Google's Annoying Ad Onslought

We can't do much about ads while web-surfing beyond trying to ignore them.  But Google's most intrusive innovation is extraordinary annoying.  They keep track of the web sites you surf and, if they are among their paid advertisers, you are in for a dose of ads that are unbelievably stupid and apparently forever.

Example: I bought my grand daughter a dress for her birthday a month in advance, had it shipped to her, and that was that, right?  Wrong.  I am being bombarded with Google ads from that same store for children's clothes.  That's dumb.  If I am a parent buying lots of clothes, I already know about that site and am likely to return (or not) as a result of my experience with their products.  Ad after ad does not change that, at least not in their favor.

Example: Last week I was looking for Haggar slacks because I have lost a little weight.  I was very unhappy with the Haggar choices and decided to look at some of my old, smaller slacks.  I discovered, looking through my closet, that Haggar quality has deteriorated dramatically over the past five years.  The latest pairs are very poor fabric that is so wrinkle free that they won't hold the factory crease, and they don't even contain labels showing their size. My reward? The price has dropped from $35 to $30 since last Fall. It's not worth it. So much for Haggar.  

I also looked for Gold Toe socks, but decided to buy the socks locally because they were so poorly described everywhere I looked on the web.

Same story.  I am now bombarded with Haggar and Gold Toe ads.  I am NOT going to buy them on line;  my web-shopping experience is complete and was a big disappointment.  Why keep annoying me with reminders that I was unhappy?

There is a remedy. It, too, is annoying, but it's effective.  Close the page containing the ad. In Firefox go to Tools/Clear Recent History and select what you want cleared.  You may have to click the Details drop-down.  I check everything except cookies, select the appropriate time frame, then close my browser immediately and restart it.  It's most effective if I shout "SHUT UP" at the same time.  No doubt other browsers have a similar escape route.

Google Mapmaker

Google has released Mapmaker as a way to crowd-source corrections to their notoriously poor maps.  Unfortunately, Mapmaker was written by an infinite number of monkeys crowded into a room full of keyboards. The result is chaos.  I cannot recall ever seeing a piece of software that was so completely unsuited to its task.

My advice is to wait for release ten.  Unless, of course, you revel in becoming frustrated.

Spam. I hate it!

My ISP uses a spam filter by Postini, a subsidiary of Google. The ISP charges $3 a month for it.  But Postini acts like a giant corporation that cannot fix anything.  For example, Postini allows passage of at least four emails a day that have the following characteristics:

From: Delmy Petros
To: patricia warrick
CC: venu julepally 55864 [followed by my address botched with caps]
Subject: Pa tro nsFee lHap pyToHa veSeenCaps ulesOutl et

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5GPQVH5QIDEJXQ4V4SV5P7YKWM/blog/articles/196430/
 

Aseasy asaboo k andnoton lytellyoufif tyorsi xt yth ingsthat sgo ingto happ entoyou bu tfif tyor.

Oden

I got fed up and started using MailWasher today (free version.)  It appears to be heuristic; it learns what spam looks like.  If that's the case, it's cheaper than Postini and far superior.  We shall see.

Meanwhile I discovered the source of these awful emails.  It's Yahoo!  Anyone with a Yahoo address is just asking for spam.  Yes, it's possible to change your Yahoo settings to minimize who can see your address but why bother?  Just cancel your Yahoo account.  Yahoo is just another giant corporation that cannot or will not fix anything.

How to cancel a Yahoo account.  Google to the rescue!  

Hey, Google took my suggestion!

Well, maybe they started before I made the suggestion last month, but "Google is giving users the ability to block sites that annoy them from ever showing up again in their search results, via a new link next to search results," to quote wired.com.  Click the title of this entry to read the Wired article.

It's supposed to be available yesterday and today on English-language sites.  I just checked and couldn't find anything new. I really, really, really want to block results on huffing-puffing post!  Even their headlines annoy me.

The Intelligence Officer's Bookshelf

While researching Brian Wynne Garfield's body of work, I ran across this unusual web site.  I suppose it's not surprising that professionals read books related to their specialty, but I do find it amusing that the CIA would make the reading list public.

Stumbleupon

Stumpleupon.com, previously sold to eBay for $75 million, has been repurchased by its original owners for an undisclosed sum. See bits.blog.nytimes for details. I hope that it will regain the original promise that it showed.

If you are not familiar with stumpleupon, I highly recommend it.  It's free and, for the moment, ad free. You sign up with a short questionnaire covering your interests. It then guides you into stumbling upon Internet sites that appeal to you. Thereafter you can rate each site with thumbs up or down to improve the accuracy of your future finds.

Take a look and report back on the most interesting pages that you stumble upon.

Al Gore Admits Ethanol Bill Was An Error

Energy: Former Vice President Al Gore admitted Monday that his pivotal 1994 Senate vote for ethanol subsidies was bad policy but good politics. That says a lot about the reality of environmentalism in government.
As the ethanol tax credit comes up for renewal in Congress on Dec. 31, it's worth noting it only came about because the vice president cast the decisive 51st vote in favor of it in 1994.
At the time, he packaged it as a big move to preserve the environment in a market-friendly, sustainable manner, and for years defended his vote because it was supposedly good for us.
"The more we can make this home-grown fuel a successful, widely-used product, the better-off our farmers and our environment will be," he recounted in 1998.
Now the real story emerges. On Monday he matter-of-factly told a bankers group in Greece it was actually about helping himself.
"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president," the former vice president said.

See the original article for the estimates of what this has cost taxpayers and people who depend on corn for nourishment.