Ad Muncher PROXY demo

[MackDiesel2010]

What better a way for users to try out the effectiveness of ad muncher than for them to browse the web without having to install it?

Host a cgi-based proxy server, where users could browse for a limited time, but the sites viewed through the proxy would be filtered with the ad-muncher engine.

Right on the front page of admuncher.com you could have a form to have visitors type in any website and view what it would be like if they had ad-muncher installed.

[war59312]

Yeah that would be pretty sweet!

[Shamurai]

Personally, I would rather see the existing development efforts go into the program. The amount of time it would take to write this code would take away time in programming things like regex, http 1.1, gzip, and per site filtering.

[Murray]

Definitely a good idea MachDiesel2010. It will have to wait though until the conversion to C is complete, at which point it should be relatively easy to compile under linux and hook into an existing proxy app.

But indeed for the moment we have to concentrate on important developments within the program itself.

[[deXter]]

Its an awesome idea

Actually, they idea can go beyond a demo. Registered users could have their own login on the site, and they could use it in places where they aren't allowed to install programs (like Office/School PCs), or even better, be able to surf ad-free on ANY OS! This could even be configured further to perhaps have a complete ad-muncher clone online - like imagine, you'd be able to setup custom filters/text replacements/options etc, all online! Of course, the only limitation would be not being able to filter other processes

[[deXter]]

When I saw this thread initially, I thought this idea was too easy to implement, so I set up a cgi proxy and configured Ad Muncher to filter it. The site worked and all, and for a while there I thought it was going well, till Shannow pointed out that it wasn't really filtering anything! I realised that some Ads were being blocked as they were filtered within the script, but as such, Ad Muncher wasn't filtering it. After reading the help, I fould out about Ad Muncher's wsock32.dll that can be used for apps that aren't getting filtered. Unfortunately, it wasn't working with that too. This wasn't so easy as I thought it would be..

Anyways, I setup a local proxy server and found that Ad Muncher was working fine with it!

So here I present the very first Ad Muncher CGI-Proxy online demo!

http://admuncher.mooo.com


Edit: After a bit more messing around, I managed to also setup a SOCKS proxy - that means you could also use Ad Muncher's filtering remotely for any app that supports it! (eg: MSN, Yahoo, etc) Although currently I've disabled the SOCKS feature (for obvious reasons).

[MackDiesel2010]

I agree that C conversion and program development should come first.

@deXter
proxy functionality is somewhat pointless for paying users. A demo proxy would be a great way to show off the ad removal, but proxies are slow. I know that when I need to use a proxy, I couldn't care less about ads and popups, as the most annoying thing is how slow the pages load. Also, most proxies now have *basic* popup removal functionality. an ad-muncher proxy would not save much load time, and at the office or school, people don't use proxies to get around ads. Such a service for paying admuncher users would not be practical or worth the increased load times.

Of course, if I needed a proxy for circumventing a blocked site at my school, an ad-muncher proxy service would be my first choice, but that's beside my point.

[[deXter]]

I agree that C conversion and program development should come first.

@deXter
proxy functionality is somewhat pointless for paying users. A demo proxy would be a great way to show off the ad removal, but proxies are slow. I know that when I need to use a proxy, I couldn't care less about ads and popups, as the most annoying thing is how slow the pages load. Also, most proxies now have *basic* popup removal functionality. an ad-muncher proxy would not save much load time, and at the office or school, people don't use proxies to get around ads. Such a service for paying admuncher users would not be practical or worth the increased load times.

Of course, if I needed a proxy for circumventing a blocked site at my school, an ad-muncher proxy service would be my first choice, but that's beside my point.

I for one would love to use such a service when I'm away from my home PC. Proxies aren't necessarily slow, I regularly use free anonymous proxies to surf the net, with good speeds too. Well, sure, if you're having a 10Mbps+ connection, you might find it "slow", but I don't find a difference on my 2Mbps line.

I know a lot of people who wouldn't mind using a slightly slow proxy than see all the Ads on some sites. The proxy needn't be run on CGI, it could provide http / socks servies too, making it much more faster, efficient and reliable. I'm running a socks Ad Muncher proxy locally right now, and it works like a charm. I'm using it to surf Ad-free on my Pocket PC, and on a pc that runs QNX. I personally don't find any difference in performance using my local AM-socks proxy.

You know that we can't run Ad Muncher on any other platforms, so this is another advantage of having an AM proxy. Imagine those who use smartphones and such for accessing the net on-the-move, using GPRS or EDGE. Their net is slow as it is, and some providers even charge by the amount of data downloaded. Imagine also being bombarded with Ads at the same time- not only is it slowing down their net, its also increasing their bills as well as wasting precious screen space (since smartphones screens are small). An AM proxy would be immensely useful in such cases. A few of my friends are already pestering me to give them access to my proxy so that they can surf Ad free on their smartphones.

Of course, I too agree with the fact that AM development should get first priority (its been ages already since we've been hearing about gzip / http 1.1 / C ), but my point here is that not only is the proxy-for-registered-users idea very useful and feasibe, it also requires minimal effort to set it up. So this is something that should be on the AM team's plans, if not now, atleast in the near future.

[horizon]

Any chance to see the package, which I could deploy to my home machine?

[[deXter]]

@horizon:

Just get a proxy server that works with Ad Muncher. Personally, I'm using ccproxy and it works well. Set Ad Muncher to filter ccproxy, and thats it. Enter your PC's IP address on any other machine and surf ad free

[horizon]

Ok, I'll give it a try

[horizon]

Hi, I cannot make to work. i have got ccproxy running but I am stuck

[[deXter]]

Hi, I cannot make to work. i have got ccproxy running but I am stuck

Add ccproxy to Ad Muncher's list of programs to filter. Also, make sure that you've got some open ports, ie check whether you can access any sort of server on your pc from the net. You may need to enable port forwarding in your router.

[horizon]

Yep, deployment of ccproxy and it's configuration might be clear. This enables me to use from intranet), but I am wondering, how can I utilize ccproxy's filtering (running on my home server) from extranet. Like you demnostrated. :-O

[Jeff]

Keep in mind that this can't be used to bypass Ad Muncher's license restrictions.