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Web Ads with Sound?
Mina asks: "Just noticed that some sites, About.com in particular, started piping sound adds in their pages - one in particular (the Harry Potter themed CocaCola subsidized reading campaign from Reading is Fundamental). This isn't something that can easily be turned off - unlike popups, they can't just be clicked on or elminated by a nifty browser plugin. I'm interested in seeing how the Slashdot community deals with the new, more annoying ads that the more desperate companies are implementing now. Do you just live with them? Are there even niftier plugins to the browsers that I'm just not aware of?" And you thought pop-ups were the worst, now you can get sudden and annoying sounds played as well. Maybe browsers will have volume sliders bundled with them in the near future. God, I hope not, but if such ads become commonplace, it may be a good idea.
Does my bum look big in this?
I personally do such things to prevent these ads by firewalling out every IP block belonging to ad agencies. Most people don't host their own ads, and there for you can do this without killing your normal content.
Well, Konqueror already allows for certain sites for cookies. Why not just add the same feature for music? Seems like a really simple fix to me. One of the best things the Konqueror team does is add really cool things to avoid annoying things like this.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
It bothers me that rather than coming up with creative and interesting ways to target advertisements to certain groups, interesting ways to add value while serving ads, etc, inif* these marketing droids would rather have your computer become a TV that just happens to be connected to the internet.
:)
I hope the online community is strong enough to stave off the "dumbing down" of the internet.
-- MetaCosm
P.S. This posting made after being up all night without sleep, trying to hunt down one bug, and generally being grumpy, take it with a grain of salt, and PLEASE ignore spelling and "grammah"
... with lynx ! ;)
McCartney fans pay bus tickets. [...] Lennon fans too, with discretion.
IE 6 allows you to turn off sounds in web pages, kill dancing baloney, manage trust relationships with websites & control cookies with fine granularity.
Considering most of the users of slashdot are running some flavor of IE, I would anticipate this is the answer to your question.
What are these banner ads you speak of? I do not believe I have ever seen one.
Liberty in your lifetime
If I find a site that uses incredibly annoying ads, tracking cookies/gifs, and other stupid marketing tricks then I simply stop going to that website. I'll find a different source for the information that I require.
Also, Lynx was mentioned a bit further up. That's a really good way to avoid multimedia advertisements.
What you need is a browser firewall, so programs can't access devices (like speakers) without your permission. IE is trying to play a sound file, is this OK? Yes, No, Cancel This could be a neat features for the next windows release (WinRG)
1. Block sounds from this site
2. Block Flash plugins from this site
Starting to seem better and better every day.
Help us build a better map!
Simple.... surf with lynx. No annoying pop-ups, no sounds, no flash adds dancing across your screen.
Ohh.... you WANT the pretty graphics! You like the cool mouse overs.... Then move to Windoze and run IE.
Problem solved.
Has anyone seen the ads that come up in the middle of the page you are trying to view? I believe it's an image in another layer that they put on top of the page for n seconds and then it fades away.
I think those only work on IE since I haven't seen it happen on Netscape or Mozilla yet.
With the popups, sounds, flashing banners, and these images I'm really missing gopher
Run your browser as a different user that doesn't have permissions to /dev/dsp
That way you can keep using all your sound generating apps without your browser butting in.
Unfortuantly all you windows users can't do this...
I don't got one. I can't stand computers making noise at me.
If your computer makes the noises that you wrote yourself, I'm not at all surprised.
Can't be any worse than those site authors which seem to think a shite midi rendition of Britney will enhance my eXPerience.
---
http://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml
You can always disable your sound plugins. Unless you are going to download a movie they really should not be doing that. I know that when I worked at a web portol we had strick guidlines about sound on the site. If it existed it should play only once and the user should be able to disable the sound. If this site does not do that I'd like to know what the name of the sites that are doing this are and then I can avoid them, which is what I'd really suggest you'd do unless there is something that you MUST have from that site and cannot get elsewhere.
Only 'flamers' flame!
(from about:opera)
Version Information
Version : 5.0
Sound Information
Sound is not avaliable.
Opera uses the Network Audio System to play sounds
i havent listened to noise, er sounds on the
net for years. much more peaceful without it.
also turn off all the multimedia plugins, flash, real audio, whatever else.. the net should be server side only.
Get the Proxomitron here: http://www.computerstuff.net/prox/
Not only will it block all conventional banner ads and popups, it also does useful things with respect to stopping embedded multimedia. By default stuff like flash, embedded quicktime, embedded midi's or wav files, etc are all filtered out and a link to them is inserted in their place so if it is ever something you actually want to view you just click the link and it loads.
Works flawlessly... no aggravating floating flash ads at IGN, makes it easier to save embedded videos (right click on the link, save as), and I haven't seen a popup since I installed it.
Why do sites/advertisers do intrusive advertising like this in the first place?
Do they think the internet is a TV or something?
I for one like the text based ads on other sites more so than the picture based ones. Namely
because I can get information about the product/site w/o visiting it first, this sounds
counter productive to what ads try to do (generate hits to websites) but I normally go to websites
I wouldn't normally with a picture ad with a text based ad.
Maybe websites/advertisers should take a hint.
I use TVGuide.com all the time and recently the banners have been changed to very annoying flash banners that turn on when you accidently mouseover them (they also expand to fill most of the friggin' screen).
& Zip=92627
:o
Example URL: http://www.tvguide.com/Listings/index.asp?I=61286
It should be the Michael Jackson banner
They also designed to the interface so that 99% of the time you will accidently mouseover it while navigating the different times and start the ad sounds.
... to be like...
o od ness.htm
http://www.somethingawful.com/firemancomics/myg
Yes! And they will be scriptable!
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
imagine what things are going to be like when the porno companies get ahold of this. you surf to a new site while searching for something, find it is a porno site or even just one of those sites that seem to be nothing but porno ads, and suddenly your blasted with "Oh, yeah, right there, harder, faster, oh,oh, oooohhh" then a voice says "If you want to have hot phone sex with transvestite midgets then call me at 1 800 555 1212
I also don't use a monitor because I can't stand my computer being able to show me things.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The ad serving party (ie, the ad network serving the ad) will do nothing about complaints. They are getting paid money to show the ad, and unless you're willing to offer them more, they will likely show up at work in the morning, read your email, and snicker.
.. and everyone that actually cares, DO IT! Companies, contrary to popular belief, are fairly sensitive to feedback from marketing campaigns.
So email the actual company advertising
"Old man yells at systemd"
Once you've found the correct url to use in the filters, the majority of the ads you had been seeing will disappear. You'll be surfing 95% ads free! You can also filter headers transmitted to and from the server (cookies, browser version,
My results so far are:
- Arround 90% of the ads filtered
- Popup and popunder filtered: don't even open if called by external js, otherwise content filtered.
- Some "brand toolbars" wiped (xoom and nbci when they existed, netscape, freeservers, lycos)
- No watermark or ads of any sort on Geocities (for all sites)
- External stats/counters sites filtered (mainly those adding ads to the counter)
- ...
There are some other programs doing the same thing. You should be able to find one that fulfills your needs.about.com is horrible. I used to work co-op for them back when they were miningco. They require webmasters to prefix all links with a miningco address to show the link inside a frame of their page.