Ryan Block » advertising

Leica’s pixel dog

Ryan Block — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:03:35 +0000

If I had a dog, it would absolutely have to be this breed. [Via Core 77 and Comunicadores]

“Annoying habits” ad irony

Ryan Block — Mon, 26 May 2008 03:57:01 +0000

You know, if you’re going to do a feature called “The 10 Most Annoying Habits of Technology Companies”, you’d do best to vet your own site first — especially the page dedicated to annoying advertising.

Although to be fair, they do disclaim being guilty of the same, and I’m sure the site’s editorial staff doesn’t approve of that kind of advertising nor want it on the site. Trust me, I understand as well as any editor that the people making the content don’t always have much or any say in how their property advertises — but that’s both a double-edged sword and a conversation for another time.

Oh, so that’s why Facebook Beacon is so evil

Ryan Block — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 22:56:41 +0000

Logged into Facebook (yeah, I finally started an account a couple of months back to watch the Engadget stuff on there) and saw this. Kind of a duh moment because I followed the whole Beacon controversy and all, but I’ve never used Facebook enough to notice how much of a completely seamless, fantastically engineered, and revolting invasion of privacy Beacon is. I also didn’t realize they’re referring to these Beacon snippets as “stories,” which is a really finessed way of phrasing the reality of the “feature”: information about my personal life that I never explicitly gave you or your partners permission to share or syndicate.

Oh yeah, and Merry Christmas!