Review: Read It Later for iPhone
I've recently been using the Read It Later app for the iPhone. The concept is great: If you see a blog or article of interest but you don't want to read it now or find it again later, just add it to Read It Later, then log in via the website or iPhone app to read it.
Saving pages
You can save a page to your reading list in a number of ways. On my PC, I've been adding pages online using a Firefox add-on. On my iPhone, I use a cool bookmark tool on mobile Safari and the Echofon Twitter app; you can add links from tweets straight into Read It Later.
Going offline
One of the big draws for me was the 'offline' mode. I get the train to work most days. So being able to save blogs and articles to read on the train - when I've got no phone signal for big chunks of the ride - was a big positive for me.
But that's where Read It Later doesn't deliver. First up, it only downloads content for offline viewing when it 'syncs'. So far, I've found no way to do that on my iPhone, even when I log in to their site on my web browser. So, when I spend say 10 minutes saving pages and articles while I'm waiting for my train, I can't access them on the Read It Later app until I have signal again which kind of defeats the point. I can however sync using the Firefox add-on on my desktop PC - but remembering to do that each time I log off is a pain.
There is one way to download content for offline viewing through the app. But it involves going through each individual page and saving it manually when you've got a connection. An option to 'download all' wouldn't go amiss - it's not that as though I have hundreds of pages to read at any one time.
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