A better way to organize items you want to read later

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve bookmarked an item intending to read it later. I never do of course – inevitably they end up lost in a sea of bookmarks.

Read It Later is a Firefox extension which attempts to eliminate this problem by providing a way of “bookmarking” items for later reading that even integrates with iPhones and Google Reader. When installed, you’ll notice a tick symbol in your URL bar. When you want to mark a page for later reading, simply click the tick to turn it red and the page will be added to your reading list.

To access your reading list, click on the book symbol in the top right hand corner of Firefox. This reveals a dropdown list of items saved for later reading. You can sort them either by date added or more useful, by title or keyword. This list can be synced online – a little bit like Xmarks – meaning wherever you install Firefox and whatever machine you’re working on, you’ll always have access to it.

In addition, there’s a separate iPod Touch and iPhone app that automatically syncs the reading list to your device for later reading. If you don’t have either of theses, you can download the items for reading offline later. Finally, Read It Later also offers a way of transferring items from Google Reader to your Read It Later reading list. A small tick appears in your Google Reader account next to the star which when selected, automatically transfers the link to your reading list.

Read It Later is a very powerful Firefox extension that ensures that one way or the other, you’ll finally get round to reading pages that you could never find the time for before.