Conspiracy of context sensitive advertising

I think I’ve uncovered another conspiracy by Google, particularly with their context sensitive advertising service AdSense. It’s not a bad conspiracy – as far as I am concerned, they are trying to do a good thing. But still, it’s a mean way to go about it.

A reader of this blog left a comment to one of my earlier posts about media brain wash, a story about Dell notebook exploding at some conference. Jon agreed with me that this story was a pure media hype. In his comment he said exactly this:

Now it won’t be long before some terrorist hops on a plane with Dell laptop batteries strapped all over his body. I agree, this story is media hype.

In order for me not to miss any comments, and to respond faster to my readers, the moment any of your post a comment, I get an email notification. As you know, recently I moved all my email affairs to Google’s mail service GMail. Now, Google uses its own AdSense service to show ads to people while they are reading their emails. The content of the email is used to determine which related ads should be shown.

GMail adsense When I openned a notification email with Jon’s comment I was shown four ads on the right. All four ad links were about notebooks. Two links were generic, but two others featured a brand. And although the brand in the content of the email was Dell, both branded ads were about IBM.

Now, you might think that this is just a coinsidence. But for two links out of four? I don’t think so. What is more probable is that Google undestood that Dell brand was used in connection with terrorism and tried to substitute that for IBM. Probably that was an attempt to sell non-explosive items to terrorists. Thanks Google, but no thanks.

NOTE (this note should have been written a very small font, but since noone will read so far down, I’ll leave it as it is): please, don’t take this entry seriously. I’m just messing with you.

Carlton Draught – The Big Ad

I don’t care that much for television. Even less I care for advertisements. And even les than that I care about advertisement on television. You can easily say that I don’t care about them at all.

But that didn’t stop me from seeing one of the funniest things that I’ve seen on TV ever – The Big Ad for Carlton Draught (It doesn’t look that as good in the tiny window as it does on a large TV screen, but at least you’ll have an idea of what I am talking about here.). That was something!

It turns out I am by far not alone. A lot of people enjoyed it. There is even a Wikipedia page for it.

(singing)It’s a big add. Expensive ad! …

XA-XA-XA

In my slow advance towards The World Domination, I have started another blog.

XA-XA-XA.com

For the time being, this is Russian-only website with jokes and funny stories. Some of you may know that I’ve been doing this for some time already – but I was posting to my LiveJournal diary.

I don’t think that it is very appropriate, although I appreciate the audience. Hence – the XA-XA-XA.com.

The design and functionality of the site are very simplistic at the moment and very close to default installation. I am not going to do a lot of changes in that regard. Not just yet at least. I’ll find a better theme and I will switch the interface to Russian, but I am not planning anything more than that for the time being.

Anyway, please welcome the new site and let me know what you think.

Billing. It’s a serious matter.

Now this one is simply great.

I was reading through the funny IRC quotes at Bash.Org.Ru, which is a Russian analogue of Bash.org, when I came across the quote #4741.

Here is a rough translation for you:

Billing

Dear customers! For the last three days we had a technical problem and your used Internet traffic wasn’t calculated properly. We kindly ask you to calculate the approximate amount of traffic that you used during this period and pay cash accordingly in our office. With best regards, company management. http://isp.kz/

I smiled and almost went away. But before I did so, I noticed a small post-scriptum – it was a moderatorial note from bash.org.ru that confirmed that this message was actually posted to the official website of the provider.

So, I rushed to check it out and, indeed, it was still there.

I was laughing so hard that I almost woke up Olga and Maxim. I mean how stupid and naive that is – asking your customers to pay based on their own calculations? What are they counting at? Good will? Honesty? Or maybe they just have an excellent sense of humor. If so, they should have an update of some sort published shortly.

After all, those who thought tha Borat (.kz stands for Kazakhstan, as does Borat) was an exhageration are wrong. He is by far not. No.

The Dilbert Blog. Again.

There is much to learn about good writing. And by learning one could improve greatly. But whatever you do – you’ll never even come close to people who have talent. Talant can be recognized from a mile away. Scott Adams of the Dilbert fame has talant. And, although, he is mostly popular for his comics cartoonist talant, I have to say that I enjoy his writing equally or even more.

Here are a couple of examples for you to enjoy.

In his Thanksgiving post he mentions how he felt after an recent operation:

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know that last week was about as pleasant for me as (pick one):

a. using a rabid porcupine to loofah.

b. having a head that looks exactly like a soccer ball and living in Brazil.

c. being Darth Vader about an hour before he gets the helmet.

In another post he talks about how difficult it was, until recently, to find a good sitting place in Mongolia:

In the old days, this restlessness probably caused the Mongols to invade neighboring countries looking for a warm, dry spot to relax and put their feet up. It’s a little known fact that the name Ghengis Khan means “I’m serious man, I need a chair.” But these days, thanks to IKEA, the Mongolians no longer need to stun a yak to find a seat that won’t move.

And his post on interrogation techniques is just brilliant:

It occurred to me recently after having surgery for my deviated septum that lots of Al Qaeda members must need that same procedure. When Amnesty International finds out that we gave free medical care to prisoners, that won’t sound so bad. And yet I can tell you from my own experience that by the second day I would have given up the missile launch codes to make the pain stop. And if I didn’t know the codes I would be willing to torture someone who did until I got them.

Go read his blog. It’s one of the best on the web. Seriously!