The term “startup” carries a lot of baggage. Too many so-called startups are building technology instead of a customer base, or traffic instead of revenue. So I don’t feel comfortably sharing the startup label.
Instapaper Needs Dogearing
I’ve been a user of Instapaper for a long time, I think I became one of the early users after I’ve picked up the word that such a service existed, and if I’m not mistaking one of the Tumblr guys is behind it, and ironically – I am writing this on a Tumblelog.
Anyway, great service, I am so grateful it is available – for free no less – and that there are iPhone and iPad versions respectfully as I use it every day (not the iPad version though, as I don’t own an iPad). I love it’s simplicity, nothing about this service is particularly pretty or flashy, it does not act as an attention whore with it’s aesthetic – something that can’t be said for a lot of web services out there. However it feels exactly as it should, it doesn’t do a whole lot – but it does what it does very well. It has this – as much as I hate to say it – almost Google–like quality to it.
However, I would really like to see one addition to it – dogearing. There is a separate service for this – called Dogear no less – but I wish I could do this with Instapaper.
The way I propose for it to work is as follows:
- User adds a page to their Instapaper
- User visits the page from their Instapaper and reads the long article – such as this one – half–way through
- User selects the part of the text where they stopped reading and hits the Instapaper bookmarklet to update their Instapaper entry
- The next time they come back to the article (via Instapaper obviously) they jump straight to the part of the page they selected when they updated the entry
An added bonus would be a highlighted background of the selected text, but it can do without it just as well.
How about it Marco?
