I tried to access Twitter on the Freefi/Jiwire network here at the Oakland Airport, and kept getting weird page refreshes from the bar at the top of the screen that loads banner ads, a small and a 728×90. The thing that sucks though is that at least half the large ads and all the small ads seem to be PSAs or house ads. This is a common issue with high-frequency websites, but then again, this is not an unplanned-for situation with a service like this. Also the PSAs are interspersed with paying ads which leads me to believe that their ad network rotation is horribly misconfigured at best.

Worse – a lot of sites just won’t load – like the twitter problems above – and amazon.com is inaccessible probably because of javascript conflicts with the shitty browser bar. The pop up window for inserting images into wordpress is also broken by it.

I’ve written about this before about this service here. I would much rather pay than deal with this crap, especially for public service ads that are making nobody any money. I wonder how last this company will last with this kind of revenue model. It looks like Collective Media is providing some of the underlying advertising.

I checked out Freefi’s twitter page which hasn’t been updated since November 2009. They are apparently located in “Wooldland Hills, CA” [sic]. I’m going to tweet this post to Freefi.com and their 12 followers, and encourage them to respond , once I can get onto twitter from my blackberry of course.

Just a funny observation when reading this good Newsweek article about privacy, is that there are a lot of behavioral targeting pixels getting fired on that self-same page, including AudienceScience, Quantcast, and Doubleclick. Such is the world we live in:

http://pix04.revsci.net/B09806/b3/0/3/0902121/642641728.js?D=DM_LOC%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.newsweek.com
http://pix04.revsci.net/B09806/b3/0/3/0902121/997357272.js?D=DM_LOC%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.newsweek.com
http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel;r=1520162946;fpan=0;fpa=P0-2043871114-1266555449664;ns=0;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Fid%2F233773;ref=;ce=1;je=1;sr=1440x900x32;dg=P9940-W-MS-7;dst=1;et=1266555480477;tzo=480;a=p-1axiNKelAV3F-;labels=Business_Tech
http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel;r=1991808241;fpan=1;fpa=P0-2043871114-1266555449664;ns=0;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Fid%2F233773;ref=;ce=1;je=1;sr=1440x900x32;dg=P9940-W-MS-7;dst=1;et=1266555449664;tzo=480;a=p-1axiNKelAV3F-;labels=Business_Tech
http://core.insightexpressai.com/adServer/adServerESI.aspx?bannerID=155498&siteID=N2958.Newsweek&creativeID=35286945
http://core.insightexpressai.com/adServer/adServerESI.aspx?bannerID=157152
http://core.insightexpressai.com/adServer/GetInvite2.aspx?esi=true&bannerID=157152&referer=www.newsweek.com
http://core.insightexpressai.com/adserver/showInvite.aspx?ImageOnly=true&bannerID=157152&esi=true
http://ads.revsci.net/adserver/ako?activate&csid=B09806&ko=2010_2_18__0
http://ads.revsci.net/adserver/ako?activate&csid=B09806&ko=2010_2_18__1
http://b.scorecardresearch.com/b?c1=2&c2=6972086&rn=0.11742583378751214&c7=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Fid%2F233773&c3=&c4=&c5=&c6=&c10=&c15=&c16=&c8=Lyons%3A%20How%20Google%20%26%20Facebook%20Violate%20Your%20Privacy%20-%20Newsweek.com&c9=&cv=1.7
http://b.scorecardresearch.com/b?c1=2&c2=6972086&rn=0.6740785767349728&c7=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Fid%2F233773&c3=&c4=&c5=&c6=&c10=&c15=&c16=&c8=Lyons%3A%20How%20Google%20%26%20Facebook%20Violate%20Your%20Privacy%20-%20Newsweek.com&c9=&cv=1.7
http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js
http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js
http://b.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=8&c2=6035585&c3=91900631&c4=autotag&c6=00000126655545776310180000106049048050
http://b.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=8&c2=6035585&c3=91900631&c4=autotag&c6=00000126655548607223311000000106054051
http://b.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=8&c2=6035585&c3=92068662&c4=autotag&c6=00000126655545933629473000000106050057
http://b.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=8&c2=6035585&c3=92068662&c4=autotag&c6=00000126655548713221232000000106053050
http://b.scorecardresearch.com/p2?c1=8&c2=6035585&c3=91900631&c4=autotag&c6=00000126655545776310180000106049048050
http://ad.doubleclick.net/activity;src=2163259;met=1;v=1;pid=45108152;aid=221548926;ko=0;cid=35286945;rid=35304763;rv=1;&timestamp=1266555475555;eid1=2;ecn1=0;etm1=2;eid2=12;ecn2=1;etm2=0;eid3=254307;ecn3=1;etm3=0;eid4=11;ecn4=1;etm4=0;eid5=254300;ecn5=1;etm5=0;

I’ve been seeing voicefive.com loading everywhere so wanted to see who this is — according to domaintools.com their nameservers are all .comscore.com – so it looks like this is another “unbranded” comscore domain. According to the voicefive.com website:

VoiceFive Networks is a leading global market research company that studies and reports on Internet trends and behavior. VoiceFive Networks is routinely commissioned to conduct research on numerous topics of concern to industry leaders in diverse fields, including travel, pharmaceuticals, and publishing.

The usual giveaways are their privacy policy address, and of course the nameservers. Then of course, the repetition of wording – if you do a google search you’ll see “a leading global market research company that studies and reports on Internet trends and behavior” also includes “Full Circle Studies” (http://www.fullcirclestudies.com) and their “ScorecardResearch … domain used by Full Circle Studies, Inc. to help with the collection of Internet web browsing data on specific websites that have enrolled in a broad market research effort to create reports on Internet behavior and trends.” We’ve seen b.scorecardresearch.com before which is the beaconing URL that comscore is using for reconciling its panel numbers with the higher site-measured figures.

My younger brother Ray has a very cool job – driving and writing about cars! Getting flown to car launches all over the place and getting paid to try out lots of different cars like Nissan GT-Rs, BMW Z4′s and all the rest… I must say it’s not half bad.