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.'"

Comments

Yeah, ok.

[Valar]

And when I'm done, I need to start installing my virus collection.

Re:Yeah, ok.

[Anonymous Coward]

And when I'm done, I need to start installing my virus collection.

This is awesome! I just found out that I can pay money to have my own conversations tapped, and now I just found out that I can install a plugin for my browser that gives me more ads! 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!

IT'S A TRAP!

[Rylfaeth]

or so shouts Admiral Adbar.
-Rylfaeth

I hate to admit this...

[Osrin]

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.

Sometimes people actually want ads

[MrRTFM]

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.

Does Google know about this?

[LostCluster]

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...

is there a version for

[theguywhosaid]

Internet Explorer?

Re:is there a version for

[mabinogi]

hundreds of them, just use IE for a few hours and one is bound to install itself.

You just saved me from installing IE!!!

[cytoman]

Thanks, dude!!!! I was going Cold Turkey without the ads/popups after switching to Firefox... I needed to see those ads so bad that I was about to uninstall Firefox and switch to Windows so that I could use IE!!!!!!

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.

Yep it's a joke

[beakerMeep]

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.

Re:Google is a special case

[Anonymous Coward]

Sucker.

Well

[mfh]

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! :-)

Re:Well

[parksie]

To me, it seems like the same thing as buying a trade magazine (say, Micro Mart in the UK). You are specifically *asking* for adverts on what you're looking at; in effect advertising yourself as a potential and interested buyer.

Re:Well

[Achoi77]

*woah* did you just insult a 2-digit UID? :-P

All jocking aside, I beleive when grandparent says high moral road he's referring to is adware applications that don't hijack your computer, putting on excess bloat eventually rendering your computer useless on order to force their ads upon you.

Personally I've enjoyed using google's ads, as they offer me more or less the most relevant stuff I'm looking for during my surfing session. If this thing even gets popular, perhaps there will be less and less browser spamming, less pop-ups, less harassment over all. Ok I'll stop dreaming now.

In any case, I find google's ads very non-intrusive, and very relevant - those are the kind of ads I like to see.

Re:Well

[soimless]

My question is if i can Adblock my Adbar?

Re:Well

[halowolf]

All jocking aside, I beleive when grandparent says high moral road he's referring to is adware applications that don't hijack your computer, putting on excess bloat eventually rendering your computer useless on order to force their ads upon you.

Personally, I don't mind getting ads that are relevant and on my own terms. For some reason I quite enjoy looking at shopping catalogues and stuff even though 99% of the time I wouldn't buy anything from them. If there is something that I may be interested in then I don't mind being told about it.

For instance I've got my Amazon recommendations list as part of the Mozilla Browser home tab group. I don't always look at it but I do find something on it every now and then that I am interested in, and best of all it learns my preferences and offers more relevant results. Though it does tend do go off in unexpected directions and makes some less than relevant selected obviously based on keyword association.

Whats important for me is that the advertising is on my terms and not on the terms of someone else. I rarely watch any TV at the time is on and simply time shift it to where I can easily bypass the ads.

I've worked for a number of marketing departments now and every one of them has been focused on getting into the customers mindset anyway they can. None of them seemed concerned about annoying potential customers with advertising that they didn't want. They would run competitions so they could harvest contact details to advertise to consumers with and such and they got mightily offended when I compared their "directed marketing" to SPAM. Oh well...

Re:Well

[BrainInAJar]

" *woah* did you just insult a 2-digit UID? :-P"

He bought it (the UID) on ebay, so it's okay

Re:Well

[bhima]

Who buys trade magazines? You just fill out the zillion question form and they appear at your office for the rest of your life.

Don't cross the streams!

[deep square leg]

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.

Re:Registering to get rid of ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why pay to remove something you can simply choose to not install in the first place?

Here on Earth, we call this a "joke".

Targeted Ads, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So based on the assumptions about slashdot users, you will get even MORE ads about "enlarging your member" based on surfing habits.

I just invented something too

[oasis3582]

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!

Honestly

[nwbvt]

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.

Can I hack it to pay myself?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you run Google ads, Google pays you. Can I program this toolbar so every link I click pays myself?

Kinda like setting up an Amazon affiliate link on your own page to get a 15% discount on books?

Re:Can I hack it to pay myself?

[leathered]

" If you run Google ads, Google pays you."

..in Soviet Russia?

I actually feel this way...

[gerf]

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.

Re:Resolution to burn

[Donny Smith]

> Sorry, I prefer to keep my [very limited] desktop space.

Haven't you seen that ad for large LCD monitors?

My DVD Player

[Frankie70]

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.

He did buy the uid on ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

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.