Adblock and RSS
I use Firefox (which I shouldn’t even have to recommend to you) … and I have an extension called Adblock. I think Firefox has an ad blocking featuring (or more simply, and image blocking feature) built in (cause it rocks). However, Adblock allows you to block not only images, but Flash movies (cause I don’t really want to shoot Brad Pitt, or punch a monkey, or even look at any stupid moving ads). It takes time to block the images and Flash animations, but with liberal use of the “*” you can make short work of most advertising servers. Often you can even make it so you still see ads you want to see. So, that’s my first tip…
The second tip is, well, not so much a tip… but a behavioral observation. I am more than happy to look at ads in people’s RSS feeds. As long as the ads don’t flash at me or move around, I really could care less. I consider that a great way to support the people I enjoy reading. In my recent reading there has been quite some fervor over whether people should put full text entries in their RSS feeds, or whether they should stick to summaries. I am a full-on proponent of full text. I have been known to unsubscribe from feeds that only have summaries (not all of them, like Scoble, but some). Really, there are 2 reasons that make sense as to why a publisher would only have summary feeds. 1) Advertising revenue, and 2) getting people to look at other posts on the site (in attempt to make more advertising revenue) Frankly, I’d rather have ads in my RSS feeds than partial posts or summaries. I put that in bold so hopefully someone will notice. Not likely, but a man can dream (in fact, a man must dream, according to Brian Tracy)
Of course, the issue of “full posts with ads vs. summary posts with no ads” pales in comparison to ads as posts. Partial or summary posts don’t make me anywhere near as mad as feeds that mislead my BlogLines account into telling me there are new posts when, in fact, there is merely an advertisement waiting for me. I was excited to subscribe to Computer World’s RSS feeds until after about 2 weeks I’d consistently seen more posts starting with “Partner:” than actual posts with content. It goes without saying.
Everybody’s writing a novel + Dave Ramsey + Give Me The Rock + Affirmations anyone?
