Four short links: 4 December 2009

Readability — bookmarklet that takes the crap out of a web page, resizes, and reformats so it’s easier to read. Doesn’t work for all sites, but it’s a hellishly interesting idea.
An In-Depth Look at Pivot, Microsoft’s Newest Data Visualization Tool (TechCrunch) — When turned on, Pivot can also make sense of your own browsing history (if you are using Internet Explorer). Pivot hosts a portion of IE within the app, and will get a sense of your browsing history over time and then will slice and dice your history based upon various verticals.
Eben Moglen, Lazarus Phenomenon, and The Girl Scouts of America (Brian Aker) — Once software has been published under an open source license, it continues to be available, whether its current owners wish it to be or not. I’ve been in the library world long enough that while I respect Brian’s argument, I know that preservation doesn’t happen by magic. Perhaps we need an Internet Archive for software.
Three Lessons I Learned From Porting Diablo (Pete Warden) — The second lesson I learnt was that I wanted to work with people like Gary, willing to help the whole team, rather than hunting for individual glory. I’ve since worked with a lot of ‘rock star’ programmers, and while they always look good to management, they hate sharing information or credit and end up hampering projects no matter how smart they are as individuals. Gary used his massive brain to help make us all more effective instead, and I’ve always tried to live up to his example.