Shack Attack

Instapaper Makes Reading Online Content Fun and Easy

A clever young man named Marco wrote an awesome little web service called Instapaper. If you ever find an online article you'd like to read, but are annoyed by the text size, the ads, clicking to change pages (each one with more ads), or your inability to pick up the article and go somewhere else, you need this.

Instapaper is really simple:

1. Drag this link to your bookmarks bar: Read Later

2. Whenever you're on an article you want to read later, online or offline, at your leisure, click "read later."

3. That's it. You can access all of your content at Instapaper.com.

Instapaper syncs between the web and your phone, which is sweet. If I'm reading something on the computer and need to go somewhere, I can keep reading it wherever I am. It uses crazy-ass technology magic to remove all the ads, pictures, and weird formatting from articles, so all you have is beautiful, distraction-free text.

I haven't touched another iPhone app in a while.

NPR Parody Video: Oh, So Good

This is why you should support public radio. I want the Carl Kasell app.

via Giz

Undercover at a Christian Gay-to-Straight Conversion Camp

Long Form, a repository of journalism "too long and too interesting to be read on a web browser" is my new favorite blog. One of today's stories, a weekend undercover at a homosexuality 'reform' weekend, is excellent.

The Friday morning of the retreat, I double-checked my bags to make sure I didn’t pack anything that might divulge my true identity or my secular tendencies. Stricken from the usual weekend-getaway packing list: My iPod, for the Rage Against the Machine and Immortal Technique albums, and my current reading list — Karen Armstrong’s The Bible: A Biography, and Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

fulltext

Brett Domino and Steven Peavis Bringing Sexy Back

And how!

(via thedw.us)

LinkedIn Isn't Fun

LinkedIn sounds good in theory- a social network for professionals, where you can put your most businesslike foot forward, connect with others in your industry, and participate in networking and discussions on a higher, more grown-up level than Facebook or Myspace. I remember getting excited about connecting with people from work and school, seeing who they were connected to, and thinking about all the opportunities to connect with potential employers.

Then I got a job. When you're not looking for employment or employees, and you're faced with a finite amount of free time in the day, you want to allocate it to something enjoyable. LinkedIn is not enjoyable. Andy Wibbels from Six Apart nails it:

I don't see the need to use LinkedIn if I'm not looking for a job - I'm sure that is a total insult to all the many things the designers and engineers behind LinkedIn see as other ways to use the site - but I simply don't get it. Plus, I'm not the type to hermetically seal my business and personal lives so if crazy updates from Facebook or Twitter or my blogs are seen by both co-workers, potential employers, friends and possibly conservative-minded extended family members in Indiana (who are always polite enough to just simply ignore those things since that's just how we roll in Hoosier-ville).

As does Josh Porter:

LinkedIn is not used every day by most of the people who use it. Many of the 38 million registered users use it infrequently. Personally, I only use it to respond to requests for connections or some other email notification I receive (sad but true). Other than pruning it as a weak-ties network, LinkedIn really isn’t that useful for me. A lot of folks I’ve talked to share this sentiment…it’s basically used as a souped-up contacts manager.

On the other hand, who cares? As a souped-up contact manager, LinkedIn works really, really well, and the ability to see a person's work history, contacts, and recommendations at a glance is wonderful when scoping out potential business partners or employees. LinkedIn is a nifty tool, but I think it's unlikely we'll ever see it be a daily destination for anyone but headhunters and the unemployed.

Oh, and maybe "Social Media experts." Not the real ones, who get paid money to solve problems, but the thousands of self-proclaimed gurus cluttering every social network on the web.

Drop me a line on LinkedIn and I'll respond, but until I'm scrambling for a job right before graduation, I'd rather be watching YouTube.