April Fool’s Collection

Okay so I am tentatively going to say that I aim to be posting a bit more. No promises as I am still very busy, but on with it!

So yesterday was April 1st and as usual we saw  numerous gags take the blogosphere, some funny, some were so quick you would have missed them. I posted about one on The Global Geek Blog that I found quite humorous. That said I did not go out and hunt them all down. Fortunately a few kind souls have done that for us.

First up The Bloggers Blog has done a nice round up of most of the online pranks that were staged. There were some great ones, I particularly liked the WiiHelm from Think Geek. They always come up with a ripper. I saw one joke from them (I have no idea if it was an April Fool) that detailed a product that was a “wireless extension cord”, very funny. The Geeks there even went to the effort to rig up a demo version and a video for the WiiHelm which had the right amount of stupidity about it.

Wikipedia have compiled a more definitive list of jokes and pranks. This list also includes print, television and audio media. Might also be worth checking the legit stories that were not April Fools gags but were mistaken as such. Always good to know. I just about gave up reading the RSS feeds yesterday as I was begining to think that everything was a joke. Must have been a bad day for news.

Other April Fools 2007 Lists and Resources:

Urgo’s 2007 List of April Fool’s Day Jokes on Websites: Add one if you can not find it

2007 April Fools Jokes by goodstuff: Do the April Fools Jokes Web2.0 style with this tour on Trailfire. It would have been nice  if this was a bit more exhaustive, but that would be a huge job to put together. Nice way to see them though, including descriptions.

Have fun and get thinking for next year, maybe your prank will top the lot, might make you famous even.

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Google Earth 4 Released

For those of you that are still staring at the Apple keynote, here is some other news to prod you with. Google Earth 4 is out of beta and available for download as of today. Isn’t it great when something really big happens and then lots of other stuff follows, I think Google are just making sure you have not forgotten about them.

Seriously though, Google Earth 4 is a nice upgrade from the last version. I have been using the beta version for a while now and the features are impressive and functional. The interface is much cleaner and easier to use while supporting some nice additions to the regular “Earth Browsing” experience:

• 3D Models
• Time Animations
• New Appearance
• Now Supports Controllers such as Joysticks and 3D Navigation Devices
• Heaps of Regions and Layers to Play with – both serious and fun

If you have not used Google Earth before then now is the time to. It is a great fun piece of software. In addition to that there are some very interesting features that make it more than a toy. Such as the new integration with Wikipedia and National Geographic, in a cool way; not boring at all. Or what about some historical maps? There are far too many features and exciting new additions to mention here. Go and discover!

Apple Rock the World

Well that is how I feel at any rate. I have often wonderewd if I would like a Mac. Watching Steve Jobs and his keynote presentation makes you want one. Huge announcements and the biggest (if the blogosphere is anything to go by) being the iPhone.

If you have not watched the keynote then I suggest that you do, for the whole effect and demo’s of the devices that are presented. The streaming video is about two hours. However, for those of you that might be a bit bandwidth impaired there is a blow by blow written account of the presentation with photos on Engadget.

I have watched it and I was indeed blown away. But there have been enough people blog about what Steve has said so I am not going to repeat it. But from another angle, I was reading through my feeds and came across an entry made on 37 Signals and I would have to say that it is a nice “prediction” of what the “Apple Phone” was going to be. As it was written before the announcement it is an interesting reflection and not far from the truth.

No doubt the details of the keynote will provide weeks of blogging material for a lot of people and then some. The details make for much more interesting reading this is mainly hype at the moment. I don’t see Microsoft anywhere, I do think they have reason to worry. I want a Mac.