Several times a day I’ll find something neat on the web, see a Facebook post from a friend, or get a link to an article in an email. At first I would try to go to all these articles immediately because I had no way of saving them to read later. It first got to the point where I would just skim everything, and then I pretty much stopped trying to read all these articles and posts altogether because I simply wasn’t getting any work done! Enter Instapaper.

Instapaper offers a one-stop shop where you can save anything and everything you find on the web and read it later: in a checkout line, on the bus, or waiting to meet up with friends.

How it works: you register for an account and download a bookmarklet (a little link that runs a mini-program from your browser toolbar) for Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari. You click on the bookmarklet whenever you find something you want to remember to read later. All the content gets saved to your Instapaper account.

Instapaper saves two views of each page whenever possible: a web view with all content intact, and a stripped-down text-and-links version without all the slow-loading flash videos, images and ads (good for reading from your phone or mobile device).

The best part for iPhone users is that the Instapaper iPhone app actually downloads the content of the articles to your phone so that you you can catch up on reading when you don’t have a wifi connection. Like when you are camping out for Red Sox tickets, for example.

Many people subscribe to RSS feeds so that they can stay updated on all their favorite websites sites from one place (usually a feed reader like Google Reader) without going back to the sites all the time. Instapaper offers a great way to save and read scattered articles from those sites that you may not necessarily be interested in subscribing to.