How far we've come since the launch of Nate Weiner's Read It Later Firefox extension and Marco Arment's Instapaper back in late 2007 and early 2008, which helped set off the first wave of "read it later" apps that simply let you save text for reading later. It's an elegant idea that offered readers a respite from the increasingly cluttered web by displaying content stripped of the usual clutter of navigation, buttons, and sidebars (and notably, ads). After the first bookmarklets and extensions, apps from Read It Later, Instapaper, and then Readability appeared, and we've seen a lot of this functionality and design language bleed into everything from Apple's Safari browser to the Longform iPad app.

Today, Read It Later has announced a complete rebranding across its iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire apps. Now dubbed 'Pocket,' the app expands beyond just text and web pages by now offering video and image support. Also notable is the price: Pocket is now free, and many of the "pro" options from the old $2.99 Read It Later Pro have been mixed into the new free app. More importantly, Pocket offers a complete design overhaul across all supported devices. Whether they've helped revitalize long-form reading and writing (or not), these single-tasking reading tools are enormously helpful in getting away from the distractions of the web.

How's Pocket hold up to review? Read on!