Jul 14, 2008 07:06 PM
1941 Views
(Updated Jul 15, 2008 12:29 AM)
I absolutely detest any form of advertising other than print. Whether it's TV-where every freakin 10 minutes your program or movie gets interrupted by the same lame moronic ads targeted at the unwashed janta at 10 times the volume of the normal show- or useless online ads, blinking, flashing banners, pop up windows and what not.(The rest of the online world-yahoo, msn etc- ditched popup windows after surveys told em that users hated them)
Yes, Rediff and Indiatimes, I'm looking at you!! 2 of the most lousy websites ever made, just infested with ads-each article split across 10 pages of epilepsy inducing flash ads and so on. Way back in 2003, I discovered this lovely little piece of software- AdMuncher. It's just about 100kb in size and sits quietly in your system tray as a cow head icon.
It works as a transparent filter-ie you don't have to change your browser settings or anything. The software parses outgoing web requests for ad related URLs and blocks them from being retrieved. There is a default list of filters that gets auto updated. In addition, you can specify your own filters or exception rules.
It goes without saying that you should have some basic knowledge of how web requests work. For example, an URL for an ad might say ' http://www.site.com/click?adbanner&id=12345' Just copy the URL and add it with a wildcard- ie ' http://www.site.com/click?adbanner&id=*' so that all future ads from that site will be blocked irrespective of the exact URL.
By some trial and error, you will be able to understand how to do it; the software documentation also explains this. By default it filters IE, if you want to, you can even add your messenger programs to block them from showing ads. The blocked ads on pages are replaced with a discreet text message -'Ad Munched' and the cow icon animates each time it munches an ad.
There are a few extras also provided-an option to anonymize your browsing by using multiple proxy server; however this slows down your browsing considerably and is only for extreme paranoiacs. A bandwidth counter tells you the number of ads blocked and approximate bandwidth saved.
For me right now it shows over 200, 000 ads blocked and about 1.5 GB bandwidth saved. Of course there's no scientific justification for these stats. There is also a tool to remove redirects from links. Some sites, eg google images, display results like this.
When you click a link, the request goes back to google before going on to the target link. This option lets you remove such redirects and save time. Ad Muncher takes some work to setup, but once it's done you will have a completely ad free experience. If you're the kind who will never purchase anything online by clicking on an ad, or surf international websites and are frustrated by looking at popup ads for products you can't buy-this is for you.
Not to mention online safety- many ad servers serve up porn ads and spyware in addition to being a nuisance. So ad muncher also saves you embarrassment and somewhat safeguards your PC from inadvertent spyware. Firefox users might point to the free Adblock Plus extension that's available-but in my experience Admuncher is still superior. All activity is logged, so you can see what exactly was blocked or fetched, in various categories and take action accordingly. You can also password protect the software so that others can't disable it or change settings. All in all-this is the best $29 Australian that I've spent.
