Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Tip - TidyRead will save you time and cut the noise

I just started using TidyRead. A real time-saver and an aid to reading enjoyment and comprehension. I found out about it at MakeUseOf.com - here.
I use Google Reader to filter all the blogs and news sites that I like to keep in touch with, scanning the headers for items that look like they will interest me. This has automated things to the extent that it saves me considerable time/effort in visiting these sites individually from RSS feeds/bookmarks - I now have it all “delivered” via Google Reader - which presents me with a neat and uncluttered list of the feed items, with headers.

However, when I go to read the items presented in Google Reader that interest me, I am faced with something I detest: all the distracting colour splashes, logos, and general advertising noise/garbage and bad ergonomics in web design that the authors/promoters of the destination sites have decided they will force-feed to me as part of my “user experience” (a euphemism for “you will see what I dictate” used by editorial/media fascists). It’s got as bad as - if not worse than - commercial TV advertising, which is something else I detest. The media are in control of the viewer.