Most mornings when I wake up I usually have over 500 post in my favorite feed reader. Clearly I am not going to read all of them so I skim through them and then save those that look interesting to Read it Later. Once I am finished skimming my feeds I then can go to Read it Later and read those articles that really interest me. I have the choice of seeing just the text or the full article. I can also adjust the font size, which I like especially at night when my eyes get tired. You can also adjust the backlight on the app for reading at night. Although I prefer the black type on white background, you do have the option of doing white text on black background.

After you have read an article you can share it out to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or Digg. If you want you can save the article to Pinboard Evernote or to Tumbler. Read it Later is available on the iPad, iPhone, Androids, Blackberry and Windows Mobile. Read it Later is accessible through various Twitter application including Twitter for iPhone and IPad, Tweetbot and Osfoora and Seesmic just to name a few. Which is great if you see a link to an article on Twitter and you want to read the article later. As far as RSS readers it works with Reeder, River of News, Feedler, along with Google Reader among many other. I personally use it with Zite and FlipBoard. It is also available as an add-on or an extension for all major browsers.

A lot of people will compare Read it Later with Instapaper. which I have also used. However I tend to use them differently. To me Read it Later is a more temporary holding place, after I read a post I may send to my various social networks or save it to Pinboard or Tumbler and then I archive it. If it is article that I think might use to write a blog post at some later time I will save it to Instapaper and put it in my Blog folder. What about you do you use Read it Later or do you prefer Istapaper or perhaps something else. I always willing to try something new to see if it has something that I am missing.

A recent article in the NY Times discussed the new video games that provoke youngsters into …. Gasp …. Reading. I think it could certainly help while it will never motivate huge numbers to pick up actual books. I remember the same discussion years ago about comic books. Kids would get criticized for reading that “junk” but at least it gave them experience in reading. Most kids won’t read anything past a certain age unless they are forced to in school. That is part of the problem I guess. In public school you are forced to be in class about 7 hours a day and learn what they tell you to learn. So when you get home the last thing you want to do is read more, even about subject you enjoy. I have read many, many more books since I left school than when I was in school. It’s my fault for not taking advantage of books when I was younger but at least I learned the skill and now I can use it to the fullest extent.

If these video games just kick start the process of enjoying reading then I think it is a great idea. Reading is one of the most powerful weapons we have. Once you can read there is nothing you cannot learn. It is the key to education obviously. If a kid lives in a poor family & community sometimes his only hope is reading. Without it he may never know there is a better life out in the world for him. He may not have a good role model in his home but his books can introduce him to many heroes to inspire him. Watching TV will rarely make you smarter while audio books are much more valuable. Reading is even more valuable as you absorb the information much better.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/books/06games.html?_r=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&oref=slogin