News For April 2, 2008
Entire Internet Goes Crazy Over April Fools
As usual, April Fools day was the internet’s Christmas, with many major and minor websites getting in the holiday spirit, most with unfunny fake news stories. A few were interest or stood out:
- Google AdSense introduced AdSense for Conversations, involving a screen you stuck on top of your head that shows ads based on what you are talking about.
- YouTube turned all the Featured Videos on its front page into links to Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up. The video, already the center of the Rickrolling meme, is now the unofficial anthem of April Fools day, with multiple pranks involving it somehow. The video pulled 6 million views in just one day.
- Phillip listed a ton of others from Google, including a retread “We’re going to space” joke from Google (this time with Richard Branson and Mars and YouTube videos, but even less funny than when they did it in 2006), scratch-and-sniff Google Book Search, Google Talk auto converting everything you say into acronyms, a paper airplane template in Google Docs, custom email time in Gmail, Google Calendar’s Wake Up Kit (which pours a bucket of water on you if you ignore the alarm) and I’m Feeling Lucky button (random blind dates), Orkut renamed Yogurt, and more.
- Blogger launched “Google Weblogs”, essentially a look at what a blog service by Google would have looked like in 2002, before Google discovered UI design
- Andy talked about a Google USB Search Watch. Yes, a watch, as in what you wear on your wrist.
Google Docs Finally Gets Gears Offline Access
Google Docs, the most obvious candidate for offline access, has finally been enabled to work with Google Gears. You can now access and edit your text documents (but not spreadsheets or presentations, yet) without an internet connection, provided you’ve installed the Google Gears plugin. Wonderful news, and hopefully the start of a wave of Google products taking advantage of Google’s offline platform.
Here’s a video about it:
Google Spreadsheets Adds Gadgets
Google Spreadsheets has added a directory of Google Gadgets you can use to extend its functionality. It includes charts, new table functionality, pivot tables, maps, search results, organization charts, and many other features Spreadsheets lacks. It also now has email notifications, autocomplete and a new visualization API. Unlike Docs, Spreadsheets is one area where the majority of users won’t be satisfied with an underpowered Microsoft Word, and any way Google can get advanced features in there, the better.
Google’s Search Lead Continues To Grow
comScore saw Google share of the search market grow in February (surprising no one), reaching 59%. Yahoo fell to 21.6%, Microsoft slipped slightly to 9.6%, and Ask added .1% to reach 4.6%.
Viacom Will Not Get Punitive Damages Vs. YouTube
A judge ruled that if Viacom prevails in its lawsuit against Google-owned YouTube over copyrighted videos, it would not be entitled to punitive damages. Instead, Viacom will have to prove actual damages, with each successfully proven “willfull” violation costing Google up to $300,000, and other costing as little as $750. Gonna have a hard time getting $1 billion out of Google that way.
