[PLUG] MSN SideGuide

kurt braget joehaircut at gmail.com
Mon Jan 21 13:11:41 UTC 2008


Anybody else find "MSN SideGuide" creepy?

I hate how it hogs my screen real-estate. Reminds me of why I stopped
watching TV a long time ago... all the ads, and flashing BS. It really
bothers my Metro-Fi experience. I get the feeling it could potentially be
intrusive, but I don't know much about it so it's probably a bit of
paranoia. Still, very annoying.

According to this press release, *"MetroFi will replace its existing banner
ads, sponsor logos and paid search features with MSN SideGuide for users
with Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems."* That is definitely
not the case: I'm running Vista and XP and I get ads on both the browser
window and the "SideGuide". It's good that non-windows users don't have to
deal with SideGuide, but if they do actually phase out the browser-based ads
for windows users, then the non-windows users will be stuck with
browser-based ads. I sat and stared at the ads for a while just to see if
anything was Portland specific, and didn't see anything. I find that kind of
hard to believe since Portland paid for it. I wonder who chooses or filters
out the content displayed in the SideGuide? Probably some jerkoff, but
that's just a guess.

Another thing I read from MSN was "The (Metro-Fi) network will be coupled
with a suite of Internet services designed by Microsoft to help consumers
find locally relevant information." I'm not really seeing that. But I did
see and interesting articles about Beyonce's new album, and how cool George
Bush is.



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