So a couple weeks ago I was sitting here at my PC and the speakers suddenly started playing a ten or fifteen second movie ad. The fidelity was quite poor, so I couldn't really make anything out but "Paul Walker."
I had about twenty IE windows open, so I figured it was an embedded ad in one of those sites that had thwarted the Google Popup Blocker.
The thing is, days later the same ad played again. I scrambled to triangulate what web page it was coming from, but I failed. It was too quick.
And then again, but this time, I only had two or three pages open. One was my own site, and the other was something safe, like moveabletype.org or whatever. In the brief playing window, I also scanned the Task Manager but saw nothing obvious.
So what the hell is going on? My next idea was that I had some spyware/adware on my PC. I ran AdAware with an updated database. IT found nothing but tracking cookies.
I talked to the fellow who wrote Sharp NewsReader, the only software I've recently installed, and we couldn't figure out any obvious way people were somehow injecting this ad through RSS feeds or the preview pane. All the sites I subscribe to are relatively innocuous anyway.
So basically I have no idea what the hell is doing this. It just played again, and now after hearing it five or six times, I understood a bit more of it. I think it is an ad for some stupid [ A group of archaeological students become trapped in the past when they go there to retrieve their professor. The group must survive in 14th century France long enough to be rescued.] movie called "TimeLine" starring "Paul Walker".
That the organism playing this dumb ad is so furtive it is really annoying. I picked through my installation of QuickTime, but it wasn't clear that had any mode for "unrequested movie blurbs." I threw away Winamp 4/Pro a long time ago, so I just have the old, dependable, staid Winamp3. Otherwise, unless Microsoft Messenger or AOL Instant Messenger is doing this {and I cannot see where}, I'm totally lost.
Help!
Posted by Nils Blutig at November 29, 2003 12:30 AM | TrackBack