Archive for October, 2008

The three internet giants Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google are joining together by agreeing to a common set of principles concerning conducting business with nations that restrict free speech and expression. They are basically trying to protect people’s information overseas with oppressive governments. I was interested to learn that the Human Rights First and Committee to Protect Journalists and nonprofits the Center for Democracy and Technology and Business for Social Responsibility took part in the formation of this humbly crafted entity known as the Global Network Initiative. What I found troubling was the lack of specific implications and obligations pertaining to these companies. Some other points of interest are the restrictions on citizenship and how that plays into this decision making. I would also like to hear the CCIPS chime in.

At least one human rights organization that didn’t sign onto the plan said it doesn’t go far enough. “More serious questions have to be asked about these company’s legal obligations,” said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA. For instance, he said he would have liked the document to address whether Internet companies are violating U.S. or international laws by complying with requests from certain governments.

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I hope I’m not the only one who consistently experiences this annoying behavior when browsing specific web sites. I have been able to reproduce the issue both at home and at work, so I doubt I’m the only one.

Update
Kev (below) has identified that this is caused by a conflict with firefox. Sounds logical. Switching to version 1.2.0b4 or disabling firefox reportedly fixes the problem.

The Issue:
When browsing a site with one of Doubleclick‘s ads on it, sometimes the ad will take over the whole page (likely due to malformed HTML in the iframe or some type of javascript error), effectively rendering the page useless. The back button doesn’t work because it just keeps taking over the page when you press ‘Back’. I usually end up just closing the tab and forgetting about it. That being said, I imagine other annoyed users are doing the same. This behavior is occurring across multiple very large sites (list below). It makes me wonder if these publishers are aware of potential dollars they are wasting by compromising the user experience in such a big way.

Over the past month, I have taken screenshots of this issue across various sites. It could be a conflict with a FireFox plugin (although I only use Web Developer Plugin and Firebug), but that’s unlikely. This issue seems to be caused by firebug. This issue has been recorded in firefox 2 and 3. By looking at the status bar text which reads something like ‘Transferring data from m0.2mdn.net’ or ‘Read m1.2mdn.net’, and by a quick glance at the source of each of these broken pages, I can quickly conclude that the problem lies somewhere within Doubleclick’s ad code.

yelp, YouTube, Gizmodo, and LinkedIn have all been captured with this problem.

I also wonder if Doubleclick is aware of this issue. They deal with very large advertisers and I can’t imagine something like this going unnoticed for too long.

Has anyone else seen this bug while browsing popular web sites?

I was recently considering canceling my Netflix account as I have noticed a decrease in return time and lack of good movies to watch instantly. I love watching a movie right before bed on my 22″ Samsung monitor, but lately I’ve been noticing that there just isn’t anything to watch except documentaries and lame TV series’. The delay in movie return time (supposed to be 1 day first class, but it’s repeatedly taken 2-3 days for a few months) probably isn’t their fault anyway – it’s probably USPS that is dropping the ball on that one. I found out today that Netflix has now partnered with Starz Entertainment, bringing a whole new set of quality movies into the ‘Watch Instantly’ realm.

Not only does this deal add another 2,500 or so movies to Netflix’s existing streaming library of roughly 12,000 films and TV shows, but it also adds some sorely-need, recent A-list titles, such as No Country for Old Men, Superbad, and Spiderman 3. Most of the movies are older titles and classics, but they represent a noticeable step up from the rather non-Hollywood-based titles that have been the main fodder on Netflix’s Watch Instantly feature until now.

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I guess I’ll stick around for another month and see what happens. Vietnam war flicks, here I come!