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Friday, November 14, 2008

Haven't We Evolved Beyond Pop-up Ads?

I regularly use the Merriam-Webster online dictionary to look up words. It's a wonderful resource and I'm glad they made it available on line.

It's also incredibly annoying. I don't mind ads and I'm fine with plastering them all around the site, but for the love of Pete, why do they still use the pop-up ads? Argh! Every time I look up a word, I get another window bouncing onto my screen advertising this or that. Stop it! Go away! It makes looking up a word take twice as long.

If you've got a dictionary resource that doesn't do this, please let me know.

Human evolution. Apparently, it culminates in pop-up ads.

7 comments:

  1. I like dictionary.com. They have ads, but not annoying ones and give you multiple citations.

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  2. If you are only looking for spelling just try the word into the google search window.

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  3. Anonymous10:19 AM

    Firefox plus NoScript plus Symantec 10. I've pretty much forgotten what online ads are :-)

    (proxi)

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  4. Anonymous2:42 PM

    I use www.dictionary.com for most things.

    Also, if you're using the latest version of Explorer, you can turn on the pop-up blocker that will stop most of them.

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  5. Anonymous4:54 AM

    http://dictionary.reference.com/

    Very nice reference site. Good tools.

    Word o' the Day today...

    frowzy: frow-ZEE, adjective, dirty and untidy, slovenly, The Apostate

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  6. Anonymous4:48 PM

    (This is Oromin, but I'm seeing if posting anonymously will work, since my posts have gotten eaten a lot lately.)

    I'm seconding dictionary.com (it's the same as dictionary.reference.com).

    I use Opera as my primary web browser. It automatically blocks pop-ups without me having to do or install anything at all.

    For foreign-language dictionaries, Word Reference is very good, although for straight English definitons, dictionary.com is better.

    P.S Capcha words have been trasid squid, and dense. Wow, real words!

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  7. To expand on the Google comment left by Kelly the Dog; type the word "define" before any word in a google search engine and it will return a few definitions, as well as recommendations for misspelled words at the top of the search. A cool google hack!

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