Free Stuff Friday - Pocket

Pocket is celebrating its first anniversary today.  If you haven’t discovered Pocket yet you are really missing something wonderful. 

Pocket is a web site and a free app for your iPad, iPhone, Mac, and Android phone or tablet that allows you to save articles or pages that you find on the web.  Rather than just bookmarking or adding a site to your favourites list in your browser, you add the entire article to Pocket.  Then, when you have time you can read it later.  It also syncs across all your devices, so you can catch up on reading your articles whenever or wherever you are.

I have the Pocket extension for Google Chrome installed on my computer (get it at the Chrome web store) and the bookmarklet for Chrome on my iPad, so that if I find an article I want to keep I just click the button on the Chrome toolbar and it is added to Pocket.  You can also get the bookmarklet for Safari and Firefox.  Alternatively, you can just copy a URL and when you then go to Pocket you click on a link at the bottom of the page to save that clipping.

I read Pocket on my iPad and for most pages it’s not the same format as on the webpage – Pocket changes it to a much easier to read format, no ads, no extra stuff – just like reading a magazine article.  Once read I can delete it, or, if I want to keep it for future reference I can send it to Evernote.  If there’s an article I think one of my friends would like I can email it to them, or share it on Facebook or Twitter, right from a link on the article in Pocket.  There’s also a link to go back to the original article – especially useful if you want to read more on that site.

Since I started using Pocket I've found it so much easier to keep up with all the digital information I'm bombarded with each day.  Whenever I find an article I want to read, on Facebook, an email newsletter, the web, I just add it to Pocket and then I can forget about it until I have the time to really read it.

Click here to go to the Pocket page where you’ll find links to get Pocket for all your devices.  The page that this link takes you to will change depending on which browser you open it in – it changes to display the correct bookmarklet or app for that browser – how clever is that!