Friday, November 16, 2007

Third Post of the Day

My ambition is frightening me. Maybe I should take a nap.

I haven't heard anyone else mention this, so here goes:

On a lot of pages now, buried inside the text, are those little double-underlined-roll-over ad links. You open them by accident and then you have to click the "x" to close them. Whoever invented those things should be sentenced to 90 days in front of the all-infomercial channel, with nothing to eat except stale Cheezits and flat, lukewarm 7-Up.

Damn it all. Those things have got to be the most annoying interruptions to web surfing ever devised. I'm actually looking at the ads, though. I will not so much as mention a company that has an ad in that format. I will specifically look for ways to avoid buying products of services from those companies.

I can't really boycott the sites that have them, because they're ubiquitous. But you can bet that not a single company that uses those nasty things will ever have access to my disposable income.

I do the same thing with companies that have advertisements attached to the Sunday Comics. You can fold your ads up in the funnies, no problem. That's the American Way. But if you make me tear your ad off the sheet before I can read Pearls Before Swine, I will remember your company's name. And I will hate it.

On a happier note, I really like the ads that sit in the upper corner of a page with a little teaser text and graphics. When you deliberately roll over them, they give you the whole ad. When you roll off of them, the ad goes back in the corner very nicely. I've actually clicked through a few of those, just because they're well done and cool. If they were invented by the same guy as the others, maybe he can get only 85 days.

Seems like a good time for another cup of coffee.