Marco Arment’s Instapaper is a great service. I like it so much, I pay the nominal $3 monthly subscription fee to make sure Marco has some income and can keep developing it. Not that my $3 feeds his family, but if enough of us do it… you get the picture.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]Instapaper is about to get a whole lot more popular. Arment release an API for the service that will allow other developers to tap into it. However, Arment can’t give away the farm or API as the case may be. So he came up with an innovative solution.

“Full API access, but only for paid-subscriber accounts. In other words, all developers can use the Full API, but it will only work for customers with Instapaper’s $1/month Subscription memberships.”

Sounds like a fair solution to me. I don’t mind paying to see great developers make their products better. Arment and Instapaper deserve the support.