Who’s Fooling You This April?
Today is April 1st, and over the years it has become customary to fool people on this day. The Internet is normally a prime fooling-ground, so you can imagine what the web gets like on April 1st.
We’re just going to tell you about a few of today’s pranks that made the news.
1. The April Fools Computer Worm
CNN reports that the computer worm expected to exploit millions of computers on April 1st, appears to be hoax.
However, fears that the worm, called Conficker.c, would cause chaos with Windows-based machines worldwide appear to unfounded.
There have been no reports of problems so far.
As many as 10 million PCs are thought to be infected with the worm. In theory, that gives an unknown master computer control of these infected “zombies,” allowing the master to push a malicious computer program onto the machines.
So far, that appears not to have happened, despite the fact that a bit of code in the worm had set it to launch automatically on April 1, computer experts said.
Google is a prime offender when it comes to April Fools pranks, and this year is no exception.
2. YouTube is Upsidedown. According to YouTube…..
Our internal tests have shown that modern computer monitors give a higher quality picture when flipped upside down—kind of like how it’s best to rotate your mattress every six months. You might find that YouTube videos look better this way.
3. Google claims to have been taken over by an artificial intelligence called CADIE
So you can expect to see her influence crop up in a number of Google products in the months to come. That will happen slowly and carefully, though, and we ask for your patience as we work through a few initial bugs. It seems CADIE has a mind of her own… (Read the full post at the official Google Blog)
4. Google releases its Chrome Web Browser with 3D.
Google, or rather CADIE has released a version of Google Chrome optimized for 3D.
Using technology known asstereoscopy, CADIE brings you the web in 3D. Stereoscopy provides the illusion of depth by presenting slightly different images to each eye. You’ll need to use our printable glasses in order to experience the web in 3D.
5. New AutoPilot Feature for Gmail automaticaaly composes mail responses.
As more and more everyday communication takes place over email, lots of people have complained about how hard it is to read and respond to every message. This is because they actually read and respond to all their messages.
There are actually a lot more Google related pranks, but other companies and websites got into the do as well.
6. Internet Explorer 8.1 (codenamed Eagle Eyes) supposedly launched.
Eagle Eyes’s most exciting (and highly anticipated by developers) feature is its wide support of Mozilla-based add-ons. Though IE 8.1 duly notes that not all plugins will work perfectly, we have tested four popular Firefox plugins (Firebug, Web Developer, Tab Mix Plus, and No-Script) and they worked flawlessly (some of the developers even claim that – in terms of performance – they work much better under IE 8.1 versus Firefox 3).

Advertisement


