Cennydd Bowles imagining a calmer reading app:
An estimated reading time accompanies each article, calculated from its word count. It’s harder to estimate the scale of a digital work than its physical counterpart, since we can’t skim to the end or feel the paper it’s printed on. The reading time estimate helps users to fit reading around their schedules, reducing the chance they’ll have to abandon an article halfway through. It also promotes the understanding that it’s OK to graze on short articles. Reading needn’t be just about marathons of concentration.”
I love that idea and I hope it is one that Instapaper includes. (In fairness Instapaper currently uses vague dots to signify article length — this is better than nothing, but a time estimate would be killer.)