April 4, 2010
Ike Pigott on the future of reporting
Ike Pigott argues that, as the number of conventional journalists plummets, corporations will have to hire their own “embedded” journalists to fill the void. Read more
| Categories: Blogosphere, Mark Logic, Online media, Social software and online media | 5 Comments |
April 1, 2010
Google funniest joke of the year (that I’ve noticed so far)
I just noticed a subtle and really funny Google joke. Look at where on the search results page it tells you how long the search took. They’re screwing around with the units of time (and in some cases substituting actual measures of speed). So far I’ve noticed figures in units of:
- Centibeats
- Microfortnights
- Microweeks
- Nanocenturies
- “The velocity of an unladen swallow”
- Planck times
- Shakes of a lamb’s tail
- Warp (Star Trek, of course)
- Centons (Battlestar Galactica)
- Parsecs (a unit of time in Star Wars Episode IV
) - Jiffies
- Skidoo (23.00 skidoo, to be precise)
- Gigawatts (pretty hard to explain how that’s a unit of time or velocity)
- Epochs (one precise figure was 1.25e-15 epochs)
- Hertz
- Femtogalactic years
I haven’t tried to check or estimate the conversion factors used.
Related links
- 2010 April Fool’s Day highlights
- My recent roundup of past years’ April Fool’s highlights
- A companion roundup of other, even funnier pranks
- My alternative to pranks: April No-Fooling Day
- Google Operating System with more on Google’s 2010 April Fool’s jokes.
| Categories: Fun stuff, Google, Humor | Leave a Comment |
April 1, 2010
April Fool’s Day highlights
It’s April 1, and hence time for jests, online or otherwise. Highlights this year include:
- In a charming blog post, Google annoucned the new Android Translate For Animals feature.
- Reddit has apparently made every user an administrator, throwing the whole site –or at least the Reddit hot stories list — into chaos.
- A video depicts icons falling off of an iPhone onto a table.
- Firetoys, Ltd., whoever they are, are promoting a Back To The Future style hoverboard. I want one!
Edit: And more being added as I find them:
Related links
- My recent roundup of past years’ April Fool’s highlights
- A companion roundup of other, even funnier pranks
- My alternative to pranks: April No-Fooling Day
| Categories: Fun stuff, Google, Humor, Social software and online media | 3 Comments |