Dumping items in a sort of “inbox” to process later when you have time has become one of the basic mantras of modern-day productivity systems and is the foundation of services like Pocket, formerly known as Read It Later. But that step is only half the equation, with knowing when and where to tackle which item being the other part. This latest update to Pocket brings a bit of intelligence into the service to help you pick out the best item to read at the right time and the right place.
The new Highlights recommendation system is Pocket 5.0’s main highlight, no pun intended. Highlights sorts, organizes, and offers recommendations among the dozens if not hundreds of unread items you have queued up. Want to read the most popular or most important stories in your list? Browse the Best of and Trending section. Only have time for a quick peek or two? The Quick Reads category has you covered. How about when you have lots of time in your hands? Then the Long Reads will keep you occupied, informed, and entertained. Of course, Pocket doesn’t just do it all by itself willy-nilly. Highlights learns what’s important and what’s not from your usage. It even features dynamic categories that it continually updates to your tastes.
Of course there are other nice changes waiting inside this update as well, particularly related to the user interface. To accommodate the new Highlights feature, articles are now marked with colorful badges to make it easy to see which is which in a glance. Navigation has also been improved, now sporting a side panel that will let users jump right into the appropriate section or category without going back and forth the homescreen. And lastly, Pocket has finally added Bulk Edit, making it so much easier to manage those articles all at once.
If these new features to your favorite app has you foaming at the mouth, best to calm down for a while. Pocket 5.0 won’t be available on Android until November 20, and will still be rolling out to the Web and elsewhere in the coming months.
SOURCE: Pocket
