I enjoyed Yoz Grahame's satirical piece about the hoo-ha, and why Dave Winer should assume that satire (which he dismisses as 'sarcasm') should be a form which can't make serious points is … beyond me. (Much of the literature I most admire is satirical.)
Cory is spot on:
It's not a service I'd use, but I believe that it's the kind of service that is vital to the Web's health. The ability of end-users to avail themselves of tools that decomopose and reassemble web-pages to their tastes is an issue like inlining, framing, and linking: it's a matter of letting users innovate at the edge.
I think I should be able to use a proxy that reformats my browsing sessions for viewing on a mobile phone; I think I should be able to use a proxy that finds every ISBN and links it to a comparison-shopping-engine's best price for that book across ten vendors. I think I should be able to use a proxy that auto-links every proper noun to the corresponding Wikipedia entry.
And so on -- it's my screen, and I should be able to control it; companies like Google and individuals should be able to provide tools and services to let me control it.
