The power in your Pocket- alternative to Google Reader

You consume media and news throughout the internet over several devices.



Consider the following scenarios

  • You are using twitter and found some good link to read on. You want to continue using twitter but also don’t want to miss on the great article.
  • You found a great link while browsing internet. You want to save it for later reading.
  • You found a good video on YouTube that you can’t watch right now due to the paucity of time. You want to save it for later viewing.
  • Your friend forwarded a good link to read on email. You want to save it for later.
  • You want to read the most dugg story of the day at your leisure.
  • You want to read a top post in a subreddit at your leisure.
  • You are sitting idle with your smartphone in your hand and just remembered a great article, the link for which you saw on twitter and now want to read.

There are ways to achieve all of the above scenarios. But these methods are either site dependent, app dependent, browser dependent or device dependent or simply not possible.

For example:

  • You can select the option for “Watch Later” for later viewing any good video in YouTube.
  • You can favorite the tweet on twitter so that you can view the link in the twitter later on.
  • You can bookmark the links on your browser, so that you can read it later on at leisure.

Notice how all of this method are applicable only for a particular app/ site/ software/ browser you are using. The link is not readily available to you in your pocket when you need it.

Get introduced to the power of Pocket – a great app that can achieve all the above purpose. It is so good, that we decided to dedicate a separate post for it and not include it in our list of must have apps for iPhone.

The app can achieve all the above tasks and much more. For some of the tasks you also need to install another app call IFTTT. We told you the other day how you can do away with birthday wishes on Facebook using the IFTTT app.



Steps

  1. Install the Pocket app and register using your email id.
  2. Install the IFTTT app and register using your email id.
  3. Install the pocket browser extension on your laptop/ PC. Pocket is already built in for Firefox. You can install the extension separately for Chrome, Safari and Opera.

To save a link from twitter to Pocket

  1. You need to activate a pre-created recipe on IFTTT app in your smartphone that will automatically save the links in favorite tweets to your Pocket library.
  2. Now anytime you find a link in a tweet that you want to watch later on, you just mark the tweet as favorite.
  3. The link will be saved in the Pocket app for later viewing and reading at your leisure.
  4. Moreover once the link is saved in Pocket, you can remove the tweet from your favorite list in twitter.

To save a video in YouTube

  1. You need to activate a pre-created recipe on IFTTT app that will add your ‘Watch Later’ videos to Pocket.
  2. Now anytime you want to save a video in YouTube for viewing later on, you add it to the ‘Watch Later’ library in YouTube.
  3. The video’s link will be saved in the Pocket app for later viewing.

Saving links from your browser

  1. Install the Pocket extension for Chrome, Safari and Opera
  2. Now anytime you come across a link that you want to save for later viewing, simply right click the link and you will see a ‘Save To Pocket’ option. Choose the option.
  3. save linkThe link will be saved in the Pocket app for later viewing and reading at your leisure.

Read the most dugg story of the day

  1. Activate the pre-created recipe for sending the most dugg story of the day to Pocket.

Similarly you can play around with IFTTT and pocket app to create wonderful rules and enjoy the power of internet.

Advantages of using pocket

  1. All your links that you want to read later on are at one single place, literally inside your pocket in your smartphone.
  2. The links (not the videos) can be viewed in offline mode. Once the links are sent to pocket, it saves it for offline viewing.
  3. You can customize the view of the articles in the links between article view and web-based view.