April Fools Day 2011


I do like a good April Fools prank and so am going to keep a little list of my favourites today. Here we go:

Royal Charging:

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Control Google Mail with your Body!!!

How it works

Gmail Motion uses your computer’s built-in webcam and Google’s patented spatial tracking technology to detect your movements and translate them into meaningful characters and commands. Movements are designed to be simple and intuitive for people of all skill levels.

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Google have helpfully made a list of common actions and phrases to help you get started with this GROUND BREAKING new method of communication:

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Already they’ve got the next implementation of this lined up – Motion in Google Docs:

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For more information and Health & Safety tips, visit:

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/motion.html

Google AutoComplete:

Google’s innovation keeps on coming…now they’re making AutoComplete even better…

The role: Autocompleter

Are you passionate about helping people? Are you intuitive? Do you often feel like you know what your friends and family are thinking and can finish their thoughts before they can? Are you an incredibly fast Google searcher? Like, so fast that you can do 20 searches before your mom does 1?

If, like me, you’re thinking this job sounds pretty brilliant, your enthusiasm may be tempered by the required skills. I think only a few great people will be up to scratch for this:

Responsibilities:
  • Watch anonymized search queries as they come in to Google.
  • Predict and type completions based on your personal experience and intuition.
  • Suggest spelling corrections when relevant.
  • Keep updated with query trends and offer fresh suggestions.
Requirements:
  • Excellent knowledge of English and at least one other language.
  • Excellent knowledge of grammatical rules (e.g. parts of speech, parsing).
  • Understanding of the search engine space.
  • Proven web search experience.
  • Good typing skills (at least 32,000 WPM).
  • Willingness to travel (in order to provide local autocompletions) or relocate to obscure places like Nauru and Tuvalu to develop knowledge of local news and trends.
  • Certificate in psychic reading strongly preferred: palm, tarot, hypnosis, astrology, numerology, runes and/or auras.

New Domino’s iPhone App:

NEW ‘SM-APP’ RELEASES PIZZA SCENT WHEN ORDERING

“The new ‘sm-app’ from Domino’s uses the latest in aroma technology to release a small amount of pizza scent from the iPhone when customers place an order. The ‘scratch and sniff’ page within the new sm-app, is displayed after the ordering section and simply by rubbing the iPhone screen, the mouth-watering smell of a Pepperoni Passion wafts straight out of the phone”

The new sm-app is compatible with all iPhone models. For more details on how to download it, visit Domino’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/DominosPizza

Linkedin

Check out the “People I Might Know” section on LinkedIn:

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Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard, one the world’s most successful gaming companies, are also pretty great at April fools…here are the FOUR they hit us with today!!!

Horadric Cube:

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To learn how to make your Angry Birds become ninjas, and more, fly to:

http://us.blizzard.com/diablo3/media/horadrapp/

Tomb of Immortal Darkness:

Bringing true realism to WarCraft and using “Deep Dark” technology, the world of “Omgsogoth” is almost completely pitch black…all the way through:

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As the tagline says, In the dark, no-one can hear you scream!

To see more (pun intended) head over to:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/game/dungeon/tomb-of-immortal-darkness

Crabby, the WarCraft Helper:

The World of Warcraft can be a cold, lonely, unforgiving place and wandering the lands alone can be a daunting prospect. So having someone to keep you company and help you in your quest would be good right? Blizzard certainly think so…say hello to Crabby:

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See more at:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/game/dungeon-helper/

Future of StarCraft…with Kinect Support!

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Perfectly optimised for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Kinect system, you can use gesture-based controls to direct your forces and out-move your enemies. Wave your arms in the air like you do, in fact, care.

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To see the video of this in action, jump to:

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/console/

Microsoft Research & Guitar Hero


Guitar Hero is awesome (and Rockband-don’t worry!) and Microsoft Research are pretty great too. So what happens when you put the two together? I’ll tell you…playing Guitar Hero without a controller!

This would definitely reduce the amount of space that all the guitars take up, and make it easier to carry them around (should you wish). They also show the technology being used to control an MP3 player whilst out jogging…just move a finger to skip, pause, play etc…something that would definitely take off 🙂

Again, more great work from Microsoft Research 🙂

1 Year anniversary


Today (24/09/09) is the first year anniversary of my first blog post 🙂 It wasn’t much, just a little hello to get me started followed the day after by a post on the MS Roundtable.

I’m not 100% sure what made me decide to start blogging, although I’d joined Twitter a few weeks before so I think that might have been part of it! Seeing people sharing information to help others to discover new things, solve issues being experienced and just generally being social with people all across the world was pretty great and I’m really glad to be part of it now 🙂

Thank you to everyone who has visited, linked to and mentioned my blog. I’m happy that it’s been useful to you and I hope it will continue to be so 🙂

Going to Pieces: Awesome horror documentary


I’ve just watched “Going to Pieces: The Rise & Fall of the Slasher movie” and it’s brilliant…interesting, enjoyable and it brought back memories of watching all those awesome 80’s horror films back in the day 🙂 It’s full of interviews with horror legends like John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tom Savini & Rob Zombie among others as well as clips from all the films you love like:

It’s great to hear first hand accounts of what it was like to be part of (pretty much) creating a whole new genre with tales from the directors, FX guys and stars. It’s also great to see clips from films that you’ve forgotten about or perhaps never heard of…my LoveFilm list jumped up by about 15 films this evening with a bunch of films I’ve not seen for years like House of a 1000 corpses, Nightmare on Elm Street & Maniac Cop as well as films I never got round to watching like Maniac, Slumber Party Massacre & Prom Night 🙂

Do you like Scary Movies?

If you’re into Horror/Slasher films in any way then you should definitely check this out. If you’re kind of interested in them and would like some help in choosing which films you should watch-check this out. If you don’t like horror or gore-then stay away 😉

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