Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

A good bit of my day, every single day, is spent reading on screens. I’ll read news on my computer, and then save some interesting stuff to Instapaper to read while I’m on the subway.  I’ll read RSS feeds when I get to work, read blogs and news throughout the day, catch up on ESPN when I’m bored, and maybe end the day reading a book on my iPod Touch or my laptop while I’m sitting in bed.

All of that would be fine, except that computer reading is a nightmare. There’s the obvious problems, like “you’ll go blind,” as well as a host of other annoyances. Between blinking ads that pop up over the first nine paragraphs of the story, ads about some girl’s nasty yellow teeth I’d really rather not see, and the “hey there, want to subscribe to my newsletter?” notes that seem to be plastered all over most blogs, reading on your computer (or any screen) just sucks.

I can’t fix the problem, but I can offer a few tips and solutions I’ve found that make reading on your computer not only sustainable for your eyes, but also make the experience much more enjoyable in general.

Save Your Eyes

I think the jury’s more or less in agreement on the fact that staring at a bright screen for a long time isn’t the best for your eyes. Since spending less time online is just a terrible idea, we’ll just have to lessen the impact on our eyes. (Note: see update at the bottom)

There are a couple of ways to do this. The first tip is a simple one – anytime you can, use your computer with some other light. It’s much easier on your eyes when you’re not being blasted with the bright lights of only one thing.

Another good way to remove the strain is to invert the screen’s colors (meaning you read white text on a black background instead of the normal, black-on-white way), which is a lot easier on your eyes. Many reading applications for mobile devices (including Instapaper and Read it Later) have a setting for that mode, which both saves power and saves your eyes. For broader uses, there’s a Firefox add-on called Invert Colors that does exactly the same thing, only on every page in your browser.

Get Some Readability

My saving grace for Web reading, and the inspiration for this post, is the Readability bookmarklet for your browser. I’ve written about it before, but it’s worth mentioning again because it’s such a life-saver. When you click the button (on any page, in any browser), Readability extracts the important pictures, text and video from a page, and gets rid of everything else – ads, banners, subscription nags, all of it. Gone. Just read. Want the annoyances? Refresh the page, and it goes back to how it was.

Readability is also fantastic for bookmarking pages (because you’re only bookmarking the good parts, not the nav bar and ads and sidebar and everything else), but it wins my heart for letting you read without any distractions.

Get All Newspaper-y

If you’re reading a lot, checking RSS feeds or just surfing around for reading material, the typical format of most websites – where you read straight down a page in reverse chronological order – doesn’t really work. It’s been shown that things like multiple, short columns work better than long ones – think newspaper layouts versus blog format.

A few cool applications are taking advantage of that, making the reading a lot more pleasant and efficient. If you’re reading the New York Times, for instance, the Times Reader is phenomenal, showing the articles as the dead tree paper might. You’ll pay for the Times Reader, but it’s worth it.

There’s also a similar application that works on Adobe AIR (which means it’ll run on any platform) called Readefine. Readefine takes files from RSS, from your computer, or from webpages, and displays them in a pretty, easy-to-read way. It’s an excellent one-stop shop for reading better, and all for the low, low price of nuffin’.

If you’re reading RSS feeds, check out Feedly – it’s like Google Reader, only with much smarter ways of formatting, sorting, and displaying your content. It’s a Firefox extension and Web site, and works fantastically to give you a better reading experience than Google Reader.

Reading’s moving to screens, there’s just no getting around that. But, with a few useful tools, and a little bit of TLC for your eyes, that may not be such a bad thing.

Do you use anything to make your screen-based reading experience better?

Update: I’ve been doing some more reading on the subject of screens, paper, and the health of your eyes, and there’s some fascinating discussion that is much more controversial than I would have thought. Here’s my current favorite article on the subject, but I’d love to hear your thoughts as well!

(David’s note: We’re starting a new series here at the 2.0 Life, called “What’s in Your Browser?” The browser, it seems, is the new go-bag: everyone’s got it customized, right down to the nitty-gritty, to help them browse better, or faster, or more productively.

We all use browsers differently, and I get a kick out of seeing how other people have customized the “same” browser I use, sometimes to the point you can’t even tell it’s the same.

Our first submission comes from a regular contributor to The 2.0 Life, Squealing Rat.

Browser

IE is terrible. Safari is nice. Chrome is sweet. Firefox is amazing. You can guess which one I use. Do it. Guess.

If you didn’t guess, I use Firefox. The main reason to use Firefox is the extensions. Extensions allow you to add your own personal touch to Firefox. More popular extensions include those that block ads, download content and add the weather to the sidebar. But I will go into the depths of extensions later.

If you find yourself without the need for wonderful ways to expand your browsing experience, find yourself needing simplicity, don’t lose hope. There are others. Pretty darn good entries in the race I might add. Those would be Chrome and Safari. Chrome is Google’s browser. It works the best on PCs, and is very fast. The Mac version is not as polished, but still does a fine job, which leads us to the second contender. Safari. Safari is Apple’s default browser on the Mac is sleek and nearly identical to Chrome.

But I won’t dive into the browser wars when there is so much more that can be discussed.

Customizations/Extensions

I love extensions. Extensions, also known as add-ons, are a crucial part of Firefox. Some argue that the reason Firefox is popular is because of extensions. Extensions allow you to customize your browser. To extend your browser to fit your needs. For example, if Groucho Marx constantly checks the weather, he might want to add a small 5 day weather forecast to the top of his browser. This can be done easily in Firefox. If you visit the Firefox extension website, you can browse over 5,000 free extensions. Some add things to web pages that you change the view, some edit the look of your browser, and some work behind the scenes, making it all work. Let me take you though the extensions I use.

Lazarus - Lazarus is an extension I could not live without. I was recently using Safari, filling in a long form and accidentally closed the window. Oh, no problemo, I thought. Lazarus is there. But because I was using Safari, which does not have the same vast library of extensions, I lost the data. Lazarus is the safety net under trapeze artists in the circus.

It works silently behind the scenes, backing all of your creative reviews, forms, and entries in web windows, and if you should slip and fall (i.e. close your session), Lazarus is there. Lazarus can quickly restore the text that you entered. As to the security of it all, Lazarus stores your text on your computer. Your data is as safe as your computer.

Xmarks -  Xmarks, formerly known as Foxmarks, is a service that backs up and syncs all of your bookmarks to all of your computers. It is nice to have in case your hard drive crashes. However, if you have a lot of bookmarks like me (about 8 MBs, which is a lot) you might experience some pauses in your browsing experience, a minor, but annoying drawback. All in all, though, it’s the best way to keep your bookmarks handy and safe.

Stylish – I was hoping someone would ask why in my previous article, did my browser (Firefox for Mac) show favicons. Favicons are little icons that represent each browsing window. On a PC, you see them next to each tab, and next to each bookmark. Favicons allow you to quickly identify the tab or bookmark you would like to open. Unfortunately, by default, Firefox on Macs does not show favicons. So, after a bit of researching, I discovered that a extension called Stylish could help.

By itself, Stylish is a mere icon on the bottom of your screen. But, add a “style” to the extension, and you can expand your browser. One style,  “Mac bookmark toolbar favicon”, adds the favicons to your bookmarks toolbar and tabs. Only problem: sites that are too lazy to add a favicon and java script bookmarks that do not have a favicon. Still, this is a fabulous way to free up space.

Ad-Block Plus – Woohoo! And a big uh, oh to advertisers and publishers. As a consumer, I love this tool for uncluttering websites. As a blogger, I hate this tool for drying up my income. This extension blocks ads on sites and blocks Hulu ads as well. If you start to feel guilty (which you should) when visiting a site you love, click on the stop sign and uncheck block ads on this site so that everyone can make a decent living.

Greasemonkey

Ah, Greasemonkey, the tool for everyone. Nearly everyone I know uses Greasemonkey, a versatile add-on that in itself has thousands of tools that you can add. It’s a way of adding scripts to webpages, which lets you change the look, feel, and usefulness of any website to your heart’s content.

Here a some of my favorite Greasemonkey scripts:

Disable Google Reader’s “Like” Feature- I love Google Reader, but its latest push to make the site more social drove me crazy. I didn’t like the like feature one bit. Not surprisingly, Google Reader neglected to give an option to turn it off. But this extension simply removes that annoying feature.

Linkify Ting- Ever been on a site, see a link, but found that the link was unclickable? The person behind the scenes neglected to make it a hyperlink? Yeah, me too. And luckily for us, the author of this tool got fed up with it. Very simply, Linkify Ting makes everything that should be a link, a link.

digg- add mirrors- Just as it sounds, this tool allows you to easily find mirrors to Digg articles that have been taken down by the overwhelming clicks.

Twitter Search Results on Google- Twitter search is surprisingly helpful. I guess that is why they made the front page a Twitter search box. When you are searching Google, maybe for a problem or an issue you have been having, Twitter search for Google comes in handy. It provides a little box above the Google search results with Twitter search results, so that you can see that 20 other people are experiencing the same Wordpress problem. One annoying thing: there is a small delay in the adding of the Twitter search box to the window, which can lead to misclicks.

Toolbars

I am not going to go into a large explanation of how I setup my toolbars (I did that here). But I will talk a bit about the only two toolbars I use.

Google Toolbar – Google toolbar does a couple of things that I really like.The first is autofill. Autofill allows you to automatically fill in forms with your information. You can add different profiles: one for work, one for home. You can also choose to add your credit card number, which I do not like (due to security concerns). You can also quickly see your Gmail messages and calender entries.  Best of all, the Google toolbar allows you to sync settings between computers, using your Google ID, which can come in very handy.

Bookmarks Toolbar – My bookmarks toolbar, which I just merged with my Google toolbar, is another component of my browser. I use it to get places fast. Now, I must admit, that you could simply use Firefox’s keyword browsing, but I prefer to click on my sites.

Your turn – what’s running in your browser? And do you want to contribute your own post? Do it to it!

Photo: fmg2001, pro_webdev

I have used a TON of different Web apps in the last ten months. Whether I hear about an app, read about it, or am pitched by a PR company, I have a lot of different applications coming across my various inboxes on a daily basis.

For the most part, I love trying these applications – they’re usually fun and useful, and I just enjoy getting to play around and test out a given site. But as I test drive more and more applications, I’ve noticed that there are a few features and issues that make the difference between me trying it, ceasing to care and moving on, and actually integrating a given app into my daily life.

For an application to matter to me, longer than just the time it takes to test it out, it has to meet certain criteria. Often, great though the application or service might be, it’s missing some of these things, and building huge walls to actually getting and retaining users.

Stupid Simplicity

If it takes me more than six seconds to figure out what an application does, odds are I’m going to stop using it. Applications, to have sticking power for me, need to be the simplest among competing apps. This isn’t to say it can’t have more features, or even be more complex to use – it just has to lower the learning curve.

Popular applications are popular because, at their basest, they’re stupidly simple. Users can complicate them in their own way, to suit their own needs, but leave that to the users. Simple wins.

Be Different, And Tell Me About It

The first question I always ask when I’m testing an app: Why should I use this application, in a market in which there’s definitely competition? So many applications exist, all of which do essentially the same thing – what sets this one apart? I love when apps make that obvious. Tell me not only what you do, but what you do that no one else does. If the answer is nothing, I’m gone.

The answer to this question can sometimes be, "we do the same things, better." That’s fantastic too, but tell me why. If an application’s going to make its way into my life, it’s not because I arbitrarily choose it – it’s because it’s the only one that works just right, and I can’t not use it. So tell me, repeatedly, why that’s you.

Increase Long-term Benefit

So many applications do one thing, that I need one time. That’s all well and good, but for most of them, the one-time benefit isn’t worth the time it takes to set up and get an application running.

After I set up, sign up, and learn an application, what’s the value? Am I going to care about this in three days? How about three months? Three years? If there’s no value beyond the first time I use it, I’m probably not going to use it at all.

Play Nicely

I already have a set of applications, systems and tools that I use. Any application that’s going to have sticking power isn’t going to make me drastically change that. I don’t mind an application that works on its own, or doesn’t integrate with other apps, but it’s got to play nicely. Don’t not work with Word, or not offer exporting to PDF. Don’t make me change my whole system to use your app – you’ll lose.

What do you think? What are the prerequisites to you actually adopting and using an application?

Photo: SheepGuardingLlama

The Web is full of odd trends, and bizarre things that get incredibly popular for no particular reason. Some things are funny, some are just weird, and some feature small children coming home from the dentist and wondering, “is this real life?”

These trends and fads on the Web are called memes, for some reason completely beyond me. Whatever the reason, they explode, and are the thing everyone’s talking about – at least for a little while.

If you’re in the mood to go back and see what’s been going on in the past, and remember some of the great memes from the golden days, a Dipity user has made a fantastic timeline of Internet memes, from the beginning of the Internet (August 16, 1970) to the already-mentioned “David After Dentist” video.

It’s full of mentions of interesting inventions and evolutions in Web-related things, as well as links to some of the most popular videos and icons of the Web. It’s both an interesting history lesson and a fun little diversion for a while. To view it, scroll through the timeline (it really picks up about 1995), and then double-click on any given item to read more about it, and view it if it’s a video.

A few interesting facts learned: The first emoticon was created on September 19, 1982. The first meme I remember? The Hampster Dance from August 1998. Peanut Butter Jelly Time? Still not that funny.

If you’re done with the timeline, and looking for more, poke around Dipity a bit. It’s an awesome resource for creating timelines of almost anything, and sharing them with people. The creation tool is incredibly easy, and Dipity works wonders pulling in all kinds of content from a huge number of sources. There’s a ton of interesting stuff put together, and it’s a site well-worth checking out, whether you want to put a timeline together or just view other people’s work.

The memes are fun, ridiculous, and a little saddening – I spent too much time watching Dr. Horrible. But it’s fun fodder for a lazy Sunday.

What’s your favorite meme?

Photo: webchicken

And there sure are a lot of things that fall into that category. Chrome does neat things with your history, your searching, your most visited pages, and a number of other parts of the browsing experience.

Here’s a few tips to get the most out of Google Chrome:

One Bar, Many Functions

The address bar in Google Chrome does far more than show you the webpage you’re on. Type in a search query, press Enter, and Chrome automatically searches Google for you. Type in the beginnings of a page you’ve been to before, and Chrome will give you a list of matching URLs, that you can click on to get back to your page. You can even search your history and get search recommendations by typing into the address bar. It’s fast, easy, and it just works. This bar is the biggest reason I’m using Chrome, and it makes browsing incredibly faster.

Keyboard Love

Google Chrome offers a bunch of great keyboard shortcuts to make browsing even fast. Control+T opens a new tab, Control+W closes the current one. Control+Shift+T opens the last closed tab (a shortcut I use constantly), Control+Tab cycles through your open tabs, and Control+H opens your history in a tab. And those are just the shortcuts for your tabs! Fore more keyboard-y goodness, check out Google’s list of Chrome Shortcuts.

Mousing Around

Don’t like the keyboard? You won’t have to use it much with Chrome. There are a couple of great, time-saving mouse shortcuts that Chrome did a great job with. A favorite is the “paste and go” feature. If you’ve got a URL on your clipboard, right-click in the Chrome address bar. Click “paste and go” and the page will automatically be loaded for you, without having to press Enter. It’s small, but it’s useful. Also, you can drag the corner of any text box in Chrome to make it better sized for your writing. There are other great ways to use your mouse, but those are the two that I find myself using on a daily basis.

Download Heaven

I hate, hate, Firefox’s way of managing downloads. Chrome’s, on the other hand, is just about perfect. Everything you download appears on a bar at the bottom of the screen, and you can see the progress easily. Once a file is downloaded, you’ll be able to drag and drop the file into any Explorer window to save it there. You can also use the download bar to see where a file is located, open it, or see other files you’ve downloaded in the past. Your downloads are never lost with Chrome, and they’re super-easy to deal with.

Google Toolbar

One great thing about Firefox is its support for Google Toolbar, which allows for easy access to bookmarks, files, Gmail, Google Calendar, and a host of other features. Since Chrome unfortunately still doesn’t have extensions, you can’t directly use the Google Toolbar. However, using “Project Fakebar,” you can get all the features of Google Toolbar to be available to you in Chrome. It takes a bit of legwork (though not more than a few minutes of your time), and is hugely useful for Google lovers like yours truly.

Have you tried using Google Chrome? What’d you think?