ya. that's the best I could do. I couldn't find a vuvuzela audio file on the internet that wasn't surrounded by a bunch of flaming hoops, else, I would have had it open that URL.
Which probably means it's just looking for links to "google.com" in the page. In which case I'd doubt it'd catch connections in flash files, and it probably false-positives if you have blockers in place. (edit: checked the JS file, that's exactly what it does. Looks for URLs of: google, gmail.com, youtube.com, blogspot.com)
If this is true (and I have no reason to doubt you), then the extension is so inaccurate as to be useless. In Firefox at least, there are hooks to do everything you need to do a real implementation.
Just installed the Chrome version, and ran it on that comment's page. Results:
Google Analytics
Google AdSense
Youtube Embed
Google Chrome
And the Firefox plugin's results are coming once I get it downloaded & install the plugin. I'll edit here, and probably blog about it due to its inaccuracy (stupidity should be exposed!!!).
edit: Firefox's results mirror it exactly, minus the Chrome one of course. Plugin review result: utterly worthless.
Considering the amount of websites that use Google Analytics this will result in an almost constant sound. At least the websites I browse often.
But it's an interesting project to make people aware of the amount of data they send to Google. I just dont think that people that do not know this will install a plugin like this.. Or use FireFox at all.
I'm just glad that analytics is on its own domain. Google could easily have placed it at google.com/analytics and it would be much trickier to block. As it is, an entry in hosts or blacklist it in NoScript is all you need.
Adblock Plus does a better job of blocking than those mechanisms, however, and it could handle google.com/analytics just as easily as google-analytics.com.
Bug? I can not click on links in the upper right hand corner of a website while it is enabled. I went to amazon and tried to click "My Account" in the upper right and it was as if there was something invisible not allowing me to click links up there. Several disable/enables of the plugin later and it seems like that is the problem.
Great idea -- but overdone to the point where it's only a think piece, not a utility.
An alternate presentation idea: a toolbar with both indicators for the current page, and a timeline of recent connections to Google's servers. It would make a small ring on each new connection -- but more like an IM notification than an airhorn, and able to be turned off.
The timeline could be logarithmic, with the past to the right, so the last 5 minutes or so of hits to Google AdSense/Analytics/CDN/etc. is in high-resolution over about 1/3 the width of the screen, while the next hour takes the next 1/3, and the last day the last 1/3 -- altogether showing a total of the background hits to Google servers in the last 24 hours or so. Like so...
