If you find yourself reading a lot of articles online, there are certain tools on the web, and for your browser, that will make reading a whole lot easier, and more efficient. Below I will list some tools you should check out.

The first recommendation is a bookmarklet that makes reading articles much easier, and with less clutter.  A bookmarklet is a bookmark, that when pressed, executes an action on your browser instead of going to a webpage.  There are a bunch of these type of bookmarklets, so it’s best to try them all to see which one you like the best.  My personal favorite is the first one:

• Readable App
• Readability
• Tidy Read

A handy web service for setting aside articles you want to read later is Instapaper.  Instapaper lets you use a bookmarklet to save articles to their service to read it later.  There are some nifty features, such as the ability to make the articles more readable (similar to how the above bookmarklets work), the ability to download an article in Kindle or ePub format to read on your eReader, and more.  They even offer a free and pro version for the iPhone, which I’ve found to be incredibly handy for catching up on my reading while on the go.  A side service of their’s provides recommended reading material at givemesomethingtoread.com.

While Delicious is a handy bookmarking service, it has become incredibly cluttered and slow ever since it was sold to Yahoo.  A fantastic alternative is Pinboard.in, which is what Delicious used to be, and then some.  It is speedy, easy to use, and allows importing from links from services like Delicious, Instapaper, Twitter, and even email links in.  While it is not free, I paid a $5.82 signup fee and it goes higher as more people sign up, it does keep spam off of the service and allows them to keep the service running smoothly and speedily.