If you happened upon nj.com in the last month, you might have noticed a clucking penguin waddling across the computer screen, stumbling over text as it promoted a local utility company.
On a cricket league chat board in New Zealand, exasperated users have been deluged with floating squares that try to interest them in mattresses, dating services and officially licensed trinkets from the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy.
Not to be confused with pop-up ads, which open new windows and clutter virtual desktops, these floaters, or overlays, or popovers (no one can agree on a name), can evade the pop-up blockers that many Web browsers have incorporated.
In the last year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, which collects and analyzes data on Web advertising, the frequency of these ads has risen markedly, by almost 32 percent from December 2003 to December 2004, while pop-ups in that period declined by 41 percent.
The floater ads, often using a computer's Macromedia Flash Player to run, overlay the content of the page rather than spawning new windows. They have been around since 2001, but their rise has been abetted by the growing use of high-speed Internet connections, allowing them to play with greater ease.
Floaters are one example of a variety of online ads known in the industry as rich media. Some variants include banner ads that expand to show graphics and streaming video when the cursor is waved over them; a tamer version packs the video and graphics into a static, or polite, banner. All have a common characteristic: they cannot be categorically blocked by existing technology.
To many, they are just as irritating as pop-up ads, if not more so. On the New Zealand cricket chat board, one user declared, "This form of advertising is without a doubt the most ridiculous and offensive form I have ever come across."
But as with pop-ups (before pop-up blockers), their appeal to advertisers is simple: they get people to click, usually transporting them to the advertiser's site. While static Web ads typically have "click through" rates of 0.5 percent of viewers, according to numerous industry studies, the rate for pop-ups and floaters is 3 percent to 5 percent, though some studies suggest that many of those clicks are attempts to get rid of the ad.
According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the sites on which such ads were most common in the year ended in December were three Microsoft sites - www.msn.com, www.msnbc.com and Hotmail - followed by espn.com and www.yahoo.com.
Although most advertisers and the sites where the ads appear seem happy with the use of the floater ads, recent research suggests problems. A study of 2,500 British Internet users released last month by OMD UK found that just as many Web users (44 percent) were annoyed with floaters as they were with pop-ups. Many major sites, like nytimes.com and www.msn.com, limit the number of times a person is shown such an ad. (At nytimes.com, the limit is once per visit to the site.)
"We want to do something that's informative and entertaining as opposed to being annoying," said Joanne Bradford, vice president and chief media revenue officer for msn.com. "That's our guiding principle." To that end, the company introduced on Feb. 1 a design that limited the number of ads on the main page. (Ms. Bradford would not say by how much.) The action, she noted, did prompt "a little bit of squawking" from advertisers.
Some are trying to figure out other ways to stop the onslaught. Mozilla, designer of the popular (and free) Web browser Firefox, which offers a pop-up blocker, is trying to block floater ads as well, but has so far been unsuccessful, said Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for the Mozilla Foundation. "It really is an arms race," he said.
Jarvis Coffin, chief executive of Burst Media, a company that sells advertising for more than 2,000 Web sites, said that even though he is a fan of the "rich media" ads, he warns that advertisers should understand that they cannot deluge people with the technology without consequence. "Just because you can do it doesn't make it a smart thing to do," he said.
Well, I AM a developer so I suppose that makes my opinion more valid:
Best Game: Ratchet and Clank 3. This is the most fun I have had playing a game in a while. What game has been made recently that's more fun than R&C3?
Audio: Doom 3 is the best use of audio to create atmosphere that I have ever experienced in a game.
New Studio: What Crytek did with Far Cry as their first game is extremely impressive.
Character Design: Katamari Damacy. Your father in that game is one of my favorite characters of all time.
Technology: Doom 3. There were more than a handfull of moments in that game where I almost could not believe that what I was seeing on my screen was really there.
Writing: Ratchet and Clank 3. Most of the nominees have really terrible writing. HL2? Give me a break. The game was awesome, but the writing? R&C3 was funny and quirky, and did quite a bit to make the overall experience of the game more fun.
Just because the part about security comes last in the book doesn't mean that it is any more or less important.
Maybe the author feels that in order to get the most out of a chapter about writing secture programs you first need a good base in the things discussed in earlier chapters.
"haptic touch" is the name of the system that lets us feel stuff through objects we hold, to "feel the road through the stick or cane, or even through the wheels of a car we are driving."
When I think game development,I think of John Carmack, Will Wright, Sid Meier, and TRIP HAWKINS...
I'm very surprised that he is being inducted with all of the EA stuff going on all around us. Also, he ran 3D0 into bankrupcy with a terribly over-priced console.
Now I can make just about exactly the same thing they sell in the stores at a tiny fraction of the cost. I can burn the disc, print the image on the disc, and then print out the insert.
I wish that more music/games/movies/etc. came with cool packaging or another incentive to actually buy the physical media. I still buy all of the music that I listen to legally, but the reasons/benefits for doing so (other than 'it's the law') are disappearing quickly.
I'm even more certain that these thoughts are bad.
Why is that bad? Maybe running your car into a railing isn't the best idea, but the fact that a game is making you look around and think about things differently is not a bad thing at all.
"Sony's extremely impressive technology has allowed Rockstar Leeds to do more on a handheld machine than we could have ever imagined."
I like that quote a lot. People love talking about the innovation of the DS, but in my mind the PSP is just as innovative. The DS is combining PDA gaming with GBA gaming and wireless access. The PSP is shrinking the PS2 into a sleek little handheld. Both of these allow us to do things on that we have never been able to do on handhelds before.
That being said, I own a DS and have not been extremely impressed. I own Mario 64 and Feel the Magic. Mario is fun, but suffers greatly from the lack of an analog stick. I'll always prefer to play the N64 version because of this. Feel the Magic is a fun game, but extremely short and I felt like I was cheated out of a few bucks when I beat it so quickly. Also, the entire time I'm playing Feel the Magic I'm terrified that I'm going to end up with a scratched touch screen.
The touch screen may have some cool applications in gaming, but I think the choice to break up the device into two screens was a poor one. In Mario, the bottom screen is honestly more of a distraction than anything, and I almost with I could just shut it off (maybe I can?). I do realize that these are only the launch titles, and launch titles usually suck, but these are my honest early impressions.
I just sorta picked up the DS because I buy most consoles/handhelds, whatever. After seeing screenshots and videos of the PSP in action, I don't see any way I can possibly NOT own one.
This honestly did not start out as a DS/PSP thing, I swear!
There is a ten page (or so) interview/first look at Quake 4 in the November PC Gamer. In it they state (amongst other things):
With Doom 3 it was horror, with Quake 4 it's going to be war. Doom 3 was slow-paced, tense gameplay. Quake 4 is going to be over the top, all-out action.
Vehicles! They show a really cool outdoor shot of a bunch of Strogg (I think) fighter jets blasting everything.
Squad-based gameplay. A lot of the time you will be fighting as part of a squad.
Their multiplayer goal is to re-create the Quake III experience in the Doom3 engine, which sounds so amazingly sweet to me.
The storyline picks up where Quake 2 left off.
Quake 4 will smash the perception that the Doom 3 engine is only good at indoor environments. There are many huge, open, outdoor levels.
According to the Cox News Service, the lawsuit explains: "Plaintiff is still a teenager and wishes to attend college, develop her career and be active in her community and church."
I wonder what the church thinks of the game. Maybe if she wants to be such a model citizen, she should start out by not running around topless during spring break.
Slashdot Mirror
(W)ine (I)s (N)ot an (E)mulator
I honestly meant to post this as AC. Someone mod the shit out of this post to balance out the karma of the universe.
On a cricket league chat board in New Zealand, exasperated users have been deluged with floating squares that try to interest them in mattresses, dating services and officially licensed trinkets from the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy.
Not to be confused with pop-up ads, which open new windows and clutter virtual desktops, these floaters, or overlays, or popovers (no one can agree on a name), can evade the pop-up blockers that many Web browsers have incorporated.
In the last year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, which collects and analyzes data on Web advertising, the frequency of these ads has risen markedly, by almost 32 percent from December 2003 to December 2004, while pop-ups in that period declined by 41 percent.
The floater ads, often using a computer's Macromedia Flash Player to run, overlay the content of the page rather than spawning new windows. They have been around since 2001, but their rise has been abetted by the growing use of high-speed Internet connections, allowing them to play with greater ease.
Floaters are one example of a variety of online ads known in the industry as rich media. Some variants include banner ads that expand to show graphics and streaming video when the cursor is waved over them; a tamer version packs the video and graphics into a static, or polite, banner. All have a common characteristic: they cannot be categorically blocked by existing technology.
To many, they are just as irritating as pop-up ads, if not more so. On the New Zealand cricket chat board, one user declared, "This form of advertising is without a doubt the most ridiculous and offensive form I have ever come across."
But as with pop-ups (before pop-up blockers), their appeal to advertisers is simple: they get people to click, usually transporting them to the advertiser's site. While static Web ads typically have "click through" rates of 0.5 percent of viewers, according to numerous industry studies, the rate for pop-ups and floaters is 3 percent to 5 percent, though some studies suggest that many of those clicks are attempts to get rid of the ad.
According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the sites on which such ads were most common in the year ended in December were three Microsoft sites - www.msn.com, www.msnbc.com and Hotmail - followed by espn.com and www.yahoo.com.
Although most advertisers and the sites where the ads appear seem happy with the use of the floater ads, recent research suggests problems. A study of 2,500 British Internet users released last month by OMD UK found that just as many Web users (44 percent) were annoyed with floaters as they were with pop-ups. Many major sites, like nytimes.com and www.msn.com, limit the number of times a person is shown such an ad. (At nytimes.com, the limit is once per visit to the site.)
"We want to do something that's informative and entertaining as opposed to being annoying," said Joanne Bradford, vice president and chief media revenue officer for msn.com. "That's our guiding principle." To that end, the company introduced on Feb. 1 a design that limited the number of ads on the main page. (Ms. Bradford would not say by how much.) The action, she noted, did prompt "a little bit of squawking" from advertisers.
Some are trying to figure out other ways to stop the onslaught. Mozilla, designer of the popular (and free) Web browser Firefox, which offers a pop-up blocker, is trying to block floater ads as well, but has so far been unsuccessful, said Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for the Mozilla Foundation. "It really is an arms race," he said.
Jarvis Coffin, chief executive of Burst Media, a company that sells advertising for more than 2,000 Web sites, said that even though he is a fan of the "rich media" ads, he warns that advertisers should understand that they cannot deluge people with the technology without consequence. "Just because you can do it doesn't make it a smart thing to do," he said.
Funny, I would have described that as the worst part.
Anybody know how fast you would have to be going (theoretically or otherwise) before the Doppler Effect makes the signal unusable?
Ha ha - No.
Hell, you're playing the same damn character!
Wrong.
yet again you could instantly chow down on a complete meal to regain your health in the middle of a firefight with ten guards
Wrong. You didn't gain health from eating, but when you were well fed you would gradually regain health over time.
it was a lousy game
Just wrong.
Best Game: Ratchet and Clank 3. This is the most fun I have had playing a game in a while. What game has been made recently that's more fun than R&C3?
Audio: Doom 3 is the best use of audio to create atmosphere that I have ever experienced in a game.
New Studio: What Crytek did with Far Cry as their first game is extremely impressive.
Character Design: Katamari Damacy. Your father in that game is one of my favorite characters of all time.
Technology: Doom 3. There were more than a handfull of moments in that game where I almost could not believe that what I was seeing on my screen was really there.
Writing: Ratchet and Clank 3. Most of the nominees have really terrible writing. HL2? Give me a break. The game was awesome, but the writing? R&C3 was funny and quirky, and did quite a bit to make the overall experience of the game more fun.
Maybe the author feels that in order to get the most out of a chapter about writing secture programs you first need a good base in the things discussed in earlier chapters.
I'll fix your computer if you babysit my kids next Friday.
"haptic touch" is the name of the system that lets us feel stuff through objects we hold, to "feel the road through the stick or cane, or even through the wheels of a car we are driving."
PLEASE let that term just disappear and never be used again...
I'm very surprised that he is being inducted with all of the EA stuff going on all around us. Also, he ran 3D0 into bankrupcy with a terribly over-priced console.
I wish that more music/games/movies/etc. came with cool packaging or another incentive to actually buy the physical media. I still buy all of the music that I listen to legally, but the reasons/benefits for doing so (other than 'it's the law') are disappearing quickly.
But you don't need to sign up for a service plan to wear a watch...
I doubt if the entire Linux community combined has even SEEN $750 million combined in our lives.
I can only imagine that he will be replaced with someone just as conservative/religious/etc.
Click here and then enter the coupon code SAVER to get free shipping.
Resident Evil 4 will be making its way to PS2 sometime late in 2005.
Also as a side note, the main character Leon is the guy from Resident Evil 2. I can't wait for my copy to get here. Hurry Gamestop, hurry.
Why not iPages? Seems strange to make iEverythingElse and not iPages.
Why is that bad? Maybe running your car into a railing isn't the best idea, but the fact that a game is making you look around and think about things differently is not a bad thing at all.
I like that quote a lot. People love talking about the innovation of the DS, but in my mind the PSP is just as innovative. The DS is combining PDA gaming with GBA gaming and wireless access. The PSP is shrinking the PS2 into a sleek little handheld. Both of these allow us to do things on that we have never been able to do on handhelds before.
That being said, I own a DS and have not been extremely impressed. I own Mario 64 and Feel the Magic. Mario is fun, but suffers greatly from the lack of an analog stick. I'll always prefer to play the N64 version because of this. Feel the Magic is a fun game, but extremely short and I felt like I was cheated out of a few bucks when I beat it so quickly. Also, the entire time I'm playing Feel the Magic I'm terrified that I'm going to end up with a scratched touch screen.
The touch screen may have some cool applications in gaming, but I think the choice to break up the device into two screens was a poor one. In Mario, the bottom screen is honestly more of a distraction than anything, and I almost with I could just shut it off (maybe I can?). I do realize that these are only the launch titles, and launch titles usually suck, but these are my honest early impressions.
I just sorta picked up the DS because I buy most consoles/handhelds, whatever. After seeing screenshots and videos of the PSP in action, I don't see any way I can possibly NOT own one.
This honestly did not start out as a DS/PSP thing, I swear!
I wonder what the church thinks of the game. Maybe if she wants to be such a model citizen, she should start out by not running around topless during spring break.