How's the Weather Up There?

A number of companies will install adware software for you and in exchange for whatever they do to your PC, will provide you with a minimum of weather information, such as the temperature, on your taskbar. That's helpful if:

1. You are too stupid to hang a thermometer outside your window.
2. You cannot be bothered to open a Web browser and go to Weather.com.
3. You don't have enough pop-ups in your life.

Here are two:

• Weatherscope:
  
  
  
  Your computer utilites may not report the weather, but download our software and we'll be sure that your computer utilities now report your every coming and going on the Internet to us and report who's buying ad space from us, oh, yeah, and we'll show you the temperature, too.
  
  
• Weatherbug:
  
  
  
  A slightly less classy pop-under ad. Not only does it not identify the real reason the company wants you to install its software, but it couches it in terms of a taskbar update. As computer security experts want users to download updates immediately for their own safety, Weatherbug hopes to cash in on the gullible who will install their legitrojan.
  
  Surely Weatherbug would insist that users know the difference. Some do. Some might even think it's a clever turn on the whole operating system update/upgrade. But both of those users work for Weatherbug's marketing department. This type of po-under ad is the equivalent of Time-Warner magazines shipping out Fortune subscription junk mail designed like due invoices. Sure, attentive users will recognize the difference and might subscribe, but the ads take advantage of confused elderly people who think it is a bill and just write a check. Or a dozen. For Entertainment Weekly, Fortune, Time, and all the rest of them, thus ensuring that the bulk of their estates will be perpetual subscriptions (and "Early Renewal Savings Vouchers").