Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Instapaper App

No 7 in a series of reviews of iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad apps useful for English literature and language learning and teaching.

English teachers (and, we hope, our pupils too) are text maniacs: we want to read all the time. We've always devoured books - whether sitting down at night, lying in bed in the morning or standing in the bus queue. Now mobile devices can help quench this thirst, such as the Free Books app that was number 6 in this series.


One of the very best apps around is Instapaper, a superb way to save and read longer articles from the web. It's available in a free version for trial, but you can trust us and just go and splash out €3.99 for the full version straight away. Saving an article on your computer by way of a bookmarklet (or on your iPhone which, despite the maker's caveat, is easy enough to set up) means that the article appears on your iPhone in a readable text version (complete with tilt scrolling on the paid app). The process is slick and reliable, and you can store up to 250 articles in folders. 

No better way to catch up on good writing whenever suits you best, and when you don't have a book to hand, or when you want to read out something in class without sitting at a computer. Strongly recommended.

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