Read It Later, Part II [Site Review]

Last week, we talked about the online bookmarking tool Read It Later, and how it can help you organize web sites that you want to mark to read, but don't necessarily want to bookmark.

This week I want to talk briefly about another feature of Read It Later, namely its integration with RSS feed reader Google Reader. This feature is only available with use of the Firefox extension, so those who have installed and use RIL on another browser will not find this post of use.

Reading It Later, Blog Style

If you subscribe to a number of different blogs in a number of different areas of interest (as many of us do), you may find that you have a difficult number of blog posts to track and read. Using Read It Later can help maximize the time you spend reading blogs, while minimizing the time spent wading through hundreds of thousands of posts.

Here's a shot of my Google Reader genealogy pane, with the Read It Later Firefox extension installed. Notice the line of checkmarks which has been added to the list-view lines, between the stars and the blog post titles:



While browsing posts in list view I can select blog posts that look to be of interest to me by clicking on the checkmark:



Doing so adds those blog posts to my Reading List, visible here as the last three items on my list:



I can now mark all the items in my genealogy folder as "read" within Google Reader, and I am no longer drowning in unread posts that make for a daunting visit to my RSS Reader!

The Best Part

The excellent thing about this feature, is that when clicked on to read from the Reading List, these items will open on their original site. That is, the integration between RIL and Google Reader means that you can bookmark the pages of the original blog posts without ever leaving the Google Reader environment. Previously, a user would have to see the blog post in Google Reader, click through to the original item on the original blog site, then add the page to the Reading List. The new integrated version accomplishes the same things with much more efficiency!