Instapaper for the Kindle

[Harmon]

Instapaper http://blog.instapaper.com/tagged/press is a terrific web/iphone app which converts web pages into text files, stripping out the eyegarbage and rendering a nice, easy to read text experience, particularly on the iphone but on your web browser as well. Kind of a Readability + Read It Later application.

Well, just a couple of hours ago, on Twitter, Marco announced that Instapaper will now generate an mobi file you can download & move to your Kindle.

Here's how it all works:

You surf around the net, finding articles you want to read. You click on a browser bar button you've installed (easy - drag from Instapaper web site to the browser bar) and the articles are uploaded to the Instapaper web site, where you have an account (also easy to establish.) The articles are stored there, so you can read them as you wish on your computer or iphone.

But now, you can go to the web site and download the last 20 articles you uploaded as a mobi file using a single click. The file can be opened by calibre and moved to your Kindle, and you can read them on that as well!

To top it off, Instapaper is free for your web browser (5 Bucks (cheap) for the iPhone app.) Marco doesn't even have a tip jar, more's the pity, because this is a great setup & well worth a donation.

So basically, you can put together your own private magazine from your web browser, and have it on your Kindle to carry around & read.

NOTE: I don't have a Kindle anymore. I prefer the Sony Reader, particularly the 300 which is much smaller than the K2. But I've tested these files on Stanza Desktop, which reads mobi files, and I use Instapaper's epub file generator which works just fine with my Sony, so I'm sure you'll find that the mobi version works, too. My guess is that you can just drag the mobi file to the K2 when you have it connected to your computer.

[kalsctk]

Instapaper has a beta service that allows you to wirelessly send docs to your Kindle, subject to Amazons 15 cent charge. To access the service, look in your Account under Manage My Kindle settings.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by kalsctk

Instapaper has a beta service that allows you to wirelessly send docs to your Kindle, subject to Amazons 15 cent charge. To access the service, look in your Account under Manage My Kindle settings.

Yeah - evidently he was going to stop developing it, but changed his mind. So you can either send files to your Kindle, or download them & transfer them to your Kindle, or other mobi-friendly readers.

Unfortunately, the conversion feature is working haphazardly right now. Worked like a charm at first...

[menevets]

I don't have a Kindle (yet), but I use Instapaper all the time on the iPod Touch. In addition to the garbage removal, what I find it really useful for is offline reading, to cut battery use.

I would think downloading your selected articles onto your Kindle all at once and then switching off Whispernet and reading is more efficient use of the battery than surfing the saved pages with Whispernet constantly on.

[kovidgoyal]

calibre has an instapaper recipe tat will download the content from your instapaper account and convert it to whatever.