In this entry, Scoble points us to WeatherBug, a handy dandy little applet that runs in your taskbar notification area and provides weather information - ok, great, nothing special.  I hadn't used one of these in a few years, I figured I'd give it a shot, see how the “weather on your desktop” genre has come along.

Apparently, it's still just another way to get adware on your box - shame on me for forgetting that, and shame on Scoble for letting his fondness for Steve Rubel overshadow the fact that people trust him more than the average marketing drone.

In any case, as WeatherBug installs, it comes to a screen that has two optional pieces - one piece was something I decided I didn't need (can't remember what it was), and I deselected it.  The other piece was a browser add-in that allowed “quick access” to “all major search engines”, right in your browser.  What's that at the end?  Powered by MySearch?!?!  Well, I certainly have no need for a browser hijacking, popup popping, adware serving toolbar, so I decided to deselect that as well... well, I tried.  No folks, you *have* to install it - they put a little checkbox next to the toolbar, but were also careful to disable it - no adware free computing for you!

Bah.  Next, Next, Finish - open Add/Remove Programs - removed the search bar, removed WeatherBug... good riddance.  Scoble, you should know better.

Oh, one more thing - in the comments of Scoble's entry, Mr. Rubel has already tried to defend the product he's pushing (WeatherBug) by posting a few links that basically state that Weatherbug != spyware/adware.  That's most likely true - WeatherBug isn't, but the MySearch browser add-in that you *have* to install to get WeatherBug most certainly is spyware.

Mental note: marketing people are marketing people, no matter what form their media comes in.