There are a couple of problems with this, 1st off the ad pops up as long as you move your mouse, so you DONT get a choice on if you want to see it or not and 2nd, allot of those “related” ads may be related to the key word itself, but may have nothing to do with the topics you are searching for.  As in this post from a tech site, about a story the new i-Phone leak and when my mouse goes over the story, I get an ad for BP…..

So what do you do if you want to get rid of these ads.  Here are the steps…..

1 – On the top of Internet Explorer – Go to Tools –> Internet Options

2- Once in Internet Options, click on the “Security Tab” –> The on Restricted Sites –> The on the button that says Sites

3 – Once there in the box that says “Add this website to the zone enter the following 3 websites.

• vibrantmedia.com
• intellitxt.com
• kontera.com

4 – You will need to refresh the webpage at this point by clicking on page refresh on the top of Internet Explorer.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************

*NOTE – Example ads are bigger in post than normal for example purposes.

**NOTE – Sites that offer Inline ads do this as a revenue stream so that they can offer viewers services for cheap or free, while making money from the ads.

***NOTE – TechGeekandMore does NOT use any form of Inline ads and if anyone comes across any form of inline ads within the TGM site, we ask to be notified immediately.  Please send a screen shot if possible with details of what you see and from which posting.  (SOAPBOX) Even though TGM is looking for ways to help with the cost of running the TGM site, it is felt that inline ads ruin the browsing experience and as such does not want those type of ads for its visitors. (END SOAPBOX)

AM-DeadLink (LINK: http://www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm)

AM-DeadLink can check the following resources:

• Internet Explorer Favorites
• Firefox bookmarks
• Opera bookmarks
• URLs from tab delimited text files
• URLs from comma separated text files

AM-DeadLink can download FavIcons for:

• Internet Explorer Favorites
• Firefox bookmarks
• Opera bookmarks

     The add-on which is easy to install, will show the following type of notice on searches (Green as safe sites, Red as sites that would be recommended you avoid)

     In addition when visiting sites that could put you at risk you will see the following message

     As already noted above, this is only an alert, this add-on with all of the browsers will still allow you to “Click here to continue to the page anyways”. That means that this program does not replace common sense, it is a tool to help you better chose but ultimately its still up to the user to use their own common sense. 

     Since I like giving real world examples to explain, here is how I explain Web of Trust.  Consider WOT like your house or car alarm. When you leave your house, you set your alarm, but because you set the alarm doesn’t mean you don’t lock your doors (At least I hope it doesn’t).  Consider your common sense as the looking of your door, if you don’t do it, your still at risk. 

Internet Explorer Add-On (LINK: http://www.mywot.com/en/download/ie)

Firefox Add-On (LINK: http://www.mywot.com/en/download/ff)

Opera Add-On (LINK: http://files.myopera.com/PH%60/UserJs/wot.js)

     Microsoft has created a few viral (video’s for online showing) video’s in its time, however this latest video, I cant see how someone approved this one.  The video which is called  “O M G I G P" (or Oh my god I’m gonna puke) is a video to promote Internet Explorer 8 with privacy mode (also known as porn mode).  I’m seen this video and well I can’t put words to it so I’ll let it speak for itself.

**WARNING: I FOUND THIS VIDEO FUNNY BUT DISTRUBING AS WELL, IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH (OR EASLIY OFFENDED) DO NOT WATCH**

OMGIGP Video Link

No matter what anyone thinks of the name, Microsoft has now officially turned on Bing (Not related to Chandler).  Bing ( www.bing.com ) is expected to be Microsoft’s baby that will get it back in the fight with the search king Google.  I have tried Bing so far and I cant say I have an answer so far, its better than I was expecting.  All my searches this morning have been run 2x’s.  Once on Google and once on Bing.  So far the Web searches for me today have been very much equal, but on picture and video searches Bing has actually done a better job.  I also like the form Bing uses to show me both video and picture search, including being able to run the video directly from the search page.  So far Bing is starting out promising**, but we will see what happens…

*But that’s just my opinion.

Some people (“Us old school folks) know that there was a time that a computer could be used without using a mouse.  The feature referred to as Keyboard shortcuts still exists today (even though most current users don’t have a clue that its there). 

So in the interest of not getting this question 1,000,000 more times here are some very helpful shortcuts for Internet Explorer.

ALT+D – Put focus in the address bar, and select whatever text is there
CTRL+ENTER – Put ‘http://www.’ and ‘.com’ before and after whatever text is in the address bar
ALT+LEFT – Go Back
ALT+RIGHT – Go Forward
BACKSPACE – Go Back
ALT+HOME – Go Home
F11 – Enter/Exit Full Screen Mode
F5 – Refresh
CTRL+F5 – Refresh from the site your on (Forces re-download of page instead of refreshing from cache)
ALT+V, B – Toggle the Status Bar
ALT+A – Open the favorites menu; then type the first letter of the favorite you want
F6 – Move focus between major UI elements (Toolbar->Explorer Bar->HTML Page->Toolbar)
TAB – Move focus between minor UI elements (Link->Link in a page, Address Bar->Go Button, etc)
SHIFT+TAB – Like TAB, but the other way
SPACE – Scroll the page down (same as the PageDown key)
These shortcuts apply to all normal windows applications, not just IE:
ALT+SPACE, X – Maximize the window
ALT+SPACE, R – Restore the window
ALT+TAB – Switch between top level windows
SHIFT+F10 – Display the context menu (similar to Right-Clicking)

     This list is just for Internet Explorer, there are more shortcuts for Windows and other software.

   I just find the irony in this to be funny.  I figured I would point this out in case someone had not noticed.  Those who enjoy yahoo games, have a valid reason for waiting to upgrade.

     Internet Explorer 8 is being pushed by Microsoft starting this week as part of Windows Updates or Microsoft Updates.

Download the IE8 Blocker Tool from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21687628-5806-4ba6-9e4e-8e224ec6dd8c&displaylang=en

Once you download the file you will see the following file (make sure you know what location you picked to save the file)

Step 1 – Double click the IE8BlockerToolkit.exe and the select run.

Step 2 – You will get the agreement message – select Yes to this message.

Step 3 – You will be prompted for a location to save the files that get created from the IE8toolkit.exe file. Chose a location you can find (for my example I used C:\IE8Blocker).

Step 4 – You will be prompted that folder does not exist if it is a new folder. Select yes to this message.

Step 5 – select start – run – and in the run box that opens type CMD and hit enter

Step 6 – In the DOS window you should have C:\> if you get anything else type cd \ (there is a space between the cd and the \) and hit enter to get C:\>

Step 7 – Type the following. C:\IE80Blocker /B. If it typed in correctly you will see a message “The operation completed successfully. ** (that is IE eight zero)

**C:\IE8Blocker /B is based on the fact that I saved the files in step 3 to c:\IE8Blocker. If you choose to save your files in step 3 to another location you will need to type that location followed by a space and then /B (Capitol B).

The uninstall process

1) Go to the Microsoft site http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700

• In the middle of the page you will see an icon that says “Microsoft Fix It”, click on the icon.
• You will see a File download box appear asking you if you want to Run – Save – Cancel a program called UninstallIE8.msi. If your on the machine that has IE8 just click Run. If your downloading it so that you can uninstall IE8 on a different machine click save and save the file to a USB or other Portable drive. The file is 115k which means it will fit on a floppy (If anyone even remembers what those are!)
• Once you hit run on the download (or double click the file if you are using the saved file) you will see a window that says Internet Explorer – Security Warning and a Run and Don’t Run box. Click on Run –
• The next window “Welcome to the Uninstall Internet Explorer 8 Wizard” select that you agree (If you didn’t agree then you probably wouldn’t be trying to do this.) and Next

• The next window “Confirm Installation” (Again, if your didn’t want to do this would you be doing this?) click on Next.
• The next window just show you the progress of the uninstall. Just wait….on my machine it took about 4 minutes to complete (Yes I know its a slow machine)
• The next window you will see the “Uninstall Internet Explorer 8 has been processed” just click on close.
• Finally you will be asked for a restart. Make sure your files are saved and closed and hit restart.  That’s it…