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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.'"
And when I'm done, I need to start installing my virus collection.
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Crudely Drawn Games
or so shouts Admiral Adbar.
-Rylfaeth
but I've been using gmail for a number of months now, and I'm finding their targeted advertising more and more helpful.
I guess I've officially lost at the internet.
I was worried I wasn't getting enough google ads reading slashdot every 30 minutes. no, but really, thats how sad I am.. I'm on a 30 minute refresh cycle..
ok.. so heads you lose tails I win. right?
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
Google is very strict about where they allow their ads to be shown. For example, Google will not feed ads to sites that express extreme political views, or deal with taboo topics such as internet gambling.
So, I'm wondering if they approved this project. If they haven't, then Google will be pulling the plug very shortly...
Internet Explorer?
It's ads are actually GOOD - I've learned to pay attention to them when on Google. I might get this adbar...
Mumia Abu-Jamal is *laughably guilty*. Check the evidence.
Sorry, I prefer to keep my [very limited] desktop space.
Thanks anyway!
-Bullseye
Yay Ads! I was feeling guilty about reading pages without watching ads... I was feeling guilty because seeing content without Ads is like stealing from the content makers. You saved my soul.
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.
From the site: "Can I register and get rid of the ads? Of course! Paypal $19 (51% cheaper than Opera!) to me or the Mozilla Foundation, then use Firefox's Extension Manager to uninstall adbar." What a waste of a parannoid attack I had there. Thanks slashdot.
meep
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.
What is the point of posting this story? Is it some kind of clever backhand insult to Opera?
I use Opera all the time: number of times I have even noticed the ads consciously... um, never. Or let's say, just about the same number of times I notice them on SlashDot!
Don't install it next to Adblock! The meeting of these two opposing super-extensions will create an implosion that shall engulf the entire universe.
Install AdBar and Adblock and let 'em fight it out...
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
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
Here on Earth, we call this a "joke".
- These are not the ads you're looking for.
- You can go about your business.
- Move along.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
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.
So based on the assumptions about slashdot users, you will get even MORE ads about "enlarging your member" based on surfing habits.
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.
I just invented a reverse TiVo. It extracts all the commercials from a given time slot for viewing at a later date! One at a time folks!
But the eyecandy graphics just sounds like a complete waste. WTF does this do for anybody?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It advertises for mozilla (in mozilla). It advertises things I'm already looking at. Does it advertise itself? I've been searching for this exact set of features! It's like the second coming!
I know more than you drink.
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.
Kinda like setting up an Amazon affiliate link on your own page to get a 15% discount on books?
> 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.
I always hate to see people actually go for something like this. Advertising is the one industry which provides nothing of value to society. The only ones who gain from advertising are medium to large businesses, as they are the only ones with the investment capital to saturate the market.
That said, if these people can get anyone to fall for this, more power to them. That's capitalism. At least they are up front about it, and not sneaky and underhanded like Gator & the like.
-Amalcon
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
They're "test ads" in that they don't generate revenue, but they're still loaded from pageads2.googlesyndication.com.
The shareholder is always right.
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.
I have hacked my DVD Player to play 5 minutes of advertisements after every 10 minutes of the movie. And my TIVO plays stored ads even when I watch the premium ad free channels.
There is still no way to have a vertical tab bar, quickly toggle on/off all formatting, or quickly cycle between All Images/No Images/Loaded Images.
Also, Opera still has a magical interface. If I misclose a window, I can hit Ctrl+Z/Ctrl+Alt+Z and it is magically restored. I don't need to install extensions to get tabs to behave sensically.
And so on.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
You must not have tried Opera. If you pay for the license, you don't get the ads. If you don't want to pay, then you get the ads.
I like Opera enough that I did pay for the license. Actually, two licenses - one for Windows and one for Linux.
Personally, I have no problem with a software package having two modes - 1) free but you put up with advertizing and 2) pay with no advertizing.
If the ads are too annoying, I'll never put up with it long enough to decide whether or not I like it enough to pay for it so that there is no advertizing.
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
I wish I had the same for Mozilla Thunderbird, so I can get more spam...
If they ever come up with a device for my computer that shoves a hot poker in my ass every so often, I'll be in heaven!
Close...
--Dan
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.
who modded this as funny? he did buy the uid on ebay A very little amount of research will also reveal the uid of the user who bought it.
Does no-one in this thread think it's a joke? It appears to be functional, but it is clearly humourous, satirical, ironic - that kind of thing. Hats off to them.