A step by step guide to tracking your Instapaper reading list using Beeminder. This method can also be used more generally to track many things that spit out an RSS feed.
In short: Instapaper gives you (private) RSS feeds for your Read later folder and your Archive. We give IFTTT these feeds and tell it to send an email to Beeminder whenever either feed updates. We'll send a "+1" when you add an item to your read later folder and a "-1" when you archive an item. Your Beeminder goal will track the total number of articles in your queue.
- An Instapaper account.
- A Beeminder account, with at least a Bee Lite subscription (because you'll need to set up a custom goal).
- An IFTTT account.
- A Gmail account.