Block That Flash

By | November 22, 2011
1 Comment

Further to my rant about IntelliTXT and its interstitial ads (why do I think they’re called that? No one else seems to think so. Maybe I just like saying “interstitials”), here’s a great tip from Amy Gahran at Poynter Online, on blocking Flash-based ads, using a Firefox plugin called Flashblock. She has this message for news websites (or any websites) that rely on these intrusive ads:

I’m sorry if Flash-based ads are a cornerstone of your online business model. But frankly, basing your business model on something that annoys people is probably not a sound approach in an age where audiences exercise ever-finer control over the media they receive. Fighting human nature is always bad business in the long run.

Hear hear.

The Pop Up Piggyback

By | November 22, 2011
7 Comments

Is it just me, or have these interstitial ads or whatever they call themselves suddenly become ubiquitous, and no less annoying for it? They now seem to be everywhere (even O’Reilly uses them, shockingly, although it does offer a way to disable them). These are ads, courtesy of companies like Vibrant Media IntelliTXT, that add underlined links to certain words on a website which, when you move your mouse over them, pop up an ad that’s tangentially related to the word in question. This one, for example:

Intellitxt

The ad is for digital cameras. The word link is “review”. The piece itself is about solar-powered garden lights from one of my favorite gadget sites, the long running Gadgeteer. But these ads drive me nuts. Move your mouse over any of the nine links on that article and you’ll get a popup window like the above. Few of them are useful or relevant, as the following study reveals:

  • AC adapter – as in “There’s something really cool about using the power of the sun instead of the power of an AC adapter, when it comes to powering products” — throws up an ad for Laptop AC adapters
  • Review – as in “that’s why I was more than happy to review a solar powered garden accent light” — throws up an ad for Digital Cameras
  • Light weight – as in “The product is composed of a durable and UV protected resin material that looks very much like stone, while remaining light weight” — throws up an ad for Light weight (sic. The ad text is for “Shop for great deals on light weight and millions of other products”. No idea what they’re talking about)
  • Picture — as in “One clue that this might be the case [i.e. that the product cracks; They’re thorough in their reviews over there] is the picture hanger built into the back of the stone” — throws up ad for Free Digital Photo Software
  • Battery – as in “On the back of the stone, you see the battery compartment” — throws up ad for PDA batteries
  • Batteries — as in “Two rechargeable nickel-cadmium AA batteries are included and pre-installed” — throws up ad for Siemens Cordless Phone Batteries
  • Rechargeable batteries — as in “pre-installed rechargeable batteries store energy to power the light at night” — throws up ad for Sanyo rechargeable batteries, the first ad in this bunch which is vaguely relevant to the context.
  • Photo — as in “The built-in photo sensor automatically activates the light” — throws up an ad for Musical Slideshow software
  • Flash — as in “Here’s a picture of the stone that I took without a flash” — throws up an ad for Pentax SLR Digital Flash, arguably relevant but so specific you have to wonder whether anyone is really going to be reading the piece and needing a Pentax SLR Digital Flash
  • Conclusion: Out of 9 ads, 1.5 might be possibly considered useful to the reader.

I’ve whinged about this before (and before), believing it was too intrusive and likely to create a conflict of interest on the part of content creators who may be influenced to insert words that are more likely to match contextual words sold to advertisers. In the example above, for example, a less scrupulous content producer than The Gadgeteer might have chosen, or be encouraged to choose “photo sensor” over “photosensor” (the latter spelling slightly more popular online than the former) because the word “photo” would attract more ads. That’s not a sinister example, but what if the ad sellers forwarded a list of words popular among advertisers, which would steer content producers into putting those words into their writing?

(Vibrant Media says that “IntelliTXT ad units are delivered in real-time and deployed after the article has been published by the website. This is an automated process that cannot influence, or be influenced by the Editorial Team at this website or any other partner publication.” It also includes in its guidelines (PDF) a line: “Vibrant Media strongly encourages publishers not to implement IntelliTXT in late breaking news, political coverage, or other news channels that Vibrant Media deems to be controversial or inappropriate.”)

But the conflict of interest issue (news websites like Forbes.com stopped dealing with IntelliTXT, apparently over this issue) is less important to me than the annoyance and befuddlement that comes with these faux links. There is one real link in Julie’s review but it’s lost in there. First off, it’s the same color as the IntelliTXT ads, but it’s not double underlined, and it’s covered, when the mouse moves over the line above, by an IntelliTXT pop up (see if you can spot it in the screenshot above.) I find these ads annoying, distracting, and not a little confusing. When you compare it to the contextual ads displayed alongside content, you can’t help wondering whether this is a big step backwards for online content. (The ads alongside Julie’s review include one on Solar Powered Fountains and one on Solar battery chargers. I’d argue both those are a darned sight more relevant than any of the interstitials.)

Vibrant Media call this kind of advertising “user-driven advertising”. How is it user-driven? It says that “IntelliTXT helps empower users to view relevant advertising on their own terms.” Relevant? I think not. How “empower”, exactly? “Own terms”? I’d argue IntelliTXT piggy backs a fine tradition of hyperlinking — the vision and bedrock of the World Wide Web to sucker users into mistaking a popup ad for a genuine link.

Vibrant Media sells the idea to advertisers as a way to “Use words to brand. Cut through the online advertising clutter”. Actually, I’d argue it adds to the clutter, and, as the example above shows, has nothing to do with “branding” as anyone I know might understand it.

So what can one do? First off, IntelliTXT isn’t loading anything onto your computer. The ads are sleazy, but the actual implementation isn’t. If you’re a Firefox user, install Greasemonkey and then this IntelliTXT Disabler script. The IntelliTXT links will load, briefly appear and then you won’t see them no more. If you’re not a Firefox user, get it. Sure, websites need advertising to survive, but lets make sure they are either smart ads, funny ads, ads that are relevant to the content, ads that don’t mislead the reader, and, finally, ads that don’t get in the way.

The iTunization of Books

By | November 22, 2011
3 Comments

Good piece in yesterday’s NYT about the future of books. Yes, we’ve been there before but this piece by Motoko Rich does a good job of bringing new elements and old elements to play, from MarK Z. Danielewski’s Only Revolutions to Yochai Benkler, a Yale University law professor and author of the new book “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom” (Yale University Press), [who] has gone even farther: his entire book is available — free — as a download from his Web site.

So what is the future of books. I think the important distinction to be made first is between books that are read and books that are referred to. The latter is anything with an index. Sure, people read them cover to cover too, but they are retained in libraries and on your shelves when you need to refer back to something, and you usually do that via the index. Indexes are old hat, and ripe for innovation. That innovation is digitization. Once the information, previously locked up in analog format, its accessibility dependent on the agility and diligence of the indexer, is free, the full potential of the book is realised. That’s why I think all reference books should be digitized, and offered in digital format by their publishers. It’s as simple as the way Google liberated the Internet.

So the real issue is about the first category: the books that are read for their own sake. This is more difficult. Such books offer us not just a bit of reading pleasure, but an invitation to enter a universe created by the author. And it doesn’t have to be fiction; travel, history, even economics — any subject where the author has embraced the form that books offer to emerge with a body of work that is designed to be digested as a body of work. If you get my drift.

Now I’m a bit of a conservative. I think this format works because it is the best delivery mechanism for this thing. The book has been proven to work better than all other forms of delivery and writers have, over the centuries, explored the format and made it the success it is. This, I believe, will continue to work.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for other kinds of “book”. There’s no reason that the “iTune-isation” of music — where the music industry has had to adapt to the rise of the single digital music track download and the demise of the “album” (and presumably the “concept album”) — can’t continue to make inroads to reading (although a whole other subject here is the possible collapse of concentration, focus and flow that arises from this).

And then there’s the idea of “book mashing”, where books are no longer the result of one person’s creative genius, but the combination of a writer and her fans’ comments and contributions, or simply an online collaboration a la Wikipedia.

Then there’s the economics of book publishing. This need to be addressed elsewhere, but publishing definitely needs the shakeup other media are experiencing, and Print on Demand and digital books are providing that. Can only be a good thing, so long as it leads to, or continues to offer, compensation for the creator. A creator needs to eat. (Really. We’re not just skinny through lifestyle choice.)

The final word in the NYT piece goes to Mr. Danielewski, second novel, “Only Revolutions,” will include hundreds of margin notes listing moments in history suggested online by fans of his work. He reckons that “the bar that the Internet is driving towards: how to further emphasize what is different and exceptional about books.” In the end this is what we can hope for from the Internet’s rude bumping up against entrenched ways of doing things.

Irrelevant Boring Company Chooses Lame Product No One Has Ever Heard Of Shock

By | November 22, 2011
6 Comments

I don’t know how much PR people are paid for putting out press releases, but it’s either not enough or way too much. I just got one in my inbox with the following subject header: “Octagon Jewellery Co. Ltd, Hong Kong chooses Datavision to implement LGX Info and JewelVision ERP”. Now if that means anything to you, you’re welcome to the scoop. I have not heard of any of these companies or products. None of them. The fact that the email began

Dear Jeremy Jeremy,

didn’t raise my confidence levels. I haven’t been called that since junior high school, and even then, only accompanied by jauntily melodied taunts about the size of my calves/ears/biceps/bobble hat. The email then continues

Below is a press release entitled ‘Octagon Jewellery Co. Ltd, Hong Kong chooses Datavision to implement LGX Info and JewelVision ERP’.

Just in case the fact that the subject field didn’t drive that particular information home. Press releases. One day we won’t have them anymore. Until then, I intend to kick and scream with every lame-o, poorly written, irrelevant, marginal, meaningless and tritely written one that lands in my inbox.

Killing the Couch-Loving Individualists

By | November 22, 2011
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Is HP’s anti-telecommuting move just a bid to shed expensive jobs? Thanks to my old chum Tom Raftery (thanks for the accommodation, Tom, and congrats on the baby!) Bernie Goldbach reckons it is. And he makes the important point that customers

considering H-P as part of a core IT package during the next 12 months–ensure you are comfortable about the manner in which your requests for assistance are to be handled. The mid-career people who consult with you about your enterprise computing purchase today may not be on the H-P payroll at the end of the year. If you are working with someone from H-P to construct a robust data centre, I would ask whether that project manager or IT specialist has to move. You need to know whether the people who are upgrading your services will be around to service it next year, regardless of the hour of the day when you need help. When you buy H-P, you expect better than Wal-Mart.

What I probably didn’t stress enough in my morning post was that telecommuters, whether they’re doing the washing, mowing the lawn or riding a tractor during conference calls, will probably be at their computer long after the cubicle drones are on the beach parasailing. Telecommuters, I suspect, tend to be more diligent, even if they may take a nap on the sofa (I’ve just got a new one by the way; $150 for a very nice custom-made number from Ojolali) in the middle of the day. Whether it’s through guilt at breathing non-cubicle air or a heightened sense of professionalism born of independence, telecommuters are probably more productive than their cubicle-bound brethren.

This seems to be borne out by a survey in Australia conducted by Sensis, which reported that only 1% of businesses reported negative impacts from teleworking. Staff, however, told a different story: 13% felt they were actually working longer hours, according to The Melbourne Age. It’ll be interesting to see what happens at HP.