Now is Later

One of my favorite pastime is to search the Internet for things to make life easy.

A great believer in lifehacks, I've been suggesting them every now and then. I came across something that not only is one of the coolest things as far as lifehacks are concerned but also promises to be a very useful tool. The site is called Instapaper and doesn't ask for anything more than your e-mail id. Once you log in using it, you are asked to drag an icon, 'Read Later ', on to your browser's taskbar. From that point you can click that icon and any website or web page that you wish to read but can't for any reason gets added to the list. Log on later to Instapaper and it will show you all the pages that you saved. What is so cool about it or how is it any different from adding a page to your favorites list? Well, if you ever see my favorites list, you'd know why I loved Instapaper. It doesn't open up to show a barrage of pages marked favorite and hence no clutter.

The Internet is full of such hacks and GTD's and Hipster PDA's and planners and what have you. At times I think getting these hacks actually adds to the complication but I just can't seem to help it. There is an inherent zeal in me that makes me mindlessly browse the Internet and look for programs, hacks and everything in between to make life simple. The debatable thing here could be that do I seriously consider my life to be so complicated that I constantly need tools to ease it? Or could just be that this information is so fascinating that I just can't ignore it?

For instance why'd I need a(nother) writing software that replicates a typewrite on the computer when I have every possible word processor? And that too for both Mac and PC platforms! Writer transforms the screen into a huge white sheet and while you type it doesn't allow spellchecks, doesn't let you delete a word and even if you want to delete a word, it just allows a strike through! It's a cool looking thing though!

It doesn't really stop here.

These days I'm enjoying WriteRoom that makes the entire screen go black and a Matrix like green blinking cursor teases you to write! This is a paid software which ensures that there is nothing but just you and your writing! And yeah this one allows spellchecks, thank god!

Then there is Tofu that makes reading huge files easier as it allows you to view a document in newspaper like three columns rather than one scroll-down thingy.

Why am I doing all this?

Maybe I am driven like Einstein who believed that everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler...

PS: And while you are looking for things to simplify life be sure you look 'amongst' things for the Internet is overflowing with the likes!