This tool is a little like Snap (which I tried for less than 24 hours here on ProBlogger – but took down after many complaints) but instead of showing you a tiny screen capture of where a link on a website leads – iReader lets you preview it’s content in text and as a little list (and don’t we love a good list).
Here’s what it did when I hovered over one of my recent posts (not the most intuitive of selections from the post – but it’d give readers a sense of what it was about):
The difference with iReader and Snap is that iReader is a browser extension – so it’s something that readers determine whether they’ll use – whereas Snap is something you as the website owner install.
As a blogger I can see the usefulness of this type of tool. I’m constantly surfing and to be able to get a quick sense of what a link might offer me could be useful. I wouldn’t use it 24/7 while surfing – but when in research mode it could be useful to have activated.
Performance wise – it runs a little too slow for my liking – in the time that it takes for the popup to appear i could click through and almost load the site – but as Richard says, iReader is in beta and can only improve.
