As longer term readers will know I had a Kindle for Christmas…

I haven’t used it as much as I’d hoped, mainly because I’d planned to use it with Instapaper a lot and it didn’t work quite how I wanted.

The problem with the way Instapaper sends documents is they come as one big bundle (i.e. a book full of the documents you’ve set to read later), in my case this was a fairly big bundle. Once I’d read an article it would still come down every day until I went to the website and removed it from Instapaper. Not really what I had in mind!

The Solution :: WordCycler

This little piece of software sits in your Tray (Windows) and when you connect your Kindle syncs all of your documents (or those folders you select) as individual articles. Fantastic! When you’ve read an article you delete it on the Kindle and it will be archived at Instapaper.

So my workfolow will be something like this:

• Read something interesting on the web, my6sense etc. Click to save to Instapaper.
• Sync my Kindle via USB every so often.
• Read articles and delete them on the Kindle (so they’re moved to archive at Instapaper).

Alternatively if you want them as one large book you can just set the correct settings at Instapaper and have it send it wirelessly, but I felt this method was stopping me using the Kindle how I wanted!

Note: There is one gotcha with this…

The articles synced down by WordCycler are put into a folder on the Kindle, but the Kindle only shows collections and ignores folders. They could be added to a collection but this would require a reset of the Kindle – you don’t want to do that every time you sync! The workaround is to make a collection for your books and put them in it, and use the main Kindle home page for all your Instapaper.

photo credit: kodomut

Happy Kindling!