AdBlock launches crowdfunding campaign to create ads about blocking ads

Prepare to have your mind blown: This weekend, the creator of the popular AdBlock software—which kills the ads you'd normally see while trawling the Web—launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay for ads encouraging people to use AdBlock and block Internet ads.

Whoa.

As brain-bending as the concept sounds, AdBlock isn't dreaming small. The $25,000 minimum fundraising goal will oh-so-ironically go towards the creation of banner ads to spam the AdBlock ethos, and AdBlock founder Michael Gundlach promises to spread the word via a Times Square billboard if the donations hit $50,000, or a full-page ad in the New York Times if the campaign raises $150,000.

AdBlockAdBlock's contribution rewards. (Click to enlarge.)

If the crowdfunding really takes off, AdBlock has the white whale of advertising in its sights: At $4.2 million in donations (ha!), Gundlach says he'll buy an AdBlock TV commercial during the 2014 Super Bowl.

AdBlock recently started bugging users of its extension with ads about its campaign to create ads about blocking ads, in yet another bout of delicious hyprocrisy that you can see in the screenshot to the right. Here's what the campaign page says about fighting fire with fire:

We're going to use ads to get rid of ads. We will use the money raised to make AdBlock banner ads and video commercials, and we will show these across the internet to people who don't have AdBlock. If we raise enough, we will implement our craziest advertising ideas and capture the whole world's imagination.

With ads about blocking ads. Welcome to the Matrix!

While ad-blocking technology is indeed highly handy-dandy and borders on necessity on some of the most annoying pages on the Web, it's not without its share of critics. A large swathe of the Web—PCWorld.com and TechHive.com included—relies on advertising to monetize content provided free of charge to readers, and ad-killing software such as AdBlock deprive websites of that revenue. Penny Arcade's Ben Kuchera recently wrote a superb article detailing just how harmful ad-blocking software is to websites.

Simply put, without ads, many Websites couldn't exist. Creating quality content costs money, and a truly ad-free web would be a mostly empty web.

Is there a middle ground? AdBlock rival AdBlock Plus whitelists ads that don't scream at you or autoplay or steal your browser's focus, which seems like a reasonable compromise. Some people manually whitelist the majority of the Web, blocking only sites that betray their trust with obnoxious selling attempts.

Attempts to offer ad-free content behind a paywall, meanwhile, have seen hit-and-miss success. While Netizens hate ads, few seem willing to pay to remove them.

But in a bout of irony so hard that it hurts, people are tripping over themselves to fund ads about blocking ads. AdBlock has managed to raise more than $22,000 of its $25,000 minimum goal in just a couple of days, with 28 days of fundraising left. One thing's for certain: It's going to be interesting to see where AdBlock's ad campaign goes, and what—if anything—it accomplishes.

Brad Chacos spends the days jamming to Spotify, digging through desktop PCs and covering everything from BYOD tablets to DIY tesla coils.
More by Brad Chacos

View the original article here

Ubuntu Edge campaign shatters the crowdfunding record, likely for naught

It’s official: The audacious Ubuntu Edge smartphone-slash­-PC is the most successful crowdfunding campaign in history. Canonical currently sits atop a pledged cash horde of $10,420,890, a pile of dough bigger than the $10,266,845 raised for the Pebble Watch, the previous crowdfunding record holder.

Too bad it’s all for naught.

With just six days left in the campaign, Canonical is still roughly $21.5 million short of the utterly ridonkulous $32 million goal set for the Ubuntu Edge. If the campaign doesn’t hit the magic $32 million number, the Ubuntu Edge remains a dream, and all pledges will be returned to people who donated to the campaign. Frankly, it’s not looking like that goal’s going to be met.

That’s right—the most successful crowdfunding campaign in history is shaping up to be a resounding failure.

CanonicalThe Ubuntu Edge dual-boots Android and Ubuntu’s mobile OS, then launches the full-fledged Ubuntu desktop OS distribution when connected to a monitor via HDMI.

Or is it? As I’ve argued before, I don’t believe that actually creating the Ubuntu Edge was Canonical’s true goal with this campaign. Between the sky-high campaign goal, the sky-high $695 pledge (or more!) required to claim a phone, and several comments made by Canonical honcho Mark Shuttleworth, the entire project seems to have been both doomed to fail and designed to convince third-party manufacturers that there is indeed a market for Ubuntu on mobile phones. You can read my reasoning right here.

With more than $10 million pledged for 2690 phones currently—including a massive $80,000 “Enterprise 115 bundle” investment by Bloomberg—the Ubuntu Edge may well succeed on that front, even if the actual Ubuntu Edge falls short of its $32 million goal. Thanks for taking the bullet, little buddy.

There’s no denying that the Edge looks mighty slick, though. If you want to breathe life into the dream at the 11th hour, head over to the Ubuntu Edge Indiegogo campaign page. As it stands, however, it’s looking like crowdfunding’s biggest success will also be its most high-profile failure—at least on paper.

Brad Chacos spends the days jamming to Spotify, digging through desktop PCs and covering everything from BYOD tablets to DIY tesla coils.
More by Brad Chacos

View the original article here