The annoying internet adverts

Jan 272011

Okay, I know this blog have been somewhat quiet as of late, well as of long – so time to kick it up again with a complain post.

Oh, how sick I am of advertisement on internet pages.

I see many pages with adverts are about using 2.5+ MB for a page, when without adverts the page size is under 1MB.….. that is insane.

Now, I know that for many independent sites, advertisement income is the main – if not only – source of income, and by blocking them I’m not providing them with income.
Well – frankly – I do not care anymore.  They brought it upon themselves.

The few sites out there I actually want to support, which have no other source of income, I’m more than willing to donate money to and have done so in the past when possible.
But for example news sites – their income should be news and news distribution. Not advertising for random irrelevant movies in the cinema or shopping malls.
If they do not earn enough money by making and selling news – they are irrelevant.
And well – I would never ever once even click an advert on a webpage – so there really is no loss by me blocking them either – it’s just saving me the annoyance of having to look at them.

I do not really mind “text adverts” or similar – but “loud” advertisement is the reason people are blocking more and more adverts and the reason why plug ins exists for doing so.
Adverts which play music, overlays, blinks and all those things are instant block for me.  Also because some of them are made by such inept people that they actually can completely disrupt navigation on a site.

They also make the site annoying difficult to surf via mobile devices (yes, I know certain products don’t do well with flash, but – well, some of us use devices which can) which are becoming an increasingly large part of the internet traffic.

Sites like these must adapt or die. Well unfortunately those two sites won’t die out soon because as said – they’re part of the news media – but luckily – we’ll see other sites die down.

I’ve also started blocking Google adverts, because while I do appreciate at least a mediocre of actually relevant adverts, I do not like the Big Brother aspect of them, and therefore those cookies and script blocking will also become a larger part of my browsers.

I hate adverts. I change the channel when they’re on TV or in the radio – and I block them on the internet, and I will continue to do so as the adverts become increasingly invasive.
I will recommend everybody go get the anti-advert plugins for their browser and the anti-tracking cookie plugins. The only way the websites will learn is if they get hurt on their wallet.

Saving that newspaper

Feb 112009

I saw the editorial in Time Magazine by Walter Isaacson about how to save newspapers.
Basically the premise is that newspapers are going under, or cancelling out “good journalism” to save money because fewer and fewer are buying the physical papers but reading the content online for free.
His solution is to get people to pay “micropayments” for reading news-material on the web, a small cost per article or something like that.
Now granted, I agree with him on a number of situations, but I question the methods.
Yes, journalists must be paid to do journalistic work. Naturally.
Yes, newspapers are currently too depending on advertisement companies then their reader because their revenue comes from advertisement. This can create a conflict of interests.
But that’s about as much in agreement as I can be.

I see many problems with starting to charge for online reading of news.
1) It only takes one of two companies to shoot down everybody else. If a few companies doesn’t charge for their content, then people will just go to the free alternatives and leave behind the ones you have to pay for. This is how most online services have worked.

2) Legality. If everybody starts charging, then I’m all but sure that several “gray” providers will pop up. It happens with everything online and it is a problem, but it is also a reality. Gaming, Music and Movie industry suffers from this. Some people spend their free time ripping off content providers and posting it up for free. That would open up for a whole can of “allofmp3” or “piratebay” problems. Charging for content opens up for those doors and the cost of keeping your content yours might prove way to high to be cost-effective.

3) By charging (more) for content, people will likely stop reading a multitude of different providers.
Personally- when I bought newspapers I read perhaps two at the most. Now when I read news online, I read about 8 different news sites. This provides me with a better chance of getting an unbiased picture of events and forming my own opinion. If I were to be charged for the content, I doubt I’d read more than a couple again.
And anybody who’ve seen Fox News for example, knows how unbiased “news” providers can be. I think it’ll hurt.
Now granted, this is also a risk under the current model cause if many providers go bankrupt, you are faced with fewer avenues through the physical medias, but that still mean there are free alternatives online.

4) By charging, you start implying that only those who can afford it, are allowed to read the news coverage. It can quickly create a divided segment where those who can’t afford to go through multiple sites either as in item 3) sticks with 1 or 2 or none at all.

5) Journalism will be much more entertainment then news. One of the arguments was to make journalists dependant on the readers and not the advertiser. Well nice and idealistic goal, but what do we usually see when a content provider becomes depending on its subscribers. Much more populism and sensationalism. It becomes content for entertainment and not enlightenment. These companies will want to attract most people, and well – unfortunately that usually means catering to the lowest common denominator. That will counter the “good journalistic principles” it was meant to promote.

6) Country barriers. If providers start charging online, then they must remember that it is global. I read occasionally US and UK news sites. If I were to pay, would I be allowed to? Or will it be like iTunes where I can only buy from my local store and not from the US or UK store?
The web is global, and the world is as well. But payments aren’t always.

7) Nationally subsidized alternatives. In this country – and many others – we have national supported, public service, channels we already pay for – either via taxes or license fee. Payment we can’t avoid. If we also were to start paying, or pay more, for other content providers, we’re back in item 4. People will leave them behind because they can get their news coverage from the public service channels. It will be a problem for competition.

Now, I do not have the answers – but I would think the way forward would be to offer a split plan. Subscription and free. Subscribe if you want to know more, more in depth articles, forums to talk to the editors and journalists and so on – but keep some content free, if nothing else to lure people into it.
Otherwise it’ll start to spell doom for the majority of content providers in a state we haven’t seen yet. Look at the music industry and how well it fares because they have problems adjusting to a global and intangible reality of the internet – and that is a more physical product which you can keep and take with you. News is much more intangible and fleeting.
Micro transactions on its own? I think it’ll be a big step in bring the industry all the way down, or weed out so we have one or two mega-corporations.

Ahoy! Piracy doesn’t pay. Well not if you are lazy anyway.

Feb 032009

I got a call from one of our clients today that the design of the website we had made for them, was being ripped off almost entirely by a Chinese based company.
And sure enough; entering the url of the offending website into my browser, it was all but an exact copy of the site I had made for the client. 
Strangely enough, in the footer the rip-off artists had entered “copyright” and “all rights reserved” and nonsense like that, but had been so lazy that the HTML header which stated our company as developers was still present …. I mean, how obvious can you get?

This caused much amusement in-house and apparently our client wasn’t terrible worried as well, despite the site selling copied versions of some of their products.

The most fun part for us was however, when we afterwards discovered that the offending website was utilizing resources still located on the original site, such as the CSS files and stuff like that, and also the JavaScript file.
They had been so lazy they didn’t even move those files to their own site.
That meant we suddenly had a measure of control on that site via those resources.

There were many suggestions on which course of action to take. There were suggestions to redirect them to “Free Tibet” sites (it being a Chinese site it would likely have been blocked anyway), to interjecting various forms of scripts to bog down clients, or just redirecting to something plain disgusting or pornographic … or simply change the CSS to display all sorts of things on the website.
But common sense prevailed (it was work related after all, so I didn’t’ want to be too offensive) and I choose to redirect incoming traffic to http://bsa.org as it was the only anti-piracy organization I could think off at the moment.

I wonder how long it’ll take them to fix that, given how lazy they were to begin with. Guess I’ll have to check tomorrow to see. And if they haven’t changed tomorrow, it might be time to interject some snowflakes on the website instead.

hoax e-mail spam

Aug 252008

If there is one type of spam I hate to receive more than any other, it is ”hoax e-mail virus” spam.

The reason this lies on top of my “hate-list” or “pet-peeve” list is because it usually comes from more or less trusted sources, meaning friends and family and similar. Thus it’ll sink right through your spam filter (if you have one) unless it is set up very rigiously and thus risking a high amount of false-positive.

The messages are usually very easy to spot, because they often try to seem genuine by referring to a well known news source. Others again are so silly to pretend to originate from said news source, or even from a well known anti-virus source (Symantec for example)

Almost all I’ve seen tell about “this is the worst, most evil and underhanded virus to ever be on the internet, and it is reported by <insert well known news source here>”.

There are also the devious ones which point you to a system file on your computer and tell you to remove said file if it is found, and sure enough – some delete their system file and can’t boot the computer.
It annoys me because people buy into these things. It shows that spam works, and that people aren’t using the same common sense as most of us would use in real life.

If your friend phones you up and tells you that he’s heard of a very contagious disease confirmed by cnn, and that you should phone 25 friends about it…. then I would like to think that few people would actually phone the other 25 people lest they first check it out, or if the friend is a doctor. Yet people do it with e-mails all the time.

I try to defuse the situation with replying back that it is a hoax, however you can easily be unlucky and receive many of these from multitude of your friends (reply all *arrrrgggg*) before common sense have migrated around.

If you ever receive an e-mail about a horrendously dangerous virus confirmed by “CNN”, “Symantec” or whatever and you must SPAM your friends with the message, do yourself a favor. Check it out before sending it, because as all chain letters, it is very annoying having to receive 10, 20, 30 or more mails about the same topic – especially when it is wrong.
It takes less than 2 minutes to actually search and confirm whether it is correct or not, and it will avoid making you look like a fool.

Flash back to Internet in 1993

May 312008

I saw this video today and it was fun to be reminded of how the Internet looked back in the early days when it was new and fresh. I myself did not get online until 1995, but even then it was a brave new world.

I especially liked about how the interviewed person talked about how there was little aggravation online, not much of people insulting each other for no reason and how the anonymity of the net wasn’t an issue…. boy how times have changed.

Venture into most online communities, and unless they are heavily moderated then there are scores of people enjoying nothing more than to act like twats because they are anonymous.
Anyways – enjoy the film and the trip down memory lane if you are old enough to remember, or see how it was in a time where it was not every day life to just log on via broadband and download movies and music.

 

 

Pet peeves when surfing

May 272008

People who tell me useless stuff about my own computer or origin.

Sometimes when I surf into specific pages, either when looking for blogs or pieces of information regarding issues, or when I’m just plain surfing I’ll notice the “You are using Windows Vista” notice somewhere on the page. Or “You are coming from Denmark”, “Your IP is….”, “You are using Firefox/IE/Opera”, “Your resolution is ….”

 Firstly – I know which OS I’m using. I do not need some random webpage to tell me. I know where I live, at least I better because otherwise it is difficult getting around. And my browser, yes, I am pretty sure I know that as well.  Let me rephrase … if you don’t know what OS, Browser or your country of origin is …. Then what the heck are you doing surfing around random web-pages anyway. There are more important things for you to do right now. I do not need web-pages to tell me this.
The IP one is marginal useful, but – well, if I need to find out my IP I do not need it when I surf into somebody’s random blog, but rather when I visit a service which is designed to tell me that.
I mean come on – that is soooo 1995 right there. Get into the new millennium – the web isn’t new anymore.

Sound.

What is up with sound on web-pages or in advertisements? Is there anything more annoying? (well, yeah – there are the adverts which roll over content *WITH* sound)
I do not care that you have a midi file or whatever with *plink plonk* that you think sounds good. And if you want to have it there, then put up a link so I can choose to have sound. Don’t just start playing it automatically, it is annoying and it is horrible to listen at.

Google advertisements.

Granted, they are less invasive then so many other forms of advertisement but why oh why must everybody’s cat and dog have Google advert on their page now. Did somebody sell you a book on how to get rich quick? The only get rich quick scheme which works is writing a book about “Get rich quick schemes”. Many people are stupid enough to buy.

Other advertisements.

Well those I can at least block if I choose and if they are disruptive. Currently – there is one website out online I do not block advertisements on.
These adverts are getting more and more invasive in their constant struggle with us who block them. Sound, roll over content (and often doesn’t roll back so you can’t click content *aaaarrrrgghhh*), movies etc. Thank god for 20 mbit download.

All other things which require me to download plug ins.

Yes yes, I’m sure you can make nice and perdy web sites using Flasssh, Silverlight, Air or what the heck it is called – but I do not want that on my computer. It is not user friendly, it is pointless – it is fluff – it is so you can feel good about yourself and not so you can deliver your information easy and fast. I’ll block it whenever I can, because it is just an added layer to download. On this point I do long back to the days of 28kbs modems, because at least then people knew to optimize a webpage and not plaster it with useless stuff ….. oh – well some of us knew.

Well, I have many more pet peeves, but this’ll have to do for now.

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