These limitations of extensions also effect how all the ad-blocker on Chrome work. Chrome ad-blockers don’t actually block ads the same way Firefox ad-blockers do. You will be still downloading those ads to your browser but the ad-blockers will just hide the ad elements to remove visual clutter. Its still as good as removing ads like Adblock Plus on Firefox.

This limitation has two implications:

Bad: You are being tracked by ads under chrome with ad-blocker, even if you don’t actually see them.

Good: Anti-adblocking scripts don’t work on Chrome ad-blockers like they do with Firefox ad-blocker (on Firefox you can still bypass anti-ad-blockers, but needs some custom work).

An interesting observation is that currently Chrome AdBlock Extension is the most popular extension on Chrome extension gallery, it has more than 1 million users and almost more than double the user base of second most downloaded extension, which is Google’s own Gmail Mail Checker. That’s 1 out of ~7 chrome users using ad-blockers (Google claims Chrome has 70+ million users). The second most popular Adblock extension is AdThwart which is the 20th most popular Chrome extension with ~200,000 users, as of this writing.

What does it all mean?

I think mostly power users rely on extensions like adblockers, and just like Firefox, early adopters of Chrome are also mostly power users who are helping spread Chrome to the mass.

As mentioned before, both extensions works by hiding ad elements, because of API limitations so they don’t actually have any advantage over one another. What we will look at is their implementation of removing ad elements, how they effect the speed of the site and extra options each extensions comes with.

Benchmarking Ad blocking:

We tested 5 popular sites on normal browsing, then using Adblock and finally using Adthwart. Both extensions works under incognito mode (which is how we tested), we made sure that caches were clean before running site with or without each ad-blocker. We were surprised to see that site loaded faster with AdThwart on every single sites we tried on. Admittedly, not by much, but still interesting to see that a less popular ad-blocker has faster site load time than the most popular Chrome ad-blocker.

When it comes to blocking Ads, both extensions blocked (or rather hide) every single ad element on all sites we tried; just like Adblock plus on Firefox.

 * Both Adblock extension was running under default configuration on Chrome Stable, Windows7.

Options and Configurations:

Both Extensions have almost identical options, with the ability to whitelist/blacklist sites, choose multiple filter list and manually update them, block YouTube Video ads and text ads. Adthwart has a great option where you can block/blacklist element within a site with a single click on the icon. This is great for blocking non-ads or static ad elements. I think this single option along with faster site speed makes AdThwart a better extension. I think the reason Adblock extension is more widely used because its name is more obvious than AdThwart and probably has been around since the beginning. I also tried AdThwart when it first came out on extension gallery, I remember it being slow and resource hungry at that time, which is probably why it didn’t get off the same way AdBlock did. You should check out both of them and decide for yourself which one works best for you.

 AdBlock Options

AdThwart Options

Few Words on Blocking Ads on Sites:

There has been a lot of chatter on the blogosphere about ad-blockers (renewed with Safari 5’s Reader option) and how it affects small publishers and blogger and their single most popular source of revenue in the form of ads. I think people who use ad-blockers will use ad-blockers, regardless of whatever countermeasures or rational persuasion you want to employ. Its a losing game and there is not much you can do about it because you don’t have control over the content, once its rendered and downloaded in to a reader’s browser.

That doesn’t mean that everyone will block ads and all publishers will go out of business, because users who block ads are a minority power users, and often they have very valid reasons to block ads. They don’t like to be tracked by ad scripts even if the purpose is to give relevant ads, some people are distracted and put off by large number of flashy distracting ads. But even so there are power users out there who will whitelist sites that they frequent and care about, I know power users who do it and I myself whitelist sites I care about.

As publishers/Bloggers we will have to try harder to stand out so that readers can find value on the content and they will either whitelist your site or spread your  content to other readers who don’t care about ad-blockers. Another option would be to remove all ads and replace them with a single non-intrusive ad similar to The Deck. Unfortunately these kind of ads are not mainstream enough for small publishers like this site to take advantage of.

When we reviewed Tweetie few weeks ago, we mentioned how it can be difficult to come up with unique ways to interact with twitter given that the same limited API options are available to all client developers. Boy were we wrong. When we tried out Mixero, not only did we get a unique twitter experience we actually enjoyed it very much.

Mixero is still in beta and you will need to ask for an invite in order to use it. You will get a unique Code which can be used for one account only. We asked one of developers if Mixero will be a free client or a commercial. He told us that the current version (which is a private beta) with all its features will be available as free for everyone. No words on future plans.

From my limited experience with Mixero I got the impression that this is a suitable client for either very active twitter user or someone who follows a lot of user. The main idea behind Mixero seems to be to streamline massive amount of twitter feed update in the most organized way possible without overwhelming the user.

 
To highlight someone of the main features of Mixero:

> Activelist: Goes beyond having a list of groups (also available) which can be used to filter out updates you actively follow. Groups, users and channels can be included in an active list.

> Channels: A real-time twitter search feed on topics you are interested in. You can configure unique icons for each channel.

> Filter: Filter group and user timeline with certain keyword.

> SmartPreview: Preview pictures (twitpic and flickr) and video (youtube) within the client.

> URL + AutoCompletion: You can mouse over a shorturl to see the actual URL, very useful to avoid spam links. Also autocompletes username from your follower’s list and auto shorten URL as you type.

Pros: For power users this client is godsend. This client is very extensive in features and perhaps the most organized and intuitive client I have used so far. An iphone client will be out soon which can be synched with desktop client, this is a major plus. Since its and Adobe air client, it supports all major platforms.

Cons: Its hard to criticize a client that does so much. But because it does so much it might not be a suitable option for everyone. For non-power users this client can be a bit overwhelming and perhaps a bit confusing. I know twitter users who gets confused with single panel clients, with multiple movable panels they will go bonkers.

Our short review doesn’t do justice to the amount of options and features Mixero has, so make sure to check out video demo on their site.

 
It seems like there is a new twitter client released every week, mostly in the form of Adobe Air application because it is easy to deploy applications on all platform. So when I first heard that a native Mac Twitter client Tweetie will be made available by the same guys who made the popular iphone twitter client by the same name, I was anxiously waiting for it. Now that its already out for some weeks now, time for a short review.

Notable Features:

Threaded Conversations: With native Mac client comes features and styling that are unique to macs. Threaded conversation views on twitter DMs works the same way chat conversations works with ichat. This also works with individual tweets. This may seem like a standard feature for a mac app but most twitter clients (specially the popular ones) don’t have this threaded conversation feature.

Search: Powerful search integration. The search result window can be separated from the application and you can get updates as new search results gets refreshed on the has tag or the search term you were looking for.

Handling Multiple accounts: Using multiple accounts in a single twitter client has always been an issue with most twitter clients. Most Clients handle it by having multiple windows or bundling accounts in a very confusing way. Tweetie does it seamlessly by stacking accounts in a way that makes it easy going back and forth from one account to another.

There is only so much innovation you can do from the client side when there is same API access available to all client developers, in that regards tweetie mac desktop client has some impressive unique features.

Pros: A native mac desktop clients that is not limited by the similar design of Adobe Air apps. Threaded conversation and multiple accounts handling seamlessly is a major plus.

Cons: With so many very impressive free twitter clients available with more or less the same features in all clients, it makes little sense to have a commercial desktop twitter client (or even ad supported for that matter).

The web tracking and analysis market is very saturated with some big players like Google and free and open source applications that more than does the job. The fact that people will very rarely switch from one analytics service to another makes it even more difficult to break in to this market.

Or so we thought.

Woopra knows that in order for them to break in to this saturated market they not only have to provide something very unique but actually make watching your web traffic a fun experience. I believe very few, if any, web analytic service can claim that they have made watching stats a pleasant experience, if not cluttered and confusing.

Instead of taking the usual route of making a web-only analytic service, Woopra first started with desktop client and then much later moved in to a web interface also, making it an additional option instead of a primary source of analytic information.

Their desktop client, which is based on java and runs on all major platform, is the most beautiful and resourceful analytic interface you will ever see. As visitors pour in to your website you get real time information about the referrers, landing page, search engine term they used to come to your site, the country they are coming from, you can watch them live as they leave comments and my favorite option is the ability to chat with your visitors.

Woopra is still in beta and invite only with limitation on the number of stats it will track during this beta stage (10000 page views). They rapidly improved their client in the very short time it has been operational by constantly taking users feedback as they grow. They recently did a major release candidate on their client and the number of register active users during this closed beta time has soared to 60,000 members.

Pros:

Excellent interface, great support. A web analytic service that actually makes it fun to observe your site stats. Desktop client supports all major OS platform.

Cons:

Even though we understand this is a beta stage, the server often goes down or slow to load which can result web site to not fully load as the JavaScript tries to connect to the server, hopefully as they come out of beta this will be much more stable. I think its fair guess that when the service actually rolls out of beta they will have commercial and free service options and they did hint it on one of their blog entry. It will be interesting to see is how limited their free option will be, if they keep the current limited page view option on their free service I think it will be a major turn off; instead they might consider putting limited analytic option on their free service with no limitation on the number of page views it can collect, something similar to what one of my favorite analytic service sitemeter does.