pdnewbie, I think those are great ideas. You have my full support.
I was thinking about #3 the other day -- some articles resonate with me more when I'm at a certain level of consciousness. If I'm not ready yet, I simply read, think "oh that's neat" and promptly dispose. With the plethora of articles available, it quickly becomes difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, especially if you're brand new to this site.
This site doesn't exactly contain easily digestible content either, so the sheer volume of grade A information located here can (and probably does) quickly overwhelm much of the target market. I agree that a method of personalizing Steve's content would benefit his audience, resulting in more page hits, which will certainly benefit Steve.