It seems that everyday I get a little more fed up with all the distracting annoyances that are put in my way of seeing my daily news feeds.

The advertisements are becoming maddening.

• On many sites, they pop up over the top of the news article I have chosen to read.
• Other times, it seems there are more ads than information on my screen.
• Another thing that annoys me to the nth degree are videos that are moving in the background while I am trying to read an article.
• Finally, sometimes I click on an article expecting to read the story, and instead, a video pops up. Sometimes they are captioned, sometimes not.

Even the New York Times, which I pay $50/year for, have them. I have just about had my fill with all these things! The final thing is that almost every reputable news source gives you a couple of feeds and then demands a monthly fee to see more. I completely understand that you get what you pay for, but if I joined all the sources I need, it would probably be $100/month in fees alone.

I have been on a quest to find a single source that has articles from several news organizations in one place, and is easy to use.

Then along came Inkl. In one stroke, it eliminated all these annoyances, and provided me with a home screen that is beyond my dreams.

First, Inkl is a paid ad-free service, where I am the customer, not a product they need to sell. As they say, “instead of clickbait and fake news, we show you real news you won’t see elsewhere”. I signed up for a two-week trial and fell in love with it. The home screen, as shown below, is perfectly suited for my method of browsing the daily news.

Let’s go through it. The left column groups the articles by pertinent categories. All you have to do is to click on a topic and dozens of articles from different news organizations appear in the middle column, ready for your selection. When you pick one, the text of the article appears on the right side of the screen. Nothing but text and pertinent images appear. Nothing to distract you from reading what you came for.

I almost always start with the “For You” button. It keeps track of what you have viewed in the past but doesn’t fixate only on that. It gives me a nice variety of stories to choose from. Each article clearly shows its source.

When I am researching for a future post, the “Search” does a good job of finding what I need. During my research, the “Save” button comes in handy to collect a number of different sources, which will be parsed down after the initial review. The saved articles can then be easily moved to my Evernote app for annotation and highlights.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I am becoming an avid user of this new tool. I pay $100/year for the service, but it will turn out to be money well spent.

If you are a news junkie like me, you might want to give them a try. No, I am not getting any money or other compensation for this endorsement. I just believe that quality products should get the attention they deserve.

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