I use Instapaper all the time (thanks Marco!) for saving articles I come across and want to read later…give it a URL, and it will grab the text and important images, reformat it into a very easy-to-read, clean style, and automagically show up on your iPad or iPhone for your next 5 minutes of downtime. It’s integrated into the wonderful Echofon, and Instapaper itself provides bookmarklets for the desktop and mobile browsers. My major gripe is that the bookmarklets only work once you’re on the page you want to read later – if I know a link leads to something I want to read later, why do I have to click it before I can save it?
Seemed like a great excuse to learn the Chrome plugin framework! An hour or two later, voila … my first Chrome plugin. The readme has details on the tutorials I used, and the Chrome developer docs are actually quite good. My only remaining TODO is an improved “install” flow that prompts you for your credentials, rather than requiring you to install and then go to the settings page to configure it. But done is better than perfect, so I’m shipping…
You can get the extension here:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/instacontext/dmpaafnbaejbiknnabjlmifmhjgmdccb?hl=en
or read the source here:
https://github.com/stgarrity/instacontext
Comments, requests, and pull requests welcome!