Now here's an interesting little nugget Jeff Bezos didn't want you to know about when he introduced his new Kindle tablets: the Kindle Fire HD is ad-supported, and originally, you would not have been able to remove those advertisements from the device. Over the weekend, the company reversed this policy, allowing you to permanently remove the advertisements from your Fire HD for $15.
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Member since:2010-03-08
That's true, but not all ads are so awfully designed that they represent a pure concentrated moment of annoyance.
Some examples off the top of my head
-John West salmon (on TV, can be found on Youtube)
-Ikea's "tidy up" series (ditto)
-Project Wonderful's webcomic ads (on pretty much every freely accessible webcomic out there)
I try to refrain myself from using ad blockers. If websites have such an awful advertising policy that they take hours to load (on my super-wondrous pirated EDGE connection) or are painful to read, it's better to notify the author about it or leave than to just ignore the annoyances that people who don't use Adblock go through. We won't change the fact that so far, nothing better than advertising has been found to pay for web hosting costs anyway.
Edited 2012-09-11 07:17 UTC
Member since:2006-12-05
I have to admit, as much as I despise advertising, I have seen at least a few ads in my life that I actually liked. I'm not saying they're not out there. They're just incredibly rare, as companies try to be memorable in the most incredibly annoying ways to get a sale. That seems more true than ever before these days. But even today, very few of them come to mind. They're a thing of the past, replaced by purely annoying garbage, repeated over and over and over again.
I couldn't remember a single Nintendo 64 commercial now, but being a gamer from a young age I'll never forget "Get N or Get Out." I also liked the Budweiser frogs, mainly for the humor, but of course those ones are now illegal. Oh noooo, can't advertise beer with talking frogs now, it might corrupt the children into drinking something that is not pure H₂O but includes small amounts of that dreaded chemical CH₃CH₂OH! [sigh] Of course, IMO, Bud sucks anyway and I'll take a good craft beer any day, but that's beside the point.
And never mind those chemicals that are much worse, which the government allows to be consumed legally--and those that are much safer that remain strictly illegal as if they're the devil's work and they'll turn a person into a maniac and cause them to go on a killing spree or something (gotta thank those loony Christians for that).
Edited 2012-09-11 07:47 UTC
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2006-12-05
What you described would, in my opinion, be the "best" (if there could even be such a thing when it comes to this subject) kind of advertising. The kind of stuff that doesn't try to forcibly ram shit down your throat. Instead, we've got stuff like what what Vonage put out a few years ago with their annoying little jingle, pounded in your head once or twice every single f--king commercial break. And I only know because while at a friend's house a TV was always on, and whether I was actually watching it with them in the same room or in a completely different room minding my own business... you just can't miss it even if you want to.
Things like that, they're not the only culprit, just the only one I can think of (like I said, advertising is dead to me). I have determined years ago that I will NEVER support a company that has such annoying commercials. See what that got them? I remember their name... and I remember to avoid them. Oh, and I almost forgot; more recently, Yorkshire Farms--their rap commercials annoyed the hell out of me so bad, I'll never buy their products. Maybe I'm just ass-backwards, but these companies' advertisements actually work AGAINST them sometimes.
Oh yeah, I remember alright... not to buy anything with that name on it in the future. Note to such companies: Thanks for trying... to force shit down my throat with some of the most annoying ads possible, overplayed to hell and back. I'll keep your company's name in mind, in my own little blacklist. You are precicely the reason I use things like Adblock Plus, and refuse to browse the web without it.
Edited 2012-09-11 07:10 UTC