A company called Arc90 has come up with something interesting and very useful. A bookmarklet that allows readers to view web pages without all the ads and clutter.

I do a fair amount of reading on the web. All kinds of content. I like to keep up with a large variety of subjects, from photography to digital technology to the plight of the West African Fire Ant. Ok, I made that last one up. It means I visit a lot of web pages, many of which are cluttered all over with ads and other stuff flashing at me and trying to get my attention. It makes it very hard to do the very thing I’m there to do, which is READ the article that brought me to that page in the first place.

Arc90 is a NYC-based team of engineers and designers who think the readers suffer when they get to these pages. They started an experiment, using a bookmarklet. You go to their site here and drag the bookmarklet into your browser’s toolbar. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

It doesn’t harm the ad revenue, as you have to see the page first anyway. This bookmarklet works one page at a time. Try this experiment. Go to yahoo.com. Find a story of interest and click on it. Now click the bookmarklet and read that article in peace.

You’re welcome.