tomgrom.com

I’ve generally been a fan of ad-blocking, but after reading this I’m going to have to re-examine my behavior.  At the very least, I’m now showing ads when I’m on arstechnica.com.

It’s fine if a site chooses static display ads, but for every one of those there are dozens that serve popups, flashy junk, or loud audio as a part of their advertising.

That kind of stuff I will not tolerate, if I have the means to avoid it.

[via Lots and Lots of Bloggers]

It seems as though I sign up for one or two new online accounts each week, checking out various services to see if they’re worth the trouble.

Needless to say, only a fraction of these become keepers.  Even though I use disposable email addresses to keep the spam level down, I don’t want to keep active accounts on a bunch of sites I don’t use.

Delete Your Account shows you how to remove accounts from many popular sites, and I hope they keep going with it (the latest entries date back to last July, so I’m crossing my fingers).

[via Lifehacker]

It’s been difficult for me to grasp what’s been going on with Google’s free online digital library, now that they’ve drafted a complex settlement with publishers.

I liked it a lot more when they simply insisted that what they were doing was fair use, so back off and let them do their thing (technically, they still assert this).

Instead we’re dealing with a new system of access to written material that bears no semblance to a traditional library in form, function, or freedom.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the promise of Google Books.  I just don’t think the precedent their settlement creates is quite the bargain it might first seem to be.

Lawrence Lessig explains the whole deal much better than I could in this article, and provides a useful context to the ongoing drama.  A long-ish read, but well worth the effort.

[via BoingBoing]

It seems like I share all too much bad news on the Copyright and Fair Use front, so it’s with great pleasure that I read of Stephanie Lenz’ victory over Universal Music Group.

My hope is that this will signal a trend toward less abuse of the DMCA, but I’m not holding my breath.

If you’re an audiophile, you probably prefer downloading music that’s “lossless”, meaning no audio data has been dropped to reduce file sizes.

If you’re not, you probably use the ubiquitous MP3 format, which manages to to an excellent job at squashing audio files down to size, but is “lossy” — it removes data from the source.

Trusted Reviews tested to see if people could really tell the difference, and the result will surprise some.

[via /., who warns of many ads and such on this page]

Erica Sandberg reveals that what we do online can actually effect our credit.

Creditors look at who we are connected to, what we post, and how we conduct ourselves when determining how much of a risk we are — making it yet another reason why we need to be aware of what we share with the online world.

[via Consumerist]

Ahh.  Two of my favorite web flavors, together again.

Lifehacker shows us how to be a Gmail ninja, and believe me, there’s a lot of cool stuff packed in there.  If you’re a Gmail user and like power tools, you’ll find everything you need to take the best webmail service to the next level in this article.