In only a few hours I will be going under the knife. A specialist in oral surgery and dental medicine will be cutting into the gumline just above my canine, in order to cut out a small cyst hanging onto the root of the tooth. Before you eep though let me explain a few things. Cysts are actually not very uncommon around teeth. Frequently they are caused by blood being cutoff from the tooth, and causing some organic decay. Root Canals are the usual treatment of such Cysts, and as evident by how common the procedure is, quite easy to fix.
In my case, the tooth in question has already had a root canal. Normally then, the dentist, would just retreat the tooth (do another root canal) and fix the problem. Unfortunately, because it was a canine, I had a post put inside the tooth during the last root canal, in order to stabilize it and keep from losing the tooth. Here's where the problem set in. Although a post can be removed and a root canal performed, my canine has been deemed to integrated into the post to risk removing it (it'd probably destroy the tooth). Instead the doctor will go in above the tooth, and perform a kind of reverse root canal. The procedure itself should take about 20-40 minutes, and isn't considered dangerous. However, in order to do it, the dentist will still have to cut into live flesh, and then stitch it close again, ie, it becomes Surgery.
For the non-layman, Surgery is a bogey-man kind of word. The average person does not cut into themselves deep enough to draw blood daily, nor does the average person tie flesh back together after-wards. Although Surgery is so common place these days, with all the corrective procedures available, and the wonderful world of plastic surgery to alter one's appearance, Surgery itself still holds a residual charge of emotion.
Most of this emotion stems from the association people have between surgery and pain. Coupled with the fact that people dread anything to do with changing their body, and that until this last century, surgery had a very high rate of death, and you've created a very highly perceived source of danger. On the other hand, a lot of it is just perceived notions of association.
Why is association so powerful? The human mind is a very powerful tool, most of revolving around memory. Association is a big tool that memory uses in order to link similar things together in order for a person to complete thoughts and ideas. Thus in order to assure that a person, doesn't devolve in repetition, association between thoughts takes place at a more base level motivator. Take for example a dog. Common four legged animal, it generally like to explore and be active. When it comes across another dog that is larger and more angry then it, one usually leaves with a couple of scratches vowing never to return. Ie, to the Dog, pain = Big Dog = don't go near that area or dog again. In humans, its roughly the same way, the more real pain is, the more a person wants to avoid it, ie Surgery. Oddly enough, because the mind can be so screwed up, sometimes this doesn't always prove out. Course it more often then not does, as evident by drug addiction and the like.
The end result? Although Surgery is a powerful emotion motivator, you have to realize that it's not all that bad. Frequently surgery is a needful tool to make sure you don't have a longer pain from something you refuse to treat. That is, get done with the sharper pain immediate, and spare the longer more nerve racking pain from occurring.
Thursday, May 01, 2003
Yes, I Really Want my Work Interuppted
Have you heard the old adage, "Give them an inch, and they'll take a mile?" Well, according to AdAge, "Online advertising software vendor Unicast is introducing a new kind of Internet ad that doesn't just pop up over a portion of the browser but rather fills the entire screen of the computer user." An Ad that takes up the whole screen of your computer, for at least 15 seconds, when you click on a link between parts of a story? Can AD's get anymore intrusive?
What can I recall that is wrong about this type of ad, let me recount the ways.
First off, haven't these people been watching the huge customer service backlash on AOL over pop-up ADS?. [Unicast promotional materials suggest the new format will enable advertisers to reach their audiences "with the same impact" as TV.] Um, dude, ever wonder why Tivo's, fast forward buttons on VCR's, skip buttons on DVD's, etc, became so popular? In general, ads on Television are considered a nuisance, and most people have a tendency to channel surf past these commercials, or frankly use them for snack or bathroom breaks. Numbers wise, ads on television are barely break even propositions except that good research can properly target a correct audience and catch a fraction of their attentions. The web however is less homogenized and thus loses some of that target capability.
Besides a person's computer is theirs to control, not yours. Unlike with television, you do not have inherent control over the channel content. A computer desktop is made of a couple of dozen different channels, only one of which you might control at any given time, to control more means your are monopolizing a device, that is designed not to be monopolized. You should not be able to block someone from being able to do anything but look at your ad, even if it is just for 15 seconds. If you want to do that, direct your capability to something like an XBox.
Now if you want some good proof that what your suggesting is a really bad idea, go research college computer culture at MIT and NCSU from a decade ago. Both places had in place (and there are probably others), a rudimentary instant messaging program called Zephyrs. Zephyrs were the basis for AOL's IM, ICQ, and all the other IM programs on the market now. Zephyrs were an in-house computer to computer instant messenger. They did not save, nor store messages. You had to be logged in to use them, and they were easily direct-able by email address directions.
However, Zephyrs, unlike later IM programs, were an open ended GUI system based on Unix gui(s). As such, when a message came through, all it did was open a new window, and put the pre-formatted message in it, and put it up on a person's desktop. The problem was, that new users quickly figured out, that by either upping the font, or filling the message with lots of text, could make the window you receive so large, it'd block your entire screen and interrupt whatever you were doing. Intrusive, yes, very much so. These early screen cobbling messages quickly became known as Zephyr Bombs, or Zephyr Nukes, because as long as you had Zephyr program running, anyone who knew where you were, could interrupt your work.
Admittedly, these weren't ads, but instead were deliberate attacks on people through a less then option-able client. The point however is similar enough. People will not like having their screen taken over. Initially people won't care about it of course, but given time, such a drastic intrusion will have deterious effects on website advertisement as many seek out un-aded sites, or at the very least, smarter, less intrusive AD sites.
One further note for the brains behind this. Although you've already set it up so that the ad doesn't run until its fully loaded, think about modem users downloading 300k every time the click a new link. You are eating their bandwidth up as well, and causing them to lose time that they might just use to actually want to read about your product. Also note, that even if it doesn't run, by the current implementation your suggesting, it's still going to pause the link access, until its closed, so it's going to be longer then 15 seconds until a person can access that next link that your ad is locked to.
What can I recall that is wrong about this type of ad, let me recount the ways.
First off, haven't these people been watching the huge customer service backlash on AOL over pop-up ADS?. [Unicast promotional materials suggest the new format will enable advertisers to reach their audiences "with the same impact" as TV.] Um, dude, ever wonder why Tivo's, fast forward buttons on VCR's, skip buttons on DVD's, etc, became so popular? In general, ads on Television are considered a nuisance, and most people have a tendency to channel surf past these commercials, or frankly use them for snack or bathroom breaks. Numbers wise, ads on television are barely break even propositions except that good research can properly target a correct audience and catch a fraction of their attentions. The web however is less homogenized and thus loses some of that target capability.
Besides a person's computer is theirs to control, not yours. Unlike with television, you do not have inherent control over the channel content. A computer desktop is made of a couple of dozen different channels, only one of which you might control at any given time, to control more means your are monopolizing a device, that is designed not to be monopolized. You should not be able to block someone from being able to do anything but look at your ad, even if it is just for 15 seconds. If you want to do that, direct your capability to something like an XBox.
Now if you want some good proof that what your suggesting is a really bad idea, go research college computer culture at MIT and NCSU from a decade ago. Both places had in place (and there are probably others), a rudimentary instant messaging program called Zephyrs. Zephyrs were the basis for AOL's IM, ICQ, and all the other IM programs on the market now. Zephyrs were an in-house computer to computer instant messenger. They did not save, nor store messages. You had to be logged in to use them, and they were easily direct-able by email address directions.
However, Zephyrs, unlike later IM programs, were an open ended GUI system based on Unix gui(s). As such, when a message came through, all it did was open a new window, and put the pre-formatted message in it, and put it up on a person's desktop. The problem was, that new users quickly figured out, that by either upping the font, or filling the message with lots of text, could make the window you receive so large, it'd block your entire screen and interrupt whatever you were doing. Intrusive, yes, very much so. These early screen cobbling messages quickly became known as Zephyr Bombs, or Zephyr Nukes, because as long as you had Zephyr program running, anyone who knew where you were, could interrupt your work.
Admittedly, these weren't ads, but instead were deliberate attacks on people through a less then option-able client. The point however is similar enough. People will not like having their screen taken over. Initially people won't care about it of course, but given time, such a drastic intrusion will have deterious effects on website advertisement as many seek out un-aded sites, or at the very least, smarter, less intrusive AD sites.
One further note for the brains behind this. Although you've already set it up so that the ad doesn't run until its fully loaded, think about modem users downloading 300k every time the click a new link. You are eating their bandwidth up as well, and causing them to lose time that they might just use to actually want to read about your product. Also note, that even if it doesn't run, by the current implementation your suggesting, it's still going to pause the link access, until its closed, so it's going to be longer then 15 seconds until a person can access that next link that your ad is locked to.
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