“Mommm! Leave me alone! I’ll do it later!”

Is that you, in the middle of your bookmarks folder?

Who knew that when you were whining that sentence from under your pillow, you were actually being organized?! You told her, didn’t you? A big part of efficiency (when you get past the homework, chores and allowance stage of life) is recognizing what needs to be done now, and what should be done later. We have recently discovered an awesome way to organize your future time and things that should be done later – an extension for Firefox called Read It Later. Check out the features after the jump…

One of the first things that really grabbed me about this time-saving application is the fact that it doesn’t do that naff thing where every word in the title is pushed together but still capitalized. So refreshing to see spaces in an application title – just like home made lemonade! Basically, Read It Later saves you bookmarking hundreds of sites that are only of one-time interest, then having to organize, re-organize, collate, sift through and cull your enormous bookmark list every so often.

Read It Later Screenshot

The main features of Read It Later are:

• All pages of one-time interest are stored together
• There is an offline reading mode so you can access your material on the bus, plane, train or in the loungeroom without needing wireless connectivity.
• You can manage your list in any browser, and on any device
• Your list is accessible on different computers, and you can sync the list between computers also (awww! Married list bliss!)
• You can also enable a Click to Save mode, if you have several links to check out later on a single page or group of tabs

Read It Later is easy, and most importantly, quick, to use.  What happens is, you can either click the Read Later button on your Firefox toolbar when you are on the page, or you can enable Click to Save mode if there are several links on a page that you want to check out. The page is inserted into your reading list, so that you can go through all of this fascinating and highly useful content at another stage. When you’ve read it, click the Mark It As Read button that appears in the toolbar for saved pages, and the page flutters away back to the ether and out of your life.

Click to Save Mode in Read It Later

If you want to use the offline reading mode, click the Read Offline button in your Read It Later toolbar, and go make a coffee, pack your suitcase or do your tax return while you’re waiting for pages to download.  Make sure you actually mark your pages as read if you want to use this feature regularly … otherwise you’ll waste time waiting for unnecessary pages to download. Come on, nobody is too busy to simply click a button!

The any device accessibility of Read It Later comes from the personalized RSS feed of the reading list. You can use a feed reader or other mobile device to go through them at your leisure.

If enjoying the internet efficiently sounds like something that would save you time, you can also check out our post on enjoying free music, without wasting time on it.

Now you have absolutely, positively, no excuse for wasting time on the internet!!!