Paper.li + Instapaper + Kindle = Personalized Magazine

How I Use Paper.Li

I follow quite a lot of people on my Twitter account, so it's inevitable that I end up not seeing every tweet posted by every user. I do, however, have a pretty good idea of what links the people I follow are tweeting thanks to a third-party service called Paper.li.

Paper.li crunches through all the tweets that were posted by the people you follow in 24-hour chunks, and prepares a "paper" or online magazine for you to read the articles that your followings linked to.

For example: the Scientist Artist Collaborations
(a paper.li paper that I found by randomly performing a Twitter search)

What makes paper.li interesting is that it ranks the articles from what it feels is most relevant to least relevant, and it makes the list of articles available in list view aside from "paper" view.

For example: the Scientist Artist Collaborations paper in list view
(which you can get to by clicking the "see all articles" link in the upper right corner of the "paper view")

So whenever I have some down time and want to get caught up on the most interesting articles that my followings have been tweeting about, I head to my own paper in its list view and start clicking through links that I find interesting.

How I use Instapaper

Now that I've got my own private news feed of interesting links, I make a point of reading the first paragraph of every article that I become curious about. If after reading that paragraph I find myself wanting to read more, I add the article to my Instapaper account (whether it's via web or on my iPod).

I've also set up my Instapaper account so that it has my Kindle settings (login required).  It's configured to send any new items I've added in the past 24 hours to my Kindle. It gets to me at no cost because I've opted for free delivery via wifi rather than using the not-free-if-you're-not-in-the-US 3G delivery option.

On the Kindle

Every time Amazon receives the daily feed from Instapaper, they send me an email to let me know that it's available for download. 

When I get that email, I turn on my Kindle's wireless setting and select the Sync to Download Items option. I typically leave the wireless off the rest of the time to save on battery.

Nothing beats the experience of leisurely reading articles that you've personally curated on the Kindle's gorgeous and eye-friendly screen.

How to Create an account for the US iTunes Store

This information is no doubt recorded elsewhere on the web, but I might as well write about my own experience.

Background
I don't live in the US and I don't have a US-based credit card. My PayPal account is linked to my non-US credit card, and therefore is not recognized by iTunes as a valid US-based payment method. For this reason, iTunes refuses to let me download anything from the iTunes US Store -- not even the free apps.

Solution
The easiest way to create a US iTunes Store account is to buy an iTunes Gift Card and use that as the primary payment mechanism for your iTunes account. Since I was in the US recently, I picked up a handful of gift cards at the nearest brick-and-mortar retailer and used that.

Note: This process assumes you already have an existing iTunes account that's valid for a different country.

Steps

1. Launch iTunes and login using your existing Apple ID.
   
2. Click "iTunes Store" in the left sidebar
   
3. Look for your Apple Id in the upper right corner. Click that.
   
4. In the pop-up that appears, enter your existing password and click the "View Account" button
   
5. In the new screen that appears, look for the "Change Country or Region" button. Click that and choose the USA
   
6. To successfully create an iTunes account for the US Store, you need to enter a valid payment method. The initial set of options allow you to add a credit card or a Paypal account. Select "None"
   
7. The second section on the screen lets you redeem an iTunes Gift Card. Click the "redeem" link and enter the code on the back of your gift card.
   
8. You'll be required to enter a valid US-based address, which will be the basis for calculating Sales Tax for your iTunes Store purchases. I used the address of family who live in the US.  If you're really interested in keeping your sales tax low, you may want to review this sortable table of tax rates for various US States.
   
9. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click Done. You now have a new account for the US iTunes Store, using the same email address and password as your non-US iTunes account.
   
10. Test that you've done this correctly by downloading an app that's only available in the iTunes US Store. My test app was the free Scrabble App from Hasbro/EA.
    
11. Sync your device (an iPod in my case) with your iTunes account to confirm that the newly downloaded app is successfully transferred to your device. Note: All your previously downloaded apps will still remain in iTunes and on your device.
    
12. Now attempt to download or update an app that's already existing on your device by going to the App Store app on the device itself. You'll be prompted to switch from your current country to the US iTunes Store. Just say yes, enter your Apple ID password, and you'll be switched over. 

And that's it. You now have a US Store iTunes account with a small usable balance. If you need to replenish it, you'll just need to buy new iTunes Gift Cards.

Testing Blogbooster

Was just thinking to myself today that I'd probably be more inclined to resume blogging if I could find an app that lets me create blog entries on the iPod.

A quick search turned up Blogbooster, which has both free and paid versions. This post is my first attempt to actually use the free version.

Whoever coined the phrase "there's an app for that" sure knew what they were talking about.