Versions 3.15
* Enables SearchReviews opt-in and configuration options for all users.
See: Toolbar -> Tools -> Toolbar Options -> Configuration tab -> Web Search

On previous versions of the Stumbleupon Toolbar you were presented with a choice as to whether or not you wanted your Google Search results injected with Stumbled info. The problem this time comes from the fact that even if you don’t want your Google results to be altered by StumbleUpon and you Opt-Out of this in your settings, you are still presented with an altered version of Google in a very sly way.

Here are the StumbleUpon settings, set to NOT alter your search results:

However, even with these settings turned off, a search on Google still produces a nice little link up at the top that reads See Friend Reviews in the same font as Google up with the rest of the Google Account Options.

This spyware-like behavior is also found on Ask, Yahoo, and MSN.

Wikipedia defines spyware as:

Spyware is computer software that is installed surreptitiously on a personal computer to intercept or take partial control over the user’s interaction with the computer, without the user’s informed consent.

– Wikipedia Definition

It’s fairly obvious that I’ve tried my best (short of uninstalling) to deny my consent to this behavior and though they state upfront that you are opting-in, the ‘configuration options’ section and options within would lead most users to thinking they could disable this “feature”. That, however is not the case and thus starts to blur the line between what is acceptable behavior in regards to your user information and what is actually spyware. Now it’s known that Stumbling is fun and that it can drive traffic and whatnot but surely they could come up with something better than this.

That said if you’re a fan of Stumbling you’re probably wondering:

How to disable StumbleUpon’s “See Friend Reviews” on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com

You have 5 options to disable this unwanted behavior:

1. Uninstall the Toolbar.
2. Have patience. The link will disappear on it’s own after three weeks.
3. Get click happy. It will disappear after it’s been clicked three times regardless of your other actions.
4. OBEY. This link will also go away if you sell your soul to Satan and complete the contact import.
5. Go for Beta. The beta version of StumbleUpon will allow you to disable the prompt via the “Show StumbleUpon prompts and logos” checkbox on the Configuration tab of the Toolbar Options dialog

Now 5 different options of getting rid of this atrocity is more than Gator will give you. However all of these remain unpublished and unpromoted solutions to this problem. The fact is that even though they might garner some information which makes stumbling better and also new users from this approach, it’s obviously setup to benefit them way more than it would benefit the end user. And when you start digging around trying to figure out different ways to get rid of unwanted behavior from your favorite toolbar, you really have to start questioning it’s intentions in the first place.

UPDATE (11-25-07): It appears that version 3.16 of the Firefox StumbleUpon toolbar includes an OPT-OUT for this. Problem solved. Now you only have it if you want it, which is really how it should be.

What happen? Somebody set up us the bomb.

This is a plugin for WordPress that will disable the automatic rel=”nofollow” attributes added to external links. Additionally, for those of you with open comments that want to make sure you’re not giving relevancy to SPAM, you can set an age limit for this feature that will only remove the “nofollow” after a certain amount of time.

but what about bitch-slapping the whore of the internets smoMashup?

Wikipedia NoFollow Wordpress Plugin:

This quick and easy to install plugin is but a fraction of retribution for the crimes against the web that the big wiki has committed. In short this automatically adds rel=’nofollow’ to all outgoing links to Wikipedia.org, regardless of language.

It’s time you take social media back to the place where you got it from.. society.

If you have a Wordpress blog, I urge you to use the first plugin. For as long as Wikipedia strives to discredit your relevancy, I urge you to use the second.

Special thanks to the very followable Lyndoman who alerted me to the ‘link lite’ status of this site.

1. It is impossible to ever be finished getting ready for anything.
2. For a site that’s dedicated to the Web 2.0 world, it feels very 0.9
3. None of the SMO-esque sites I’d seen actually used any social bookmarks
4. Neither did mine

Well, regardless of my inherit unrest I totally didn’t feel like working on a new theme and the only thing I could think of was trying to hook up #4, which would then fix #3 and make a little bit of headway towards the first two concerns.

In no time at all I had come across not one but two different approaches to adding Social Bookmarks to a blog.

The first one is the one that I decided upon and is the wonderful Social Bookmark Links Wordpress Plugin from TwisterMC. Currently in version 0.5.1 it has options where you can pick and choose your favorite Social Sites to display with your post in text form or toss them all in a dropdown menu.

It’s super easy to install and looking at the PHP file it also appears very hackable so that given 15 minutes or so you should be able to add anything you feel the author might have overlooked. Though I would think from the 45+ choices he gives you, that’s probably not likely in the near future.

I would give this a 4.5/5 stars. For future versions I would like to see the ability to order the results in the text format instead of only being able to display them alphabetically. That plus a bit more control over the individual dividers. Other than those wishes for down the road, I highly recommend this for anyone looking to add the easy plugin functionality of Digg, Del.icio.us, Furl, etc to their Wordpress setup.

The 2nd option that I found was an online Social Bookmarking creator by iFeedreaders that lets you choose from essentially the same options as the plugin and when you are done it spits out a clean bit of HTML code that you can drop right into your blog or static page to achieve a similar effect as an actual plugin.

This worked well and fast and would serve the purpose if nothing better was available for your particular setup (*cough* Postnuke *cough* Static Page *cough*). But since just about everyone who would be interested in this sort of feature probably isn’t using something dated I can’t think of what purpose this would serve on a regular basis. Still handy to have around I suppose so we’ll give 4/5 stars for doing what it’s supposed to do.