Slashdot Mirror
Browser Becomes Billboard
MikeKD writes "Citing a desire to 'enhance the user experience', United Virtualities is 'preparing to introduce a product [called Ooqa Ooqa] that will allow advertisers to automatically change the appearance of Web browsers, usurping some of the functions built into popular browsers...', according to an MSNBC article--and all this supposedly without downloading any additional software. UV says a lot of sweet things about being able to turn it off and allowing the web sites to customize the degree of intrusion (from reverting to normal form when leaving to retaining the rebrand even after leaving), but does anyone think advertisers will restrain themselves? Not I." Friends don't let friends use browsers susceptible to this.
... if it is made optional.
...
Some people enjoy the experience of the internet and this may be one of the things for them. How else can you explain Flash's popularity
Seriously, the key here is the ability to turn it off if you don't want it. They've already built-in the functionality for limiting it to certain websites. As mentioned, weather.com is thinking about it. Personally, it'd be cool if they threw is some weather tools on the toolbar like standard conversions, rain=snow measurements, etc.
You have to admit it beats the heck out of a car driving across your screen
I cant for the life of me imagine what kind of twisted legal logic allows some idiotic capitalist to have a program in my computer that changes everything he wants about my browser, and can still condemn the common burglar that comes through an open window and turns my house upside down, looking for something valuable.
Bloody incoherent, if you ask me. The state of the modern world disgusts me to the hilt.
Weather.com, right? Epilepsy-inducing annoying ads Weather.com? Cars driving across the webpage honking at me Weather.com?
Yeah, they have really good judgment as far as intrusive advertising goes.
Was anybody else totally not surprised to hear that Weather.com is looking to be an early adopter for this "technology"?
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
...and I think that not only do it because this kind of advertising is reprehensible, but because it is also what their users want. This might provide a nice niche for Mozilla or Konqueror to slide into - perhaps as a full-featured browser that doesn't allow the annoying ads it could gain some market share.
At which point every website with any hope of receiving revenue from this scheme will promptly stop rendering for any non-compliant browser.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
...as maybe many others are.
One part of the article mentions "a demo version of a Weather.com-themed browser prepared by United Virtualities", which seems to imply that it is a modified version of a current web browser. This is really nothing new (aside from being able to service ads), when I ran my small ISP in town we modified Netscape Comm. 4 to have our logo in place of the 'N'. This would require the user to download and install a new web browser.
However, there seem to be underpinnings in the article that make it seem like this could affect your current browser you are using. One bad scenario would be that it installs with another (freeware) program...much like the spyware in Kazaa, et al. The worse scenario would be that it could tap into the gui of your current browser just by visiting a web page. Then you would have no real control. This sounds like taking advantage of one of the many bugs^H^H^H^H features that IE has.
And then this statement: "Web surfers will always have a clear option to turn off Ooqa Ooqa and go back to their regular browsers, said Ivan Entel, the firm's chief of staff. In fact, they'll have the option never to be exposed to the technology again on certain Web sites." Go back to my regular browser?? What is meant by that? Does this mean uninstalling/re-installing? Very vague terminology sends scary signals up my spine.
Does anyone know more about this definitively so as to clear up the vagueness?
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
- AC
Thank god for lynx!
no one has stopped to think that this can be done on ANY browser. you take a web page. it then opens up the real site inside of a popup with all the navigation buttons gone, and makes it's own that function using javascript like javascript:history(-1) for the back button, and so on... it would work on ie, netscape, mozilla, konq, opera, etc... only lynx is safe remember, the oompa oompa people never said how it works. it could be something this simple.
As reported previously here [slashdot.org], United Virtualities is the same company that came up with those horrible "Shoshkeles" ads!! If you've never seen them, they are ads that run, animated, all over the page, with full sound. Ack!
This sounds like more marketing hype from United Virtualities. If you look at "shoshkeles" and what they actually do, you will see that they like the older "eyeblasters" contain a lot of code that obscures what they really are doing. They simply put a flash animation in a layer, make it transparent and position it with CSS. Flash does the hard work! It's 3 lines of code on IE instead of the steaming heap their scripts turn out.
And ad executives like this? They think people want flying soft drink cans to cover their morning newspaper? Of course they're not human so what did you expect???
This is "Overstepping the bounds" in more than one sense.
.sigs don't count.)
When I open a web page, I am generally agreeing to let a web designer do whatever he or she wants with the space between the <HTML> and </HTML> tags. Not my destop, not the frame, just the page.
If I don't have the option of turning this off, I will change browsers and not patronize sites that use this technique.
Why is it that every blank space has to become an advertising marquee?
Cheers
Jim in Tokyo
(Of course,
-- My Weblog.
Someone once said, "Programmers are often so fascinated by the fact that they can that they often don't think about whether they should.
If I find a site that does this, I will not use their product. I will email the web admin and inform them why, and I will feel a little better hoping that my little bit may cause them to stop using this technology because it costs them more money than it makes.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
The biggest mistake we as a species have made in the past 100 years was to allow advertising to become an industry in and of itself. There was a time when businesses did their own advertising, designed to inform the consumer of their new products and the superiority of those products over the competitor. Now, that function has been farmed off to other companies, who, due to the nature of capitalism, have to compete to get the most advertising business. That competition has fostered ever more intrusive advertising, from 30 second spots on tv to giant billboards to the various annoyances we're seeing now on the internet. I forsee that in ten years or less, an ad agency will replace mega-retailer Walmart as the largest company in the world.
This trend will continue, with ads becoming more and more ubiquitious. A few sci-fi writers have drawn this same conclusion, such as Neal Stephenson, who envisioned 3-D billboards that "attack" pedestrians, or another writer, whose name escapes me at the moment (it might have been Greg Egan), who posited that nano-robots could be used to "hack" the brain and perpetually display ads in a person's visual field. I can envision some enterprising young advertiser inventing eyeglasses that display ads. Poor, nearsighted people would put up with the ads in exchange for clear vision (if slightly obscured).
Sadly, there's not much we can do. Look at how well we've curtailed Microsoft. They had it wrong in Fight Club. The insurance companies and financial institutions aren't the enemies. It's the ad agencies. Maybe the same solution might work.
This product is targeted towards marketing people.
It is also named by marketing people.
That should explain a lot.
by the way the least they could do is follow basic rules of english language and put a u after the q.
Guess they are too cutting edge for that.
The problem is when they step out of the box you gave them. If you want to load their page in a frame, it should show up and not throw a tempertantrum.
Look, I hate the intrusive, large ads, but fine. I choose to view a site our not, they are welcome to do whatever they want within the window.
However, do NOT try to disable my backbutton with screwy redirects that mess up my history (do a server-side 301 or 302 if you need to bounce me around, it's not my problem that you suck).
Do not do pop-ups, I gave you a window, use it. If you want more space, ask me to click on something. Pop unders, that's abusive. You don't get to hide ads for me, that's outrageous. Exit-pops are worse. If I hit back, go to another url, or close my browser, you're done. You have no right to harass me.
It's really a shame that MS and Netscape never really worked to make Javascript respect the user, but then, Microsoft has never shown any respect for their customers. Look at the recent Looksmart thing, the thread on webmasterworld shows what their puppet Looksmart is doing to screw over webmasters that paid $300 in good faith for a service that the two of them are rendering worthless.
Alex