the reading experience. You have the option to hide everything so the entire screen is the book page. You also have full control over what the page looks like. The font, leading, margin, size, background and font colors are all customizable. See below for the same page above in Stanza.

As you can see, I’ve chosen a background similar to what Classics uses, though I prefer my font closer to black than brown. Without a menu bar and the iPhone’s info bar, I do get immersed in reading. When you need to navigate via a table of contents, or get back home, or search, etc., just tap and the menus come up. 

As for page turning, Stanza doesn’t have Classics’ cool animation, but it has a couple of options to go back and forth. I prefer page swiping (like Classics), which uses a slide animation. While the slide may not be as cool as Classics, its duration is configurable and I get a very nice “turning” experience. You can use left and right taps instead of swiping if you prefer.

Aside from the nearly limitless customization and thousands of books to choose from, Stanza also has much better navigation through your library:

• Scrolling List by Title (with or without book cover art) 
• List by Author
• List by Subject
• Cover Flow view of book covers
• You can create your own “libraries” and add books there. For example, I have one called “Sherlock Holmes” with all nine volumes in it. 

When your library gets up to 50+ books, the above will make it a lot easier to find and organize it than a shelf that can only show nine books at a time. 

Oh, and Stanza allows you to search through your book, highlighting each found occurrence.

On top of all this, Stanza is free. 

There is no question my major gripes with Classics can be added later as enhancements, and we’ll see if the developers do so. Still, some of them are obvious enough I wonder why they’re not there now. If the developers provide a lot of content (from which I can choose), and better navigation, and searching, and control over the page, then they’ll have… Stanza. OK, not really, but it will be better able to compete. 

As it is, my impression of Classics is that it’s a really good page-turning animation with a minimal book reader and content wrapped around it.

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Stereo Receiver

I have multimedia speakers, one of the many Logitech 5.1 sets that seem to be deeply discounted at Best Buy at least once or twice every few weeks. They produce great sound considering how cheap they were, but they don’t have a remote and my TV clicker doesn’t control external speakers. Having to stand up and walk to the rear right speaker constantly to adjust the volume makes me feel like I’m trapped in the 1950s, and not in the good, “Those were the days” kind of way.

Light bulb: I can control the volume on my MacBook via remote, and it has both line-in and line-out ports (mini-TOSLINK compatible ones).  The problem, however, is that OS X doesn’t natively channel sound directly from input source to output.

With the help of some Google prospecting, I found LineIn, a simple freeware application that enables playthrough and does so very well.  Setup was a breeze, and with the help of a couple cables (RCA to mini-stereo for TV to Mac, mini-stereo to mini-stereo for Mac to speakers) I was once again in full control sitting comfortably on the couch.

Yogurt Thief Catcher

This is actually something I wish I’d been able to do instead of something I’ve done. I used to have roommates, and in case you never have… don’t. Ever. It seemed like a fun college-student thing to do, but it wasn’t. It was constant fighting and petty squabbles. Over things like who ate my yogurt. The yogurt which I bought with my own money for my own consumption.

Had Air Cam Live Video for iPhone (and the iPhone itself) been available, I would’ve been able to catch the culprit in the act. The application, when paired with its desktop counterpart, uses your Mac’s iSight (or any attached compatible webcam, including those that work with macam) to turn your computer into a surveillance device.  You’re iPhone and the computer with the desktop application have to be on the same network, but that’s perfect for catching thieves red-handed.  Also apparently useful as a baby monitor, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Guitar Tuner

While I am not a skilled (or unskilled) guitar player, I have one and sometimes I jab at it with my swollen, indelicate hand digits. When I do so, I like the resulting noises to at least be in tune, since they could never be melodious.  Various tuning apps are available for the iPhone (Guitar Toolkit being my personal preference) but when I’m at home I use Guitar Tuner by Hidetomo Katsura & Rustle Laidman. It’s simple, clean, and extremely accurate, and while shareware, the price to register is only $9.00. Even my friends with actual musical talent swear by this little app.

Comic Book Reader

It has “book” right in the name, so it makes sense that I would occasionally use my MacBook to actually read things.  High on the list of things I like to read are comics, because they have pretty pictures and  explosions. Paper still appeals to the collector in me, but my bachelor pad provides little archiving space and conveniently forgetting boxes of comics at friends’ houses is not a long-term storage solution.

Thank goodness for the recent rise in the availability of digital comics. Although the big houses (like Marvel and DC) seem to be sticking with web content as the method of delivery, smaller independent studios are taking advantage of image archive formats, like .cbz and .cbr. These are great, because they’re small enough to be easily stored in large numbers without taking up too much drive space, but they require special reader programs to work properly.

This is another area where there is no shortage of software available for OS X, both free and paid. Despite my general reputation as a spendthrift, here (as with Guitar Tuner), I opted for a paid product. Enter ComicBookLover ($24.95). In addition to providing better basic functionality than many of the free apps, it allows you to organize your comics collection in the same way iTunes organizes your music. And it has a convenient laptop viewing mode to automatically rotate the page for easy, readable viewing.

That’s only a few of the ways you can get more out of your Mac.  Stay tuned for more, and send in or post your suggestions below.

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Today, Times, the newspaper-like RSS feed reader, has been released.

A few days ago we gave you an in-depth preview of this application from Acrylic Apps and are excited to see it finally released.

Be sure to take a read through our review of the app and then go download the free trial.

Times is $30 for a single license and $75 for a 3-person family license.

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