China’s Smartphone Owners Can Now Read It Later, With iKeepU App

A Chinese startup claims to have created the country’s first Instapaper/Read It Later type of cloud-powered page sync service – called iKeepU Reader. With a web app accompanied by apps for iPhone, Android, and WP7, it allows users to save any article on the web for reference or a more leisurely read at a later time.

Although neither Instapaper nor Read It Later have been whacked by Net Nanny (yet), a Chinese-language service of this nature is a welcome addition to the startup ecosystem here, and will hopefully generate enough traction to get to the point of creating an open API to allow its own iKeepU buttons to be added to local websites. But that’s still some way from happening, as iKeepU Reader’s iPhone app is currently at version 1.0, having only been released last week. But it already has all the key features in place, such as cross-platform syncing and an option in the mobile apps to read either the full HTML, or a basic text-only, version of your saved page.

On the desktop side, there are already a handful of bookmarklets and extensions to enable fast saving of your pages – which, after all, is where most of us still do most of our reading. There isn’t an extension for my preferred browser, Firefox, but the Javascript bookmarklet does its job so long as you remain signed-in to iKeepU on your desktop.

The iKeepU Reader app itself is separate from a more social hub called just iKeepU, which is where users of the startup’s service can share certain pages, and follow other users so as to read their favourite articles. It’s a neat idea for the cloud service to cover both, yet keep them in separate apps for those who’d prefer not to make a social network out of their tagged sites.

The company behind iKeepU is called Comsome, and has created the good-looking apps you see in the picture, which thankfully are not too closely based on those of its earlier rivals. Grab any of its three cross-platform apps on the iKeepU Reader homepage.

[Hat-tip: Leiphone – article in Chinese]