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This makes Smarttags look like childs play.
At least my TV has a nice blank black panel and the remote control is advertising free.
Roll on the next killer Web application because the old one just got killed.
PS Does the MSN casino sponsor know how much money they are throwing away delivering casino pop ups to Malaysia and Thailand where gambling is prohibited and seen by many as a sin?
Where can I buy shares in lavasoft.
chiyo - you give me an idea, advertsing panels on TV sets - so the ad appears next to whatever you're watching. This leads on to a little screen in the remote that displays ads when you change the channel. I'm sure these are not beyond the realm of todays technology.
Also I would think that the casino ads are targeting the right place if gambling is illegal. The biggest market for something has to be where it is illegal.
[unitedvirtualities.com...]
[unitedvirtualities.com...]
The client portfolio has some weird humour in it as well:
[unitedvirtualities.com...]
[unitedvirtualities.com...]
Do you know that changing the color of the scrollbar using CSS is not valid under the standards? But IE does it. Allowing control over parts of the browser that are not supposed to be controlled is not news.
Looking aside... April 2, may it be an deferred A1 joke?
<add> Yes it is. </add>
You got me there Ian. Of course you are absolutely correct! As a measly rejoinder and to snivel out of this, it may have a nagative PR effect on those sites that are delivering it. I know I get a queasy feeling whenever a site delivers up an ad for a p**n site, and i tend to avoid it from theron.
Well I hope its an April Fools Joke, but we can already see many examples how advertising is creeping more than slowly and surely onto the browser interface. We already know it can be done, its just a matter of extent.
Unless someone can argue that everybody using it is going to run away and never use the software again.
This is not new, if you are running Mozilla and allow "Enable software installation" anybody from their site can prompt you to install a new "skin" that would effectively have the layout and advertisements that the skin builder wants.
The difference?
1. The new skin would be selectable via a menu, and the old layout would be accesible via the "View" menu, so reverting the effect
should be trivial.
2. To install the new theme an "accept" menu should be clicked.
3. The skin is just a pack of javascript files an images .jared under a install directory, and they are easy to unpack and edit to nuke any advertisement on them.
Allow any browser to run it as arbitrary code would be stupid or at least evil.
Please, please be a joke...
Because if I have no control on a piece of software, I will just trash it and switch to another one. ASAT
I'm sorry but I don't believe a word of it. "is introducing"? What does that mean? Why on earth would anyone download a browser covered in ads, when they can download one without any for free?
Now, if the story had said "microsoft is introducing" or "aol/netscape is introducing" then it might be significant, but as it stands it's meaningless.
In any event, look at this quote from the article writer:
"The commandeering of the Web browser would be the latest in a series of intrusive tactics employed by online advertisers in the last year, often to the annoyance of Web surfers. From pop-up ads to pop-under ads, advertisers have gotten bolder in their quests for attention."
A long time ago, I remember those things called banner ads being the simple and effective way of advertising. Now, most banners are lucky to be pulling a 1% clickthrough in anything but a self-contained niche market.
Another comment I enjoyed seeing was:
"United Virtualities says it has built features into Ooqa Ooqa to mitigate its intrusiveness. 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."
The key there, is the option to turn it off. Kinda reminds me of those darned comet cursors from a while back!
~ Eric
Webmasters, you aren't entitled to disable my back button, create a new window, and definitely not place one under my browser.
If you want to obstruct your web site with an ad, well it's you site, and it makes me less likely to visit your site again if it gets too annoying.
OTOH, I've accidentally clicked on a Shoshkele ad missing the close button, I can't imagine how older users function with them.
Alex
The placement of that Shoshkele launch spot or that skyscraper I hit while I was going for the scroll bar the other day was probably intended to benefit from our accidents. It's a common ploy, as is cramming the nav menu next to the banner bar.
>it's good news for Opera, Linux and Apple.
Exactly. Just today, we had a comment in another thread about sys admins installing Netscape to sidestep some of the security issues. The issue of browser control, ad delivery systems included, starts to move into that realm pretty quickly. (BTW, last week I put N6 on a desktop used in a small office for business-related browsing for just that reason.)
