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Not Enough Ads? Install Adbar.
An anonymous reader writes "Jesse Ruderman brings the worst feature of Opera, Advertisements, to Firefox with his extension Adbar. According to the page, 'adbar displays Google ads related to pages you view. Because the ads are relevant, they are occasionally useful. When adbar isn't displaying ads from Google, it displays Firefox-related things such as silly Firefox slogans, ads for other Mozilla software, and requests for donations to the Mozilla Foundation.'"
When I'm buying a car or appliance, I like seeing ads - I go through all the catalogs and magazines looking for them.
Although, I wouldnt it it as a sidebar on all the time, and I cant imagine internet ads being usefully targetted.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
I find it funny that thats all I got when I first clicked on the article. Atleast this is an optional plugin, but it'd be funny if you ran it alongside Adblock.
I've discovered a remarkable proof, but this margin is too small to contain it...
Out of the FAQ...
"Who gets money?
adbar uses the "test" adsense mode, so advertisers don't pay Google and Google doesn't pay anyone"
Somehow, I sense that Google's going to be pulling thier new test-viewer feature offline for more security to be added tomorrow.
I'm going to take a funny stance on this subject. Normally I would be annoyed by this sort of thing, but something occured to me when I read this /. article. Because Adbar is *not* spyware, I'm going to install it. I think people should support advertizing projects that take the high moral road. I'm going to reward these guys for staying legit and we'll see how it turns out. I wouldn't mind Google ads on pages I'm surfing, because there might be cool products or services I can buy related to the stuff I'm looking at. And, no, I'm not affiliated with this project in any way, shape or form, so don't ask! :-)
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Actually, there is sorta...
If you're an AdSense publisher that is. All of us who run Google ads can install a tool that gives us access to a preview of what ads Google will run next to a page so that we can decide if we want to put the ad code on the page or not. The thing is, the tool isn't limited to our own sites, and apparently isn't very well secured in any way.
Some guy decided to write an extension. It's interesting research -- can ads be made useful enough that people will actively seek them out? It isn't included with Firefox, and it isn't taking up a single byte of your download space. I think that denigrating the guy is going a little bit over the top. He could just as easily say "I'd like to see AssProphet writing some useful open source instead of wasting his time insulting me."
May we never see th
Maybe that would be a good idea. From the FAQ:
It's obviously a joke. The guy says you can pay him $19 to register to get rid of the ads, followed by uninstalling the extension.
/usr/games/fortune
Some TV ads are so funny, you look forward to watching them (until you get sick of them.....WISE.....ER......BUD).
I accept the usefulness and necessity of ads for providing "free" access to some information that would not otherwise be free of direct cost (or even possible) otherwise. This may sound surprising to anyone who has read the About page on my web site, where I diss advertising executives. But that's different. I run a hobby site, just for fun, designed to make people laugh and then go about their lives. I pay for this myself and I don't believe advertising belongs on such Web sites, sites the Web was created for (person-to-person communication, not selling wares). But I don't hate advertising as a whole. I just want to see it kept in its proper place.
And if you can make the ads relevant, interesting, useful, and even fun, it helps a LOT.
I'm just the opposite - I've learned to block the ads from my vision. Now, I know that they are there, but I read around them and barely notice them.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Just kidding.
/.
First, thanks Mike.
A little extreme on the politics, but the hosts file works fairly well. Should change the 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0 instead, or so I've been told right here on
Also, Mike could use a little primer on copyright. Statement may be ok for commercial distribution, but doesn't work for private individuals.
Two problems not covered by the hosts file, at least on windows. The above file works great on Linux clients, but for Windows, using Mozilla, I still have to "block images from this server", even though the url is covered in the hosts file. Apparently, Mozilla keeps its own list. I've got quite a few urls blocked with Mozilla, but when other users are logged on and using Mozilla, they have to block the same urls I already blocked when I was logged on with my own user account.
Any way of sharing the url block list in Mozilla from one user so that all the other users benefit, instead of having to block the hundreds of urls I already did?
Also, I just ran into this problem yesterday: Some ad server urls are using ip addresses, instead of domain names. So the hosts file isn't checked, as their is no ip address translation going on. Any way of blocking ad servers by ip without resorting to using a firewall on individual clients? I can't block at the perimeter, as the perimeter is a nat device, not a computer.
Also, some sites use a redirect from their own site url for the images, or use a subdirectory within their own url for image serving. Any way of blocking, for example, a single subdirectory of images for a specific site (ie: http://nytimes.com/ads/intrusive.jpg, blocking http://nytimes.com/ads/ without blocking content from http://nytimes)?
And the redirects from above? Can't remember a specific example, but I'm sure some of you using an ad blocking hosts file have run into, and remember what I'm talking about. It's not a big deal since most sites work with the hosts file, and I don't burn too much bandwidth downloading the ads, but I ran into a few sites last week that were really unusable because of the ad layout and sheer size of the downloads required to view the ads, and this is a killer for speed, usability, and cost when using dial up (no free minutes beyond the first minute at one location, paying for every minute I'm online).
I, and my wallet, thank you in advance.
It could be made useful if it could target the advertising revenue toward the charity of your choice.
Or alternatively, if looking at enough ads could give you a discount on your broadband bill.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Take the Superbowl, to use television as an example. People tune in to that event even if they're not football fans just to see the ads. Millions were spent on those thirty second spots, and in a situation like that, millions more get spent on ad agencies to come up with entertaining ads.
As more people learn how to "block" ads on different mediums one way or another, the greater the demand will become to write and produce advertisements entertaining enough that people will want to see them in addition to companies creating several different ads at a time so viewers do not get hit with so much repitition. This Firefox plugin illustrates my points by allowing proud consumers to be informed about what they could spend their money on by filtering out ads that will most likely be of no interest to that Firefox user. This way, if Firefox somehow figures out that you already have a big penis by analyzing your slashdot posts, then you won't be seeing that type of spam. Instead you'll be advised of products that your computer deems worthy for that purpose by judging its relevance to your MO (deduced by Firefox from your web behavior).
If ads could be both very entertaining and minimally invasive, in addition to pushing products/services you'd most likely want to buy in a spontaneous situation, why wouldn't you install this? Not all of us are broke, and most of us want more stuff.
But the eyecandy graphics just sounds like a complete waste. WTF does this do for anybody?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Instead of ads that try to target you all the time, instead the ads should be coralled into a place where they stay until you want to look at them. For example, if I wanted to buy a new fridge then I could go to the ads and look through as many as I want, but the rest of the time they stay suppressed (an ad aggregator of sorts that's not in your face all the time). Ads are useful under certain circumstances. It's my opinion that the current ad process in the browwer doesn't work anymore because people are too accustomed to it. Of course it doesn't work for me (and many of you at all) because of Firefox/Adblock, etc.
I might actually install that if they made so that income generated from selling the ad space went to the mozilla foundation. I'd get to be cheap and financially help out mozilla.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
This is the most retarded thinking ever. This is like saying, I'll support the clips they play in the beginning of movies because they are taking the moral high road. What?
You pay to go see a movie, not to go see a 15 to 30 minutes of ads. It doesn't offset the cost of the movie. The samething for everything else. Advertising, unless it's specific product placement on high traffic sites is useless. Voluntarily subjecting yourself to a barrage of ads is like giving your address to a "direct marketing" unit. Ad's make sense in TV in sports arenas, newspapers, slashdot, google. They simply don't make sense on my desktop, that I pay for, that I pay bandwidth for, that I foot the bill for.
Of course if you're comfortable with the fact that you are footing someone elses bill while having to pay for your own; at detriment to yourself. Then more power to you.
Unlike you, no one is thinking about morals and high roads in the ad industry. This is just another way they can stick a piece of paper, image, video, link in your face. It's business.
Kinda like setting up an Amazon affiliate link on your own page to get a 15% discount on books?
And here the best look for a browser with good shortcuts and tabed browsing(at least for me)
Luxuriousity software, makers of LuxuriousityPhoto and LuxuriousityOffice, have already begun work on a new web browser based on FireFox with Adbar. It will be called LuxuriousityInternetBrowser, and it will be free for download.
> you're just another schmuck who hasn't read the damn article
I did RTFA, and I posted my response to it. The fact they are doing the test thing doesn't bother me. Google will likely make them change servers, so it's kind of a non-issue to me. Their product will move to whatever mechanism works. The fact they say you have to pay to be removed is likely a joke, but even if it isn't, I would rather know that kind of stuff *up front* rather than find out after I've installed something that it won't come off (like Gator). And it's the fact they have designed this project knowing full well that many people won't use it because it's ads, but yet they still branched the advertising medium into something else -- something moral -- I just feel like they deserve to get as many people supporting them as they can. Really, wouldn't you like to see the Internet advertising medium shift gears into something that doesn't hijack your computer? I certainly would.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The concept is obviously a joke but I can see something like this being a good idea.
People mainly object to ads because of the format in which they're delivered: popups, Flash, spam, etc. People don't have a problem with advertisement-sponsored content itself (well, some do, but fuck 'em).
Well, if we accept that we "pay" for content by exposing our eyeballs to advertisement, wouldn't it be useful to control the way in which we are subjected to adverts? For example, a site could provide meta-data, so to speak, about an ad, and the client will determine how to present it, based on use preference (ie, do you want the ad embedded in the page, or as a popup, or in its own frame, or whatever)
This would be a pretty good concept because it means that advertisement would be delivered to you in a way which you mind the least (or perhaps is the most useful to you)
Just thinking.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
I've recently started to use Adblock with Firefox. Now, not only are all my pop-ups blocked, but I never saw an ad. It seriously took me a week to adjust to actually reading the information in front of me. Before, I'd automatically scan past most pictures and words before reading anything.
Honest to God, it freaked me out. I even mentioned how weird it was to other people. Of course they gave me a weird look by saying all of this, but nevertheless it's true.
as in the Superman movie of 25 (?) years ago, every cigarette pack or banner just happened to say Marlboro. It's happening much more nowadays due to Tivo, by which people skip over commercials, in shows such as American Idol where the contestants are shown in (show sponsor) Ford vehicles.
So it will be impossible to tell where the "entertainment product" ends and the advertisement begins. But there's always been a little of that all along.
Tag lost or not installed.
That's not that far-fetched. At least the last time I was in Germany, the national (think NBC, ABC) TV stations still didn't run ads during TV shows. In fact, one station (ZDF IIRC) had a program called Meinzelmänchen which ran for about 30 minutes. Basically, it was 30 minutes of ads interspersed with 10-30 s animated spots of gnomes. It was wildly popular and the ads were all pretty good.
Considering you only saw TV ads once a day during that time, you also remembered the ads a lot more.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Not to inject some seriousness into this conversation, but why doesn't the Mozilla Foundation release something like this for real? They could set up an account with Google and then get paid for all those clicks on targeted ads. And I know what you're thinking, what kind of an idiot would voluntarily install such a monstrosity as an adbar. But c'mon. You know theres plenty of Google/Mozilla Fanboys out there that would be perfectly willing to whore a couple of pixels out to the Foundation!
Unused !! you must be crazy . My bookmarks toolbar goes there. May be u have a huge monitor and dont care abt destop space but since I run a measly 2048x1780 on my tiny 21inch pda I do need to be stingy abt every pixel. .. it does save space.
Anyway do try keeping the bookmarks toolbar next to the menu
I'm the author of the adbar extension. I was also one of the first to propose blocking pop-ups, although the method I proposed wasn't very good.
The shareholder is always right.
giving people the choice to add ads is pretty interesting... my first thought was "who would willingly expose themselves to extra advertising" but then i remembered some of the magazine junkies i know who buy the publication for the sole reason that they have a good advertiser list...
All the torrents you could want.
If the author was really smart, he/she incorporated banners ads from a pay-per-click plan they signed up for before releasing the plugin
The post is quite trollish... I use opera all the time, and I chose not to pay and use google ads instead. They're not intrusive, and sometimes, they're even useful..
I have found a way to beat the Gmail ads. Just use a few key words in the body of your message, or in your sig. I use this for my sig:
---
Death 9/11 september 11th earthquake died
car accident - These words stop google from
showing ads with this message.
And I know that the person viewing my mail wont see ads.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Last month I used was in a internet Cafe in Dublin, that used CenturySurf Linux/firfox PCs. The only program they could was Firefox.
I can see someone installing 1000's of public PC's wanting to put ads on them.
I intentionally set up my Ebay acct with my old /. nick because I did not want to mask the fact that this happened and which nick I used before this transaction.
I feel like I got a good deal on it. I was prepared to go higher than that price.
I've always been a huge fan of Slasdot, and I started coming here when UIDs were about in the 4 digit range, but I never registered then and only posted AC. I bought this acct for my birthday, as the ultimate geek present to myself. My wife looked at me like I was nuts! (She still does)
This acct was originally a beta tester's acct, so I think it's just a cool thing to have and I would never sell it. I'm not sure why anyone would sell their low UID for beer money.
If you look back at my comments, you will see that I have made good use of this acct, and contribute positively to this community. At least a troll didn't get it, right?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Although not obvious, I think this little doosey will dramatically improve Mozillas installed base.
Clone PC makers are always looking for a way to make a few extra bucks on a PC - the fact is by removing IE and replacing it with Mozilla and installing AdBar those PC's will (after a few years) generate more revenue than they made by selling the PC -- this leads to an interesting model of being able to sell computers at near zero cost, or at least to raise their margins.
I would venture to guess that the majority of the computers sold never have their default browsers changed.
So do the community a favor - next time your in a clone shop ask if they install Mozilla by default on all new systems? Then when they say "No" ask "Okay, so whats the catch -- why are you guys leaving money on the table" then they say "huh" then you explain why they ought to be installing Mozilla with AdBar and they'll start getting checks every month from Google.
Ironic isn't it?
Just imagine what would happen to Mozillas #'s if a Compaq or a Dell did that? Even a tier 2 seller like Tiger (who hawks stuff on QVC).
AdBar is an awesome idea, kudos to the author!