About two years ago, on my old blog, I posted a description of the technology I use for managing and reading various types of articles. I re-post it below. It is largely still accurate, with some minor changes that are worth noting. For one, I’ve started using LiquidText for my pdfs. Underlining and other annotations seem to work more smoothly, and I also like the ability to combine several sources in one document, connecting notes across such sources in one document, pulling quotes out from the documents, and then exporting everything in a word document. That’s quite helpful for literature reviews. The downside, as I note below, is that LiquidText integrates less smoothly with the iCloud than Goodreader. You can’t always get what you want!
I still use Instapaper, even though taking unlimited notes now again requires a paid subscription, with the owners providing only minimal development of the system, even only minimal updates of the iphone/ipad apps. I don’t mind the modest price (about $3 per month), but some of the functions can be a little buggy, particularly the text-to-speech playlist function. Still, it’s the only app that I’ve found lets me easily take and export underlines and notes on web articles, and the playlist function, buggy or not, is quite amazing. I commute a lot, and listening to class readings, even if read by Siri (or “Samantha”), has been a real time saver on occasion.
OK, here is what I wrote in January 2018, after the jump.
