A quick disagreement and then I'll agree with the rest.
NebuAd generally didn't insert ads (except in one known case, a brief trial with Redmoon). And NebuAd's hardware was Juniper. As for the "obviously built a decent product," I'll have to ask you for any data useful to reach any conclusion on their product quality.
said by fcisler:Take that same technology, put it in a business/government...it could be a good thing. Instead of inserting ads, modify it to a "get back to work" or something similar. Modify it to keep track of the users. You "working", so it's not your PC and you business is paying you.
How about something like selling it to a newspaper company. Add buttons like "Flag This" "blatant copy" "link to our site". Researchers can flag a page so that someone can follow up with it. Not the best example.
Either way, I think their base technology could be extended to put them in a spot where congress isn't on their a**.
I think that this is brilliant thinking. And given that users working on a project often will use their Intranet and Internet access for similar purposes, I wonder if such a device might help businesses build better group intelligence about their products and projects.
It would also help drive good use of work connections for work because the data that they transact over their work computers is ultimately shared back within their own projects.
(And while that sounds unattractive, those are the facts. What makes employees mad is the sense of privacy being violated. If there is no privacy in the first place, there is no sense of surprising loss when it is violated. And if the company does want to offer a little unmonitored access for good employee-relations and morale purposes, it can provide VPN proxies that would not be subject to monitoring. Plus, I don't think employees would be as negative about employer monitoring if the monitoring was done for a productive purpose and that they can immediately see the results of it.)
I think you've got a good idea.