Dr Peppers Chatroulette cheerleader prank

View Video on YouTube

This is why Dr Pepper is my soft drink of choice. It is by far the best April fool’s day prank in this year.

xkcd switches to terminal

The web comic xkcd made quite a nifty terminal based website design.

Google UK’s Translate for Animals

View Video on YouTube

Google always goes all out for their April Fool’s day jokes (In fact most of the Google product team’s done something). This year, I think the UK translate team’s was the most creative and that you can download the application on the Google Translate for Animals website.

Train Signal announces Windows 3.1 is the Future of Computing

View Video on Train Signal

The amount of time and effort that went into this video is crazy! Each time I’ve re-watched it I’ve noticed something new. It’s defiantly worth a watch if you have creative block (or you want to see what Windows 3.1 looks like).

4chan adds Facebook Connect

4chan tweeted that they are introducing 4chan 2.0 (beta), which now includes facebook connect.

Wikipedia’s features “Wife Selling”

Wikipedia featured an article about Wife Selling.

The Guardian reported about “Google Canoodle”

The Guardian reported that Google is mapping British water ways with a canoe. This strangely seems like quite a good idea.

Google Wave’s Human Notifications

View Video on YouTube

Google Wave announced you can now have Dr Wave, Ashton Kutcher or a Puppy notify you when you have a new wave.

The Independent – Hadron Collider planned for Circle Line

Lastly, The Independent reported that a Hadron Collider was planned for the Circle Line in the London Underground.

Video Stream Caching

One of the big annoyances I have with streaming video files (normally on websites such as YouTube & Megavideo) is whenever I go to jump to another section of the video I lose what I currently have already loaded. It would be really useful if I could quickly go back to the section I’ve previously loaded.

This is a mock up I done, the video I used is from RayWilliamJohnson

I’m quite sure this would need to be implemented by the software, but I can’t see how it would be difficult to add.

Facebook – Pop-up chat

Pop-ups are a double edge sword; on the one hand they have been used incorrectly and become an utter annoyance. But on the other, they also can drastically improve a users experience with a website. For example the Facebook chat system is very inconvenient as I have to be looking at a Facebook page to talk to people. On a big screen this might not be a big issue, but on a small screen this makes it surprisingly difficult to  multi-task.

Oh noes! I can’t see the chat & watch the video

However, if Facebook make the chat system as a desktop application or just available in a pop-up I suspect that would solve issue.

JavaScript Library Integrated into browsers

It seems silly that I have to keep re-downloading the same file (A Javascript Library) to make a webpage more exciting. I would love to see not just jQuery, but most JavaScript libraries integrated into browsers (maybe as a add-on or something?) to speed up the download times of webpages.

On the other hand, it could be time to consider a new browser based language which is designed to make surfers & developers lives easier. For example adding a new attribute to html forms which allowed for browser specific (so people with screen readers will not be disadvantaged) validation.

<form>
<fieldset>
<label>Phone Number:
<input name="price" type="text" value="090 111 050" /></label>
</fieldset>
</form>

OpenID/Facebook Connect – More widely adopted

I hate having to sign up to websites, especially when I could just as easily use a login details from a single source. It would be really cool if more websites allowed for a “one click registration” option.

Adobe Flash – Video Player Standardization

One of my biggest pet hates is going onto a nice website just to find features I expect to find, or actions I believe are normal are just not present on the video players. For example I think it is normal for a click on a video to mean “pause” and a double click to go to full screen mode. I think this is just something Web Developers need to consider.

Big thanks to Dan for showing me this ^^

1. Heineken’s Walk-In Fridge

Heineken’s New Walk-In Fridge Commercial – Watch more Funny Videos

2. Cadbury’s Gorilla Advert

Cadburys advert – Watch more Funny Videos

3. Sneezing In Ultra Slow Motion

Sneezing In Ultra Slow Motion – Watch more Funny Videos

4. Job Interview

6. Are you Ready to Jet?

Maru the Cat Vs. Big Box – Watch more Funny Videos

Enjoy

View Apple’s iPod Shuffle Website | Buy it on Amazon

I’m not sure what to make of this, either someone at Apple has gone crazy or they released it’s next wave of geniuses.

The Specifications can be found here.

Related Links

Future Stuff : 4GB iPod Shuffle in the works?
SNL Envisioned New iPod Shuffle in 2005
Apple’s redesigned iPod shuffle hits 4GB, talks to you

Bore Me Lunchtime Shuffle – View

Between 12pm and 2.30pm Bore Me plays 5 videos back to back, so you can sit back and eat your lunch while having a giggle. However, it only works around lunchtime (unless you change your computers clock). If they added a “It’s not lunch, but show anyway” button it would be a lot better.

Innovation Rating: 3/5
A great idea, design and execution lets it down.