Kind of distracting way to start reading

Take this screencap of an article on The Weekly Standard. All those flashy colors on the sidebar make it hard to concentrate, especially since your eyes hit them every time they get to the end of a line. And that’s just one thing in a pile of stuff that can make it hard to read. Ugly fonts, small fonts, crazy colors, flashing banners, and on it goes.

Fortunately, there’s a little tool that makes web reading a billion times² easier. It’s called Readability.

The same page viewed with Readability in a smaller browser window

Readability is a bookmarklet that strips away the extraneous elements of a page leaving you with nicely formatted content. Often, it will kill off the comments section, too (not a great loss on most public sites).

It’s also amazingly robust, extracting the content from almost any page I’ve wanted to throw at it (home pages and the like excepted, because it’s not designed for that).

Fret not, customization is easy. If, for some reason, you don’t enjoy reading medium size Athelas typeface with wide margins, change it: margins, typeface, size. Whatever you prefer. There’s even an option to convert links to footnotes, which is excellent for pages that look like a Wikipedia entry.

That’s it. No extra bells and whistles. In fact, it’s more like no bells and whistles. Which is awesome.

For most sites, you can just leave out the www and it will redirect to www.example.com or just example.com. Twitter, for example, redirects to no www.

Some sites will just accept either (which is a bad idea, actually). A number of really dumb sites will not work without www. Shameful.

And there’s no need to tack on www in front of a subdomain. www.badthing.blogspot.com. www.uncoolbeans.deviantart.com². Those are bad. The www there adds extra length, looks ugly and is quite certainly unneeded.

Thanks for reading. Tell your friends.

This is the third (second here) in a series of tech posts directed at laymen, non-geeks, etc. Basically a lot of my friends and family.

Tony Hall / CC NC-SA

With the name fresh in your ears, you may now be scoffing at what you think to be one of the new internet fads of the last years. Twitter tends to get a rap as just another social network, maybe even without much of a point.

However, Twitter is probably a bit different than what you’ve used before. Here are a few reasons, then, not to give Twitter not only a chance, but a try.

Simplicity

Twitter is explicitly simple. 140 characters, plain links, no extra crap. It doesn’t try to be everything, but does a few things very well.  New features have grown from organic usage; for example, retweets and @name replies. But that’s user inspired. No Farmville then, no people sending you virtual hearts, cows, or ice cream cones, nothing. You follow someone or you don’t. Tweet, retweet, direct message. No more, no less.

Speed and ubiquity

Twitter is fast. Facebook and FriendFeed may have auto-updating feeds, but Twitter smashes them. The hundreds of apps, as well as just the web interface, get you new tweets very quickly (and it’s going to get faster). One person can post a message and hundreds or thousands of people will read it within seconds. On their mobile phones, web browsers, and iPads. Twitter is platform neutral—meaning it’s everywhere.

Content

Certainly there are ways to make Twitter useless, like converting it into an unceremonious link dump to a blog or news site. But otherwise, it can be gold, because it has to be concise.

Connections are also much more free-form than previous platforms. Follow who you want. Unfollow people if they get noisy. Turn it off if you want for solitude.

And the other side is real time. Whether it’s knowing if Wikipedia is down or getting a restaurant recommendation, real time information flows through the public stream very quickly.

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It may take a little time to get used to, but once I think the reward is great if it clicks for you. Try out some different ways to interface with Twitter, see what you like. You may be pleasantly surprised. If not, we¹ bear you no ill will.

This is the second (first here) in a series of tech posts directed at laymen, non-geeks, etc. Basically a lot of my friends and family. Subscribe and enjoy.

It could really refer to one of three things:

Mobile broadband – broadband service delivered over a cellular network

Service from a WISP (wireless internet service provider) – the ISP delivers internet usually via some line of sight wireless technology. Somewhat more common in rural, elsewise underserved areas.

A wireless router providing an internet connection to devices – probably all types of broadband can be used via a wireless router. (Well, except gigabit service. There’s no wireless router with enough bandwidth for that.) The router allows devices (laptops, desktops, an iPod Touch, etc.) to connection wirelessly to the LAN and also provides internet if the router is connected. Wireless routers also usually have several wired Ethernet ports.

Some confusion may be had getting service from a WISP and running a wireless router. You have wireless (from the WISP) and wireless (a router running). But remember, you can also run a wireless router with other types of service: DSL, cable, FTTH, etc. In fact, you don’t even need an internet connection to run a wireless router. Once again, it forms a LAN (Local Area Network: a network of local devices, local being ones connected to this router) and provides an internet connection to these devices if there is one.

There are also wired (only) routers that perform much the same function, but may only be connected to with an Ethernet cable. Wireless is probably more common, at least in homes, because of it’s convenience (wiring a house is often much more difficult).

So that’s pretty much what wireless means.

This is the first in a planned series of tech posts directed at laymen, non-geeks, etc. Basically a lot of my friends and family. Subscribe and enjoy.

Illustration built with images from OpenClipArt.