Can Read It Later’s Digest feature help us organize and consume abundant information more efficiently? The demo video from their web site certainly strikes at this as the key value behind this feature. We intend to find out.

Automatic Grouping of Information

This video talks about how web articles can automatically be grouped and presented in an organized way. Since it is so easy to clip articles with the Read It Later’s embedded browser widgets, users presumably end up with a ton of unrelated content in the Reading List. In other words, uncontrolled abundant information. Not good. The key feature of Digest is to automatically organize that Reading List into a sub-topics that can be easily browsed. Sounds like a step in the right direction.

Does it Work?

Over the next month or so, we intend to try this out and see how useful it is. The key will be (1) convenience and (2) how well the automatic groupings work. We want to find out if it saves us time and helps us benefit from all the great information we will be putting into our Reading List.

Fogozine Integration

Additionally, Read It Later could become even more useful when integrated with our Fogozineproduct as both an import (article library) and export (sharing) feature. Maybe we should even add it to this blog so our posts can be quickly moved to people’s Reading List. Any Read It Later users out there who would like to see this?

How Mobile Devices Affect When We Read

Finally, I have to point out a really good post from Read It Later’s blog titled Is Mobile Affecting When We Read?. It presents some very interesting data about people’s information consumption habits and how they are shifting as more advanced mobile devices like the iPad become available. It is worth adding to your Reading List, and it is the first one in ours.