Wednesday 16 April 2008

Latrz - a handy web app for reading stuff later (latrz)

I've wanted something like this for the longest time! I've found when surfing, chatting online, working with email that I keep stumbling on loads of links to interesting stuff I wanna read - but just not right now - later.

I've often kept open loads of FireFox windows for stuff I should read soon (which then means I struggle to find what I am currently reading/working on from stuff I wanna read later). Then I've been through phases of cutting and pasting interesting articles into files/wikis for later. I've always felt this was sucky and wanted a nicer solution.

Now there's latrz and I confess to being totally hooked already :).

Basically if I'm on a page I know I wanna read, I click the Read Latrz bookmarket, then close the browser or carry on doing what I'm doing. Then when I've time I just click on the latrz site to read whatever takes my fancy, then mark it as read when I'm done to remove it from my reading list.

Go on, give it a try or subscribe to the Latrz Blog, you know you want to :)

6 comments:

Nigel said...

At last, a gadget that's actually useful! Thanks for that James...

James Strachan said...

You're most welcome Nigel! Let us know what you think of latrz!

pkmk said...

try http://www.instapaper.com/
i cannot compare. but it has good karma ;]

James Strachan said...

pukomuko thanks for the link! Wish I'd found that a while ago :).

First impressions are that its kinda similar - though latrz supports powerful tagging & searching, lets me read using the websites actual format by default and its backed & hosted by Google. Plus latrz also rates articles you read so one day we can share the great stuff we read...

Martin said...

Very cool that you made this in just a day. Django is very cool for doing stuff like this. But havn't you just created del.icio.us again?

James Strachan said...

Martin, Latrz certainly has similarities to delicious in that its a personal set of links with tags. So the user interface for adding/removing links is kinda similar (but then there’s only so many ways to do that :).

Though the big difference is how you use the links. With latrz its not bookmarks; its articles to read – which once read are removed from your reading list. (Plus soon you'll be able to bubble articles up/down in your list)

So I tend to think of latrz as more like a cross between bookmarks and email. You can move things in and out of your inbox when you’ve read them – along with a nice little UI for reading them and marking them as read. With an added bonus of rating all articles you read so we can generate feeds of recommended articles you can then share with your friends etc.