Jon Mitchell at RWW says websites have to get better in response to Instapaper and Readability. I agree totally!

Here's what we can do to make progress on that front. Generate a community of template designers who create readable templates that we can use in content management systems.

Use whatever you like as placeholders for macros for the CMS's to fill in.

Open source templates.

Make it easy for people to make readable sites. And beautiful and have advertising. Help solve the problem.

PS: I wrote a piece about Readability that didn't get a whole lot of play. People who are angry about Readability don't understand how we got here.

 4/7/2012; 4:23:08 PM.

Doc is one of the most pious of the Popes of the Free Internet. That's why this story is so funny, not in a ha-ha way, but in a Gee life sure is strange way.

1. I went to the Harvard Business Review page to download a free excerpt from his upcoming book, The Intention Economy.

2. I clicked on a link to buy the book.

3. Before I could buy it, I had to read an ad for something unrelated.

Now that's a bad advertising strategy. You got the customer hooked, reaching into his pocket for the credit card, and you show him an ad for something else. Hello.

 4/7/2012; 2:46:31 PM.

Wish I was over there where the grass is greener.

When I lived in Berkeley I dreamed of living in NY, if only for the walking. Every day I could walk some place different. There are so many places. Imagining the grid of streets and all the variety it offered. In Berkeley, there weren't so many long walks one could take without thinking about it or ending up on a very steep hill. So I pretty much stuck to one or two trails. It's so much easier than inventing a new place to walk to every day.

So now I've lived in NYC for over two years, and have lived in three different neighborhoods, and while yes -- there is a lot of variety, the city comes with its own set of peeves that one won't find, for example, in Berkeley. Here's the biggest one of all.

People!

Every where you go there are huge numbers of them. And most of them aren't paying attention. So they walk into you. Literally. I'm not kidding. Every day someone walks into me. Even though I'm working my ass off to avoid them, sooner or later someone finds a way around my defenses, and wham -- football size hit.

I'm worried because I'm such a large human, that one of these people will be hurt and blame me for it.

That's the story that goes through my head at least.

All of which takes me out of my zone, and I rarely get the good thinking I used to get done on my California walks.

I'm old enough and wise enough to know that moving won't fix this. The movement has to take place inside me. Ahhh yes. I know. But that's not how it feels.

 4/7/2012; 1:20:29 PM.