Where My GModules At?

The consolidation of the Interwebs as evangelized by your Googles, Facebooks, and Tweet-zones is dash inconvenient. As I was setting up my new work computer (64-bit Windows 7), I noticed some odd behavior out of Thunderbird. Some of the RSS feeds that I imported would automatically open up my browser with what appeared to be a spam site. I noted two things: a.) all of the feeds that did this were Blogspot blogs and b.) I didn't have this problem with an older version of Thunderbird.

There was one Blogspot blog that did not give me this problem, so I compared it with the blogs that did, and I noticed that the nonoffending blog lacked a small piece of code that the others possessed:

<script type="text/javascript">
if (!window.google || !google.friendconnect)
{
document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/friendconnect/script/friendconnect.js">' + '</scr' + 'ipt>')
}
</script>

The pieces fell together: as a Google aquisition, it made sense that Blogspot blogs would have Google FriendConnect code in them (GModules), and my older version of Thunderbird didn't run JavaScript at all, so I would never notice Google's clumsy attempt to customize my advertisement experience to whatever it thought my interests were.

The solution was to add a new blocking rule to Thunderbird:

http://www.google.com/friendconnect/script/*

Essentially what that does is tell Thunderbird to ignore any scripts that come from FriendConnect. Problem solve-ed.

Hey, it's June! I hope you're having a wonderful one. I'm going to another wedding tomorrow. Why am I telling you? I don't know...

I know that I ended my post title with a preposition.

Peace be with you and your kin.

-Ryan