Google, Ads and opt-out

By Henning Eiben in Internet 0 Comment

Since Google is putting a new Privacy Policy in place by 1st of march I took a more close look at the new policies.

I noticed, that Google is gathering quite some information about what kind of websites I’m visiting. I already noticed this, because recently I was surfing the web on my tablet researching some products and then a while later google would only show me this kind of products on ads. I was at first quite suprised, that Google as well as other sites only had ads for certain products, especially this kind of products I was recently interessted in. I then figured, that this is because of some ad-cookies that where stored on my tablet.

Well, looking at Googles new policies I noticed, that I could deactivate Googles gathering of products and using this information to personalize ads. This can be done via Googles-Settings page.

I also noted, that Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) is offering an opt-out mechanism for various ad-plattforms. So I did opt-out on all my devices from Google as well as NAI.

Besides opt-out I still use plugins such as AdBlock for Google or AdBlock Plus for Firefox. But at least for my tablet and my phone I don’t have such plugins, and I thing opt-out is a valid alternative.

Live writing with unsafe certificates

By Henning Eiben in Internet 0 Comment

Once in a while you might not have a 100% safe certificate, and you don’t want to go through the hassle of getting a 100% certificate just for testing purpose.

So I wanted to test my new blog, but I already had everything setup to connect via SSL only. This unfortunatly screwed Windows Live Writer, because I couldn’t connect.

Until I figured, that you can supply commandline parameters to WindowsLiveWriter.exe, such as /allowunsafecertificates … so hello live writing!

Live Writer is language sensitive

By Henning Eiben in General, Internet 0 Comment

So I though I take a look at Windows Live Writer (since it’s called Essentials it sound as you gotta have some). But vanilla is just not my style I immediately looked at the Live Writer Gallery.

But just to figure that there are no plugins available?! I just couldn’t believe my eyes!!

OK – so switching the language-preference of my browser from german to english helped a lot – seems like Microsoft doesn’t want them germans to get any plugins 🙁

Some IE-bashing

By Henning Eiben in Internet 0 Comment

OK, so I moved to the next century of browsing – at least that’s what I believed to be my next stop.

To get there, I decided to advance to IE8 – nevertheless of what’s going to happen to my computer … So installing is no pain so far.

Then comes the reboot and the first start of IE8 – and I’m greeted with a nice and warm:

Faulting application iexplore.exe, version 8.0.6001.18702, faulting module urlmon.dll, version 8.0.6001.18702, fault address 0x0003e819.

When this doesn’t make you feel welcome, warm and cosi – I don’t know what!

OK – so what’s next? Trying to start the browser without any addons … this seems to work. But hey, who wanna browse the web naked? There’s no survival without addons!

So trying to deactive them addons one-by-one – a little tedious – but … no success going that road.

After a short phase of nervous breakdown – there was another idea. So i fiddled with the IE settings, and after deactivating the startpage (which pointed to my local intranet) at least IE would start-up without any further complaint. But accessing any internal page would just bring back those screes of fault.

So I figured, that I hat one site in two security zones. After removing all sites from the zones that problem was kinda solved – except that I couldn’t be authenticated by my intranet anymore. And for some strange reason I could not remove one final entry from the trusted zone.

This was then more or lees known territory – just open up regedit and move to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\Domains and adjust the resisting site.

Welcome happy IE 8 surfing 🙂

The next level of FireFox

By Henning Eiben in Internet, Software 0 Comment

So I upgraded recently to the current beta of FireFox (which makes this FireFox 3.1 beta2). Everythings looks really cool, except that you will have to tweak your profile a little to get all the nice extensions working, which are not yeat aware of FF 3.1.

This is just like the move to FF 3.0 … so I did what I already knew about twiggeling FF for extensions.

But still one extensions is just not “behaiving”. That is the Tab Mix Plus extension 0.3.7.3. But fortunatly the new dev-build 0.3.7.4 fixes this issue.

YSlow?

By Henning Eiben in Internet, Programming 0 Comment

This is quite a common question – YSlow? So this nifty Firefox plugin can help to analyze how to improve the client/user experience of web-applications. It acutally integrates into Firebug and gives you some hints on what you might want to consider to improve your site.

Although this is nothing complete new, but these are things we might tend to forget from time to time.