iRadar: How To Use Calibre To Read Instapaper On Any E-Book Reader

Sunday, December 12, 2010

How To Use Calibre To Read Instapaper On Any E-Book Reader

How To Use Calibre To Read Instapaper On Any E-Book Reader: "

calibre instapaper Find yourself constantly distracted at work by long articles? Stop reading them at work. Send them to Instapaper and read them on your e-book reader of choice with Calibre, regardless of whether that e-book reader has a network connection.

Instapaper is a great way to queue articles and blog posts for future reading. It even features a great app for Android and iOS devices, and a subscription service for the Kindle. Those of us with certain e-book readers may feel left out from this. They don’t have to. Calibre, the ulitmate ebook management program, can download entire newspapers, blogs and magazines.

It can also download your entire Instapaper queue, as it turns out, formatting everything for a staggering number of e-book readers. Heck, you can even schedule this process to happen automatically – all you’d need to do is transfer the file and get ready to read at home! Let’s break this down.

Step 1: Set Up Instapaper

Don’t have Instapaper? Get it. Head over to instapaper.com and sign up for an account. Once you’re done that, be sure to drag the “Read Later” button to your bookmarks toolbar:

calibre instapaper

Now the fun begins. Find any article you want to read and click this button; the article will automatically be sent to your Instapaper queue. You can read them online, if you want, or send them to your ebook reader using Calibre. Keep reading to find out how.

Step 2: Set Up Calibre To Download Instapaper

If you haven’t already, download Calibre. It’s a free program for Mac, Linux and Windows that helps manage e-books. Follow the prompts to set it up to sync with your e-book reader of choice and you’ll soon see the default interface. Click the “Fetch News” button to bring up the automatic downloading function of Calibre. Search for “Instapaper” and you’ll see the following window:

reader instapaper

Enter your username; no need for your password. Schedule a regular time for this to all happen, if you like. Click “Download Now” to grab everything immediately, or set up a regular time for this download to happen and click “Save” if you want this to happen regularly.

Step 3: Profit!

calibre instapaper

You’ve got it now; your Instapaper queue is now an e-book that can be quickly sent to your e-book reader. Everything you download will be automatically marked as “Read” on Instapaper, which means you’ll never download the same article to your ebook reader unless you intend to. Enjoy!

Supported Devices

So what ebook readers will this process work on? Well, Calibre supports many different eReaders, so this hack will work with any of them. Those supported as of late November 2010 include:

SONY PRS line
Barnes & Noble Nook
Cybook Gen 3/Opus
Amazon Kindle line
Entourage Edge
Longshine ShineBook
Ectaco Jetbook
BeBook/BeBook Mini
Irex Illiad/DR1000
Foxit eSlick
PocketBook 360
Italica
eClicto
Iriver Story
Airis dBook
Hanvon N515
Binatone Readme
Teclast K3
SpringDesign Alex
Kobo Reader

Depending on when you’re reading this Calibre may support more devices. Check out the Calibre FAQ for more information.

I have to thank Evil Genius Chronicles for this great idea, which I plan on making use of a great deal in the future. Let me know how it works for you in the comments below, or feel free to suggest any other ways of achieving this sort of setup.

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