Instapaper 3 Adds Sharing, Curated Articles and Plain Old Speed

Instapaper 3 makes a good app better

Instapaper, one of the best apps on any mobile device, has just been updated to v3.0 in time for you to enjoy on your new iPad 2. There are some big new features, but if you want to go right along and continue reading articles you saved earlier, then you can carry on as if nothing had changed.

And if you never used Instapaper, here?s a refresher: You click a bookmarklet whenever you see a web article you?d like to read later. Fire up Instapaper ? later ? and you?ll find all the articles saved and beautifully formatted for easy reading.

The biggest new feature is social integration (no, don?t groan ? developer Marco Arment has got this just right). The button to ?star? favorite articles has been replaced by a ?Like? button, and your friends can browse and read these articles.

Friends come from the usual places ? Facebook, Twitter, your contacts list, Tumblr (Arment was a founder and the developer of Tumblr), and also Pinboard and Evernote. Once you have added friends you can click to browse a list of their liked articles. It actually works really well, and is a lot better than the previous system, where you had to subscribe to another Instapaper user?s email address. In fact, so hidden was this feature that you likely didn?t even know it existed.

Next up are editor?s picks. This section gathers various long-form journalism aggregators: Give Me Something to Read, Longreads, The Browser and Longform.org. Tap one of these and you are taken to the relevant website (using the new, redesigned built-in browser) from where you can pick what you want to read, whether now or later.

There are lots of other less noticeable updates, too. Better image quality for stored pictures, full search of downloaded articles (great for research) and what Marco calls a ?smart rotation lock,? which pops up a button to switch on rotation-lock if it thinks you have tipped your iDevice too far by accident. This is fantastic for people who prefer to use the iPad?s toggl-switch for muting, not rotation lock, and is one of those tiny, smart touches with which Marco peppers his software.

It?s a solid upgrade, and free. And if you don?t use Instapaper already, shame on you ? it only costs $5.

Instapaper 3.0 is here! [Instapaper Blog]

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