For my final project I decided to create a google chrome extension called “I can make the internet worse”
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/i-can-make-the-internet-w/aehmagcggoooecaoklbhaplnjfkejpdg
It replaces all the “Ls” and “Rs” in a word with “Ws”, essentially making everything on the internet sound stupid.
Has anyone ever even heard of Google News? Is it one of those many Google services that they offer, but no one uses, like Google plus? I discovered this by seeing what would happen if I simply typed “news” into google. The first couple links were articles from verified news sites, but the first text link was to Google News. When you click on it, the above interface comes up. It has the stark design that is typical of most google products, but at the same time none of the articles are very eye-catching. This is probably the reason no one uses google news.
So for this week, I experienced something that I never have experienced before in my life: I was unable to access something on the internet because it wasn’t available in my country. Maybe that says something about how America-centric my world view is, but I think It is also interesting that the idea of country specific access is still a thing in this day and age. I know that some countries have some websites blocked for political reasons; for example many American websites are blocked in China because they don’t want their people to admire the western lifestyle, they want them to focus solely on nationalistic and communistic ideals. But for more democratic countries in the world, why are things not available in every country that is able to access the website itself? I think of the internet as being this “locationless medium”, it exists in cyberspace and shouldn’t be limited by any physical location. The world wide web extends across the world, so why can’t I access all the things on it? Is it a technical limitation that may be solved in the coming years? Or is it an exclusivity thing, limiting some access only to IP addresses from certain countries? I don’t know myself, but it would be interesting to find out.
For the previous project, project 6, one of my ideas was to do something with google earth. But what I discovered was that I could no longer access google earth in my preferred browser, which is Firefox. I could download it as a program for my computer, but it was now only accessible on browser through google chrome. I feel like this isn’t an accident, seeing as how google owns both chrome and google earth. I wonder what they did to google earth that made it so firefox could no longer access it. Did they improve the user experience or something; making it like a virtual reality experience? I can’t be bothered to actually download it, so I suppose I won’t find out.
Project 4 Webstore:https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/will-you-watch-until-the/hfjogeajmcbcgjcikofalcfcaafbjkc
I was having a bit of trouble with project 5 in getting it to be added to my google chrome extensions. It appears on the webstore, but when I tried to download it it said that there was an error. However, I have all the pieces of it together
This week I was looking at things on the compass 2g website, the website used to consolidate classes, grades, and information for most of the classes at U of I. I had never really paid much attention to this website other than the links to my class pages, but there were a few things I noticed this time. For one, you can customize the page, although the only customization offered is changing the color of the banners (whee). I also saw that there was a tag on the left that said “personal information”. Curious, I clicked on it to see what personal information about me it had.
Apparently you can volunteer information like your name, address, and contact information on here. Although I don’t know why you would want to; as far as I know the only people who can see your compass page are yourself and your teachers. This page just made me think that the people who created compass wanted it to be a bit more of a school social network, having kids connect to each other on here. But as far as I know, it has never been used for that.
Again, this week I was scrolling through facebook and noticed another trend on my newsfeed. Every so often between posts from people I know and care about, there will be these “suggested posts”, as if they contain something that would interest me. But every single time these suggested posts are from sponsored companies trying to sell something. That in itself isn’t too strange, most websites nowadays have sponsored posts to give them some form of ad revenue. But what interested me was the fact that they tried to pass this off as a “suggested post”, like, they are looking out for something that might interest me. They’re saying “Hey, we think you’d like this post!” but it’s just an ad. I just thought that was another interesting aspect of the Facebook website and how it interacts with its users right now.
This week I was looking at facebook and noticed that, above one of the typical banner ads you see, they have a button you can press to “create your own ad”. I was curious, and clicked on it and was presented with this page:
Apparently Facebook will let you create your own ads to present to people through facebook itself. That means I don’t necessarily have to be a verified business in order to have an advertisement on facebook, I can just go through the proper channels on this page and have my ads appear on other people’s facebook pages. I was truly surprised by this, because I always thought that the ads that appear on websites are semi-legit, but according to this anyone can make an advertisement and have it be shown to hundreds of people on facebook!
// ==UserScript==
// @name Will you watch til the end?
// @namespace blind-youtube
// @version 0.1
// @description Youtube videos with no indication of how long they are
// @author Maggie
// @match *://*.youtube.com/*
// @include *://*.youtube.com/*
// @grant none
// @require http://arts445.courses.bengrosser.com/files/ready-vanilla.js
// @require http://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.3.1.min.js
// @run-at document-start
// ==/UserScript==
// ** CHANGE @NAME, @NAMESPACE, and @DESCRIPTION
//
// ** If using for Tampermonkey, you can just paste this into
// ** the Tampermonkey editor
//
// ** If using for Chrome, CHANGE FIRST PART OF FILENAME
// ** (before the .user.js) and edit in a code editor like Atom
//
// ** EVERYTHING BETWEEN ==UserScript== lines is read by the browser
// as configuration information for the userscript
// this line (and the last one in the file) open and close
// an ‘immediate invoked function’, which keeps our
// code separate from other code running on the website
// just leave it here
(function() {
// jQuery on ‘j’ to avoid conflicts with page jQuery
var j;
// PUT YOUR CODE within main() below
function main() {
// setup jQuery on j to avoid any possible conflicts
j = jQuery.noConflict();
// outlines all existing <a> tags in red
// running .each() on a jQuery search executes the included function
// individually for each element it finds that matches the search
// (e.g. in this case, it runs the function redBorder() for each ‘a’
// tag). the parameter name ‘e’ refers to the found element
//
// j(‘a’).each(function() { redBorder(this); });
// this line sets up a continuous search for new elements on the
// page that might get inserted later. so, in this example, any
// HTML with an ‘a’ tag that gets inserted *after* the page loads
// will call redBorder() for each one in turn. this way you can
// catch and change anything that happens after the page load
// (e.g. a new news feed story on the Facebook newsfeed0
ready(‘span.ytp-time-current, span.ytp-time-duration, span.video-time’, function(e) { hidetime(e); });
// this function could do anything with the results it receives
// ‘jnode’ refers to the jquery object the initial jQuery search
// found, so we refer to it and then continue on with familiar
// jQuery statements
function hidetime(e) {
j(e).hide();
}
}
// run the main function
main();
// utility functions we’ll use during the semester
// are below. for now it’s just another version of
// contains we can use to test string content
// cleaner syntax than match()
String.prototype.contains = function(it) { return this.indexOf(it) != -1; };
// close the opening invoked function
// Your code here…
})();
1. Taking away the number of views on youtube videos
2. Take away references to political parties in news articles
3. Take out the names of everyone on facebook
4. take away the upvotes/downvotes on reddit
5. take away time stamps on instagram stories and posts
6. take away time stamp on youtube videos
7. Remove prices on everything on Amazon
8. Take out the headlines on a news site
My new media obsession has to do with a new adblocker I installed called ghostery. I downloaded it after we talked about it in class. I’ve never used an adblocker before, so I didn’t know what to expect. Now, whenever I go onto websites, new ones or ones I’ve used before, my eyes are automatically drawn to the little notification number next to the ghost icon. This number tells you how many trackers and ads the app is blocking from any given website. Websites I’d been on plenty of times before have trackers that have been storing my information. It’s become kind of a bad habit, constantly checking how much I’m being monitored. But I guess this should come as no surprise.
// ==UserScript==
// @name second Userscript
// @namespace seconduserscript.maggie
// @version 0.1
// @description fuckin with cnn
// @author maggie O'mahoney
// @match http://www.espn.com/*
// @grant none
// @require http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js
// ==/UserScript==
(function() {
'use strict';
var j =jQuery.noConflict();
j('h1').append(', I Fucking Love Sports!');
j('a').fadeOut();
})();
Buzzfeed is a site that I go on all the time, especially when I’m bored. As you can see by the screenshot, the page is a hurricane of pictures, all of which lead to articles that can entertain me. Off to the side, you can see the articles that are trending. On the top, you can see the newest articles posted. Each article is in a tag, which you can search to find even more articles. The way this website is laid out you can spend hours pouring over the content, which I believe is exactly what the creators wanted.
j('a').prepend('Allegedly, ');
j('span').append(' According to Buzzfeed');
j('h2').append(' According To Buzzfeed');
j('a').append(' Up My Ass');
What am I doing? I am an adult!
j('#tech-specs-table-left #tech-specs-table-right .a-text-bold p').css('border','1px solid red')
j(' h2 a .mw-headline').css('border','1px solid green')
j('h3:contains("Arts")').css('backgroundColor','lightBlue')