Politics

Tools for Transparency: Arc90?s Readability

By Scott Stadum

Nicholas Carr of Wired recently wrote an interesting piece on how constant internet usage potentially “shatters focus, rewires brains.” In his piece he goes on to cite a few studies and experiments to conclude that “the Internet is an interruption system,” in more than just the traditional sense.

I would go on to tell you more but I wasn’t able to read through the entire article without….look, a squirrel!

Ok, you get the point. The more you try and read, multi-task and do while using the internet, the less you’re able to, well, read, multi-task and do. One tool I found that has helped me to focus while reading anything longer than a few paragraphs is Arc90.com’s Readability tool.

What the tool is good at doing is stripping out the distracting and disruptive ads, sidebar filler and the rest of the junk that tends to fill up a web page.

How does it work? It’s simple. Go to their site, set your reading preferences and drag the bookmarklet into the bookmarks section of your browser. When you come upon a page that looks dauntingly long, click the bookmarklet and like magic, it makes the site clear and legible.

This isn’t going to cure your internet induced ADD but it’s a step in the right direction.

Full post as published by Sunlight Foundation on July 15, 2010 (boomark / email).