Tech for Lunch!

It turns out that Spongebob Squarepants isn’t the only one who loves April Fool’s day! Google plants a few interesting pranks on this day every year and if you’re not careful, you can get caught believing them for a moment or two. Here are the reported pranks for this year…

ADsense for Conversations: Google can now place advertisements in your conversations (although that one wouldn’t be all too surprising..). When you sign up, they will send you head gear to wear on which the ads will display, based on your current conversation.

Gmail Custom Time: This “feature” was implemented in Gmail to allow users to select a date on which to send your emails. The great advantage here is that you can send emails in the past, so you never miss a deadline again. The new feature “utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality“.. they really thought of everything and that one launched a Wikipedia debate.

Virgle: This is a fake collaboration between Virgin’s Richard Branson and Google for an “open-source” Mars expedition. The first users should be able to get to mars by 2014. You can see one of the videos here.

Youtube’s Rickrolling prank: Rickrollin’ is a geek-culture phenomenon in which users send falsified links to others to redirect them to a youtube video of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give you Up”. For the prank, all the featured videos on Youtube’s page redirected everyone to that video.

Google Wake-up Kit: This one was on Google Calendar(you can see it here), offering users new ways to get a wake-up call. “First it will send an SMS message to your phone. If that fails, more coercive means will be used“

I’m Feeling Lucky Dates: Google Calendar also added the famous “I’m feeling lucky” button to allow users to add random events to their calendars, usually dates involving celebrities.

Future Search: Google Australia joined the fun by adding a button under the search bar allowing users to search the web as it will be tomorrow. See the description for gDay here. The technology behind this revolutionary search method is aptly called MATE (Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation).

Google Paper Airplane: This one was on Google Docs and was a new option in the file menu labeled as “New Airplane”. It opened up a document with instructions to fold and make your paper airplane. You can get the PDF document here to fold your very own airplane!

We’ll see you next year for the next pranks…

The internet is certainly not what it used to be and that’s a good thing. It’s not just a geeky network that uses obscure Unix commands to function. The internet is getting to a point where it is as diversified as the world we live in. Poetic, isn’t it? Women represent a very large portion of the online presence and it is no surprise that there are more and more sites tailored to their needs and interests.

Here comes Yahoo! Shine. After introducing Yahoo! Tech and Yahoo! Food in 2006, the company is now adding a new site aimed primarily at women 25 to 54. There are roughly 40 million women in that age demographic surfing the web and that is a category that is very appealing to advertisers. Yahoo! has hired a team of publishers to write fresh content and articles everyday on topics including fashion, beauty, gossip and parenting. You can also find items from other Yahoo sites such as Food or Health.

I think we will see more and more sites aimed at specific demographics like this one because they are a great way of getting a huge audience and sell advertising. This is a part of Yahoo’s Media Strategy. Even though the targeted audience is women, I bet we can still find something interesting to read on there too ;-)

Techforlunch is pretty far from reaching that many articles, but Wikipedia has reached this incredible number this wednesday.  This is my second post on Wikipedia in a very short while and it’s no surprise because it is one of the most visited sites on the internet these days.  I find that Wikipedia is just like Youtube in the sense that there are so many links that it gets addictive - You just can’t stop reading once you start.

The 10 millionth article is a short biography of 16th century English goldsmith and painter Nicholas Hilliard and was created by a user called Pataki Marta.  Of course the article is in hungarian and so, the 10 million count is only because it takes into account all the available languages of Wikipedia.

English is the most popular and largest language for the articles found on the site with 2.3 million entries.  German and French come in second and third place in importance, but neither has reached one million articles yet.  You can see all the available languages and their numbers directly on the site.

Perhaps, one day, Tech for Lunch! will have its own entry on Wikipedia but, until then, we’ll just have to keep reading about Nicholas Hilliard and everything else we can find on there!

I don’t usually cover the gaming industry because that would require an entire blog dedicated to that subject, but sometimes an interesting tidbit comes along that is worth deviating for. I know quite a few people who will be interested by this news: Harmonix has announced that the very anticipated game Rock Band, will finally be available for the Wii on June 22th 2008.

Just like on the other consoles, Rock Band will ship as a special edition set which includes the game, drums, a microphone and a wireless guitar for $169.99. You can then add another guitar if you want to complete the band and… NO!, Guitar Hero III hardware will not work with this game.

Music rhythm games are the fastest growing genre of video games right now and Rock Band has been the best selling game for February of this year. I have played both Rock band and Guitar Hero III on the xbox 360 and both have a little something that the other one doesn’t. If it’s a party music game that you’re looking for though, Rock Band is definitely the way to go because you can get up to 4 players at once rippin’ through some tunes ;-) The Wii version will be a little bit different from other consoles because there will be no online playing and no downloadable songs because the Wii does not have a mass storage solution like the PS3 or Xbox 360.

Still, if the Wii is your console of choice - or the only one you have - you will be able to get your hands on Rock Band and have some fun.

Ever since the internet became a part of the mainstream, there have been people buying a whole bunch of domain names and holding on to them in the hopes of selling them for a profit. If you have ever tried to get a domain name, you already know that there’s a pretty good chance it’s already reserved. This is mostly true for dot coms, but it’s also increasingly true for .net, .org etc… If you’ve ever wondered why most startups on the internet have weird made-up names, you have your answer.

Systematic.com was sold this week for a tiny $400,000! In this case, it’s a company that held the name and ran two separate websites on their domains. They decided to sell that one to eliminate confusion for users. You can find the press release on their new site.

A domain name’s price is based on traffic, popularity and just plain “how cool” it is. The Alexa ranking is usually a good indication of this because most of the domains that are bought for resale have nothing on them except ads, so if it still generates traffic, it means people are actually landing there for different reasons.

This is not really “news” but I though it’s a pretty cool thing (or just insane, perhaps) that a domain gets sold for a good price once in a while.

By now, most of you probably know that all TV broadcasters will have to switch to digital signals instead of analog by 2009. This means that all of this broadcasting space would become available to use by other services. Until now, regulations prevented anyone else than broadcasters to use this so-called “white-space”. By February 2009, this broadcasting space would be available for other kinds of service providers and Google and Microsoft have their eyes on it.

The idea is to use these networks for Wireless broadcasting of all sorts, including Internet-ready mobile phones and many devices which can benefit from constant internet connections. Dell, HP, Intel, Google, Microsoft and Philips are part of a group which has been working on getting the approval to use the airwaves.

I think this could be a good thing in terms of user experience since internet availability isn’t always as fast as we’d like or costs too much for data transfers. An opportunity like this would certainly open up the way and get more and more applications to use these services. Google currently has the most complete, open and free mobile platform, called Android,  being developed by the Open Handset Alliance. This is a big part of their interest in the use of these airwaves. Google has dubbed this as Wi-Fi 2.0 because it would mark the start of a new era in accessibility and convenience.

There has been a bit of a gap between the connected PC browsing experience and the Mobile user experience in terms of web applications. Most applications which are available in a “mobile” version make use of standard web technologies, html, css, etc.. to be usable by mobile users on cell phones or other mobile devices. The gap that remains is for flash applications which are not very well supported on mobile browsers on Windows Mobile.

Microsoft will be licensing Adobe Flash Lite for the Windows Mobile platform. This means that we should be able to view flash applications on mobile browsers equipped with this technology. Adobe Flash Lite is capable of rendering almost the same things as the standard Flash player that’s on your computer, but there are some differences. One of them, is the inability to run Applications created in Flex, but I hope that’s just for the current version.

There are already 300 million flash-enabled mobile devices in the world, so this has nothing revolutionary about it, except the fact that from now on, Microsoft Windows Mobile users should be able to enjoy flash enabled websites as well. Web developers may have to create mobile-specific versions for users to get the most out of their experience because screen sizes and heavy animation are sometimes a problem for mobile browsers, but at least, they will be able to develop using the same technology.

Apparently, this is a very smart move by Microsoft because they have Silverlight on the way, but it’s nowhere near ready to be deployed on Windows Mobile yet.  So this way, they add support for flash and prevent possible antitrust lawsuits for pushing only on Silverlight technology on Windows Mobile.  Time will tell which of these two platforms will be the best choice for mobile users, but Adobe will have to make sure that Flash Lite keeps receiving updates and supports the newer versions of flash applications.

The Husqvarna Company has just put on the market what appears to be the ideal mower. It cuts the grass automatically. That’s right! It does not need human intervention to carry out its task. The name of the device is the Automower.

“The new Husqvarna Automower™ Solar Hybrid is powered by innovative and groundbreaking technology that combines solar power and electricity.”

“This will take Automower to the next level with higher performance and further reduced environmental impact” says Bengt Andersson, CEO Husqvarna Group. He continues, “90% of Automower is recyclable, it eliminates the need for fertilizers, it is almost silent, has no exhaust emissions at all and delivers perfect results every time without you having to lift a finger.”

This mower is a bit like a small wireless vacuum for your home. This is how it works: You must first set the limits of your lawn by installing a wire around the yard. The mower detects the wire in question and then changes direction. You can even create pockets in order, for example, to protect flowers or shrubs.

But what is most surprising of this device is its charging station which is installed outside. This is more or less than a “garage” where the mower will rest at the end of a shift. If it senses that its batteries are beginning to run low, it automatically ceases to cut the grass and will return to its docking station.

It is not available in Canada yet, but there are dealers all over the world. You can use their website to find a dealer near you and to get more information on this cool new gadget.

I’m always interested in seeing the incredible amounts of traffic that get generated by certain sites. Google’s numbers are incredible, but they are certainly not the only ones to get huge traffic these days. Social networking sites are a very popular trend. They have been around for a few years and are still going strong. Compete released the rankings for the top social networking sites for February 2008:

Obviously, MySpace is still the leader in this segment and Facebook is rapidly gaining ground. The interesting thing is the sheer number of unique visitors and monthly visits to these sites. 65 million unique visitors and close to 1 billion visits on MySpace pages during a single month is nothing short of impressive.

The next most interesting point in this figure is the growth that has occured for certain sites. It appears that niche sites are the ones that are grabbing user’s interest on a growing basis. Fubar and Cafemom are good examples of niche sites. Fubar is billed as the “first online bar” and cafemom is directly targeted at, get ready for this one: moms. Other great movers are sites which add a technology touch to the whole social networking fad. Twitter is probably the best example of such a site.

I’m very curious to see what the next big thing will be after Social Networking.

Well, it certainly looks like HD-DVD will not be the standard for High-Definition media releases.  Paramount announced (about a week ago) that they will be dumping HD-DVD in favor of Blu-Ray and the scheduled releases are getting harder to find.  Paramount’s decision comes after Toshiba announced that they would no longer manufacture HD-DVD equipement.  Toshiba was the main driving force behind the standard.  The fact that Sony has integrated the Blu-Ray technology in the Playstation 3 has probably played a role in these decisions.

On a technical stand point, there are several differences between the two formats and there was a format war, just like for Beta vs. VHS, to determine which would be the format of choice for consumers.  The main difference between the two is that HD-DVD can hold a maximum of 30gb of data, while Blu-Ray can hold 50gb.  There are others, but nothing that is really noticeable by consumers.  Personally, I had not made a choice yet, so I’m happy there is a standard on which we can rely from now on.  What this means for consumers is that we will be certain that all movies will be coming out on a single format rather than on having to “hope” your favorite movie comes out on the format that you have a player for.

The computing side is affected by these decisions just the same.  Computer users also had to make a choice on one format or the other, but not anymore.  I’m happy to see that we should be able to store 50gb on a single disc eventually.  We will have to wait for prices to go down a little bit, but I think we can expect the same chain of events as we saw for the DVD format.  Sooner or later, we will just take it for granted and not even worry about it anymore.