Kobo, Instapaper have come together at last
The read-it-later service Pocket has shut down, and with it went its integration with Kobo e-readers. Fortunately, earlier this summer Kobo owner Rakuten announced that Instapaper would replace Pocket as its new read-it-later service of choice.
As of today, that support is live. After a Kobo software update and a quick trip to a special URL to link a Kobo to an Instapaper account, the system works just like the old Pocket integration did. Add an article to your Instapaper account, and then go to the Articles reader on Kobo (More: My Articles) and you’ll find your Instapaper articles there, ready to read in E-Ink instead of scrolling on the Web. As someone who frequently finds read-it-later services more like never-read-it services, an e-reader is actually the perfect outlet for all those longform articles I aspire to read one day.
Many modern Kobos have support for Dropbox, which makes it easier to add all sorts of other files to the mix. The big missing piece is import via e-mail, which Kindle has supported forever and isn’t offered by Kobo. (Instapaper does offer a limited email import.)
But after Pocket announced its end, I despaired for the future of my Kobo as anything but a book reader. Thankfully, Rakuten and Instapaper were able to make this switchover happen with what appears to be a minimum of disruption.