Firefox: AdBlock Video is a simple Firefox extension that eill play your videos commercial-free. More »
The great (and sometimes annoying) thing about the internet is that most web services attempt to tailor their ads to you. Reader Defunctfrenzy, though, found that he actually got better ads by switching his gender in his account settings. More »
Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Add-Art is a unique advertisement-blocking solution for Firefox. Instead of simply deleting ads from the page, it replaces them with art by featured artists.The open-source project was inspired by the popularity of ad-blocking Firefox extensions—Adblock Plus, the perennial Lifehacker favorite, is downloaded over 250,000 times a week—and a desire to put all those blocked pitches to good use. Artists are selected by a team of curators to have their work displayed, and the roster is rotated every two weeks. An interesting twist to the project is that the artists themselves can target sites with their artwork—it’ll be up to you to decide why there are photographs of unicorns wearing party hats during your daily reading of the New York Times. Add-Art won’t be too tempting to those who ad-block to streamline for speed or memory use, but for those tired of seeing “ONE WEIGHT LOSS RULE” and the like might just enjoy the web a bit more. Add-Art is free, works wherever Firefox does. Add-Art [via Download Squad]
Minors experience significantly fewer ads online than the elderly in a measure of web page “clutter,” according to a recent report from Nielsen Online. Web surfers under 17 saw the least screen real estate given over to advertising, while those over 65 saw the most. And the more “niche” a site’s appeal, the more clutter generally. Of course, dedicated adbusters can use software like BFilter or reconfigure your router to block ads for the whole family. At what point does the ad volume or tone overwhelm the value of the content or service for you?
One of the biggest reasons most Windows users are sticking with Firefox over Google Chrome is its extensibility—and the most popular Firefox extension by far among Lifehacker readers is Adblock Plus. If annoying web site advertisements are the only thing holding you back from using Chrome, a user at the Geekzone forums explains how to block ‘em without an extension. In short, you use the free Privoxy web proxy software which blocks web sites serving ads, and configure Google Chrome to use the proxy. Here’s how to do it.
