Ars Technica’s Casey Johnston has started a fun new game: find out what Google guesses is your age and gender. These “inferred demographics” are based on the websites you visit and are tracked by a Google cookie; they are used for advertising purposes. Given Google’s controversial announcement Tuesday that users will not be able to opt out of new privacy changes, learning what the company thinks about you seems particularly useful, and informative.

The Google ad preference page shows my interests, which is actually evidence of my work plus the interests of the three teenage girls who also use my computer, often without changing to their own Google accounts. Then it guesses that I am male, age 24-34. Wrong on all counts. How is this useful to advertisers? These analytics are based on categorizing individuals based on the perceived behaviors of groups. In real life, we call that discrimination and try to teach our kids not to do it. Either way, there’s a lot of room for error. How wrong are they about you? Link -via Metafilter

When Larry Met Sergey is the highly condensed story of Larry Page and Sergey Brin and the company they named Google. Scroll down for each chapter (slowly, because the graphics are in layers) and watch the men’s hairstyles and clothing change over the years. Link -via the Presurfer  

You know, when someone confides that they sometimes Google themselves, the classic answer is “You’ll go blind!” But this Twaggie, illustrated from a Tweet by @IamMsMoneypenny, strikes close to home for me today. You can see a new Twaggie every day at GoComics. Link

Google has installed another Easter egg, except this one’s more appropriate at Christmas than Easter. Go to Google search and type in Let It Snow, and watch your wish come true! I’ve even made a shortcut for you. Link -via mental_floss

Did you know you can make Google do a barrel roll or go askew? Even if you did, you probably didn’t know at least a few of these funny Google Easter Eggs.

Link

Neatorama readers might have a bit of a leg up on today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. In the wake of the “do a barrel roll” frenzy, they’ve looked up more neat tricks from Google and made some up from imagination as well. Your challenge is to determine which is which. I got 10 out of 12 correct, as I did NOT open a new tab to quick-check the answers. That would be too easy. Link

I learned this morning from reddit that the Google search page will do a barrel roll if you tell it to. That’s far from the only neat tricks Google has embedded in their sites for those who have the time to find them. For those who don’t, Buzzfeed has a list of ten you might have fun checking out. Link

Don’t think for a second that Google’s business is limited to internet services. Indeed, they have their hands in a variety of industries, most recently, they’ve been testing out the beer-making business. That’s right, Google has paired with Dogfish Head beer to make their own Belgian Dubbel beer called Urkontinent.

The final brew included some impressive ingredients sourced around the world: Wattleseed from Australia, toasted amaranth from South America, green rooibos from Africa, myrica gale from Europe, and Hive Plex Honey from Google’s own California beehives. Taken all together, the beer is described by Dogfish as being hearty, with notes of coffee and chocolate covered cherries. Also, it packs more than double the average alcohol content of average beer.

To be fair, Google’s not making any money from the venture, they just want to see how the process works and to use the beer’s creation as a marketing tool. If you saw some Google beer, would you try it?

Link Via Geekosystem

Google has a neat feature that I’d never heard of before today. You can draw a distribution curve and Google will find the search term frequency that most closely resembles it. Mine ended up being “2008 sports cars.”

Link -via Kottke

You've probably heard about how Google is enforcing a "real name" only policy for Google+ social platform (dubbed "Nymwars" and ably covered by Boing Boing).

Here's what the excellent webcomic Joy of Tech think about the whole kerfuffle (Google vs the Man of Steel? Great Scott!): Link

Google is now offering its boyfriend feature to selected users. G-Male is the perfect boyfriend. He knows everything about you! Everything.

Don’t worry about the screenshot displayed. This video from Comediva is completely safe.

Link -via Joe Carter

Oops! It’s a first -an accident caused by a Google driverless Prius. It apparently drove into another Prius near Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. Updates say that the wreck involved three Priuses and two Honda Accords! The question is: who gets the ticket? Link -via The Daily What

I have spent hours just typing in a random location and using Google Maps to “visit” it with the street view application. If that wasn’t entertaining enough (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it) Rorschmap is a website created by James Bridle which takes Google Maps and creates Kaleidoscope like images out of them.

Link

Aaron Wood created three propaganda posters featuring social media giants Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Excuse me while I head on over to Facebook to help out my friends' farms (I hear that there's also a war against mafia brewing. My help is needed!): Link - via +PeteCashmore

One of the nice features of Google+ is that you can sort relationships into different categories that you can name anything you want. Happy Place had some fun with this idea and offered suggestions about how you can categorize your contacts. Link -via Swiss Miss

The winners of the very first Google Science Fair were announced on Monday. Congratulations to the top winners in each age group!

Lauren Hodge in the 13-14 age group. Lauren studied the effect of different marinades on the level of potentially harmful carcinogens in grilled chicken.
Naomi Shah in the 15-16 age group. Naomi endeavored to prove that making changes to indoor environments that improve indoor air quality can reduce people’s reliance on asthma medications.
Shree Bose in the 17-18 age group. Shree discovered a way to improve ovarian cancer treatment for patients when they have built up a resistance to certain chemotherapy drugs.

Shree Bose (center of picture) also won the overall Grand Prize, which comes with a $50,000 scholarship, a trip to the Galapagos Islands, and an internship at CERN. Shah and Hodge also won scholarships and internships at Google and LEGO. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

The first of the features will enable users to search the web simply by speaking their requests. Called Voice Search, the speech-to-text application will be activated by clicking on a microphone icon located next to Google’s query box. Voice Search has already gone mobile as an App for Android phones, but Google wants to enable its users to search via speech recognition on their laptops and desktops as well. In addition to the convenience of not having to type, Voice Search will be a helping hand in those hard-to-spell searches. It’ll also be easier to, as Google puts it, enter “long queries, even really, really long queries, just by talking.” Initially, Voice Search will only be available on Chrome browsers, but they plan to make it compatible with other browsers in the future.

Link

Be warned, if you tend to cry after watching emotionally-charged moments, this article (particularly the videos) might have you spraying your computer with tears. I know I was misty-eyed while writing it.

1. Borderlands

I have to admit, this just might be my favorite wedding proposal ever. Ben and his girlfriend, Tora, were both seriously addicted to the popular Gearbox RPG shooter Borderlands. That’s why when Ben decided to ask Tora to marry him, he decided to ask Gearbox for help popping the question. The company’s response was more positive than Ben ever could have hoped for, as they spent a week working on a special Borderlands-themed wedding proposal video for the couple. It even featured a few hilarious quips from the robot character, Claptrap.

Ben got all of Tora’s friends and family members together under the guise of throwing her a birthday party and unveiled the video by saying he got a hold of a new Borderlands trailer. Needless to say, after watching the video, Tora’s response was a big fat “yes,” although she did later admitted that she was a little upset that Ben got to go to the Gearbox studio without her.

Video links #1 and #2

2. Mario

This guy and his girlfriend both seriously love Mario (if you couldn’t tell already by looking at the room) so in order to ask his girlfriend to marry him, he set up a functional Mario question mark box that would drop the ring when she hit it with her head. While the set up is exactly as geeky as you might expect, it’s surprisingly emotionally touching when she tries to hold back her tears as she jumps to hit the box.

Video link

3. Bejeweled

If your girlfriend loves the game Bejeweled and you happen to be a software programmer, you can do something above and beyond if you’re so inclined. Or at least, that’s what Bernie Peng did when he decided to propose, using his programming skills to create a custom Bejeweled game. Once the score got high enough, the regular screen would clear out and a ring would appear on the DS screen. Bernie then dropped to one knee and presented her with a pink ring that looked like it belonged in the game.

As if the story weren’t great enough on its own, the company that makes Bejeweled was so impressed by Bernie’s proposal that they offered to pay for the couple’s honeymoon and they volunteered to supply all of the wedding guests with a free version of Bejeweled. Now that’s a great way to capitalize on the publicity of the wedding proposal!

4. Google Maps

Michael Weiss-Malik’s girlfriend already agreed to marry him during a low-key, at home proposal, but Michael felt the occasion needed more pizazz, so he moved on to his proposal 2.0 plan, which involved a hot tip he learned at work. Did I mention Michael works at Google?

When the Google Street View car was set to drive by the company’s headquarters, everyone was invited to go outside and wave at the car, but Michael opted to do something even more memorable. He dressed in some kind of animal costume and stood outside holding a banner that read “Proposal 2.0 Marry Me Leslie!!”

Then, instead of emailing her the link directly, he asked internet users to email her and tell her why she should marry Michael or to link to his website that included the Google Street View scene.

5. Muppets

Anyone can order a custom Muppet doll to propose for them, but Sid Ceaser decided to go one step further by making a three minute long, professional-looking video staring Muppets made to look like him and his girlfriend. He then brought her to the movies where the proposal film was played before the feature presentation. When she said yes, the lights came on, revealing that her friends and family made up the entire theater audience.

Video link

6. Light Writing

Light Writing Proposal from Derick Childress on Vimeo.

Light graffiti involves using lights and a camera to “tag” a building or other surface. Usually, it’s taken close up in one long-exposure shot, but when one photographer decided to use the technique to ask his girlfriend to marry him, the production got pretty massive pretty fast. In order to spell out “Emily Will You Marry Me?” the photographer decided to shoot the massive light letters from a high vantage point that would show a huge chunk of downtown Raleigh.

After scouting out the perfect building, he rented a hotel room there and had his friends help him shoot the images and throw out the lights to create the writing. The process was incredibly tedious and technical, but if you want to learn more about how it was done, his website has a lot more information. If you don’t care about the technical side of things, the video shows all you need to know…how the lights spelled out his message.

Video link

7. LOL Cats

I Can Has Cheezburger played a critical role in this marriage proposal, where a man used photos of his cat and ICHC’s classic LOL builder to create a one-of-a-kind proposal that went on the site’s front page. When she gave her answer, they added a few captioned pics of the girl with her kitty to the post so everyone knew she gave a resounding “afurrmitive” to the question.

8. Comics

As a freelance artist who has worked on a number of major comic books, Leigh Gallagher knew he didn’t spend enough time at home or give his girlfriend nearly enough attention. That’s why he made sure his proposal comics were filled with heart-filled confessions, humor and an unbelievable attention to detail. Despite his self-confessed flaws, the comics made one thing abundantly clear: Leigh is one heck of a catch.

If all the touchy-feeliness of this article has gotten to you and you want to read about a few proposals that haven’t gone this smoothly, then you might want to check out this older Neatorama article featuring 14 Romantic Gestures Gone Terribly Wrong.

Of course, if you are feeling the emotions here, feel free to share your own proposal stories in the comments!

In general, quitting Google was easier than I thought. One of the biggest lessons for me was that Google’s not the best at everything. I’m thrilled to be rid of Google Tasks. I realize now that I was always dealing with its deficiencies; it’s not even supported on Android, and it had a tendency to undo my recent changes. I now use a site called Todoist, which I find vastly superior. I had never bothered to research alternatives before, and I ended up falling for the inferior product out of what I thought was convenience.

It’s easy to get seduced by the lure of a single sign-on. But managing multiple user accounts actually isn’t as much of an annoyance as we think it is. For me, it quickly became clear that my single Google account had mixed and muddled my personal and professional services and data. There are many online services that make sense to link together—but there are plenty of others that don’t. Calendar and e-mail might be a good fit, but do you need to use the same company to manage your social contacts, RSS feeds, and to-do lists? What about your phone and computer operating system? Even in the midst of the experiment, it was hard to remember to sign-out of the Google account; I was signed in by default, just as I’m also often signed in to Twitter and Facebook without realizing it.

Link via Glenn Reynolds | Photo by Flickr user orangeacid used under Creative Commons license

For those of you that treat your smart phone and tablet like it’s your best friend, you may now be able to get one step closer to having an actual companion. Google and the company iRobot have teamed up to create the AVA robot which rolls on wheels and uses a tablet computer as its “head.”

AVA is a pedestal shaped bot on wheels which can autonomously navigate itself through a crowd without breaking anyone’s ankles. While containing a great deal of its own functionality, AVA’s head is a tablet computer. Any tablet computer. iPad2, Galaxy, you name it – iRobot claims they want AVA to be “head agnostic”.

Link

How well do you remember -or decipher- the alterations that Google makes to their logo for special occasions? Test your knowledge with the Google Doodle quiz, from our own social networking expert David Israel. Hey, I scored 58% just by guessing. You will probably do much better! Link

Since humans were able to conceive of the concept of time they have wanted to know the future. And with the advent of Google we have come even more expectant of having any and all information at our fingertips. Have you ever found yourself wanting to Google something that doesn’t exist yet? Sports scores to a game that hasn’t been played? Find results for the 2012 presidential election? Well now someone has cataloged future events for each year as determined by the first page of Google search results. What comes up is an interesting list of visions of what’s to come. Only a small portion of the time line is shown here. Link

Bruno Miguel snapped this photograph of Yoda, just moments before he became a Jedi Master. Now you know where he got his infinite wisdom. The best part is that the Yoda in the picture came from the NeatoShop! Link -Thanks, Bruno!

IN early 2009, statisticians inside the Googleplex here embarked
on a plan code-named Project Oxygen.

Their mission was to devise something far more important to the future of Google Inc. than its next search algorithm or app.

They wanted to build better bosses.

So, as only a data-mining giant like Google can do, it began analyzing performance reviews, feedback surveys and nominations for top-manager awards. They correlated phrases, words, praise and complaints.

Later that year, the “people analytics” teams at the company produced what might be called the Eight Habits of Highly Effective Google Managers.

Adam Bryant of The New York Times has the full story: Link (Photo: Peter DaSilva/The New York Times)

You may have participated in local or regional science fairs where you had to be in the same physical space to compete with kids in your area. Now any student with an idea can participate from anywhere, and share their idea with the world. You build and submit your project—either by yourself or in a team of up to three—entirely online. Students in India (or Israel or Ireland) will be able to compete with students in Canada (or Cambodia or Costa Rica) for prizes including once-in-a-lifetime experiences (like a trip to the Galapagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer), scholarships and real-life work opportunities (like a five-day trip to CERN in Switzerland). And if you’re entering a science fair locally, please feel free to post that project online with Google Science Fair, too!

You can enter up until April 4th. Find links to the rules, prizes, and particulars at the Official Google Blog. Link -via Discoblog

Google has a new tool in which you can search the books that Google has digitized for a keyword and get statistics from as far back as the 16th century. The Google Book Ngram Viewer gives you data you can use to track the popularity of …just about anything. For example, Geeks Are Sexy looked as terms like “geek”, “computer geek”, and “computer hacker” to ascertain that geeks are indeed, gaining in popularity. Link

This promotional video for Google Docs shows how the utility’s presentation options can be used to create a fairly sophisticated animated short. It took 3 animators 3 days to complete the 413 slides. You can view the file at the link.

Link via Urlesque

Google has now released the Zeitgeist, a report on search patterns and trends, for 2010. New for this year is that they have added interactive HTML5 data visualizations for the top queries and events from around the world.

Link – via Official Google Blog

What a neat idea! Type the name of each state in the US into the Google search field one at a time, and see what autocomplete suggestions come up. Then make a map of them. That’s what happened at Very Small Array, which resulted in this. I would have guessed Kentucky easily. See a larger version of this map at the site. Link -via The Daily What

One enterprising redditor named harrichr found that it is possible to make Google Translate’s audio function generate a beatbox sound. Here’s the process.

1) Go to Google Translate

2) Set the translator to translate German to German

3) Copy + paste the following into the translate box: pv zk pv pv zk pv zk kz zk pv pv pv zk pv zk zk pzk pzk pvzkpkzvpvzk kkkkkk bsch

4) Click “listen”

5) Be amazed

You can try it out yourself at the Google Translate link below.

Google Translate Link and reddit Link via Geekosystem

So, I’m sure you all have heard about Google’s latest product called Google Instant. If you’re tired of waiting for that fraction of a second for your search result, this is the search engine for you:

Using the new system, as a query is typed, the search box immediately jumps to the top of the search page, and a constantly changing list of suggested pages appears. If the user finds the right site, they don’t need to finish typing or hit "enter." (Source)

Basically, Google tries to predict what you want based on what other people search – and serve up the results faster than you can type out the full query.

The Official Google Blog notes:

The user benefits of Google Instant are many—but the primary one is time saved. Our testing has shown that Google Instant saves the average searcher two to five seconds per search. That may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up. With Google Instant, we estimate that we’ll save our users 11 hours with each passing second!

That’s all fine and dandy – but I say let’s bring on the new bragging game: What’s Your Google Number? How many letters does it take for your blog to come up as the first result on the new Google Instant?

Neatorama is 4 (NEA brings out Neatorama in the search suggestions, but a full NEAT is required to bring out the blog in the search result). That’s pretty good, but not as cool as 4chan which comes out with just a "4."

The Taiwanese animators, who burst into the Web’s collective consciousness with their rendition of the Tiger Woods drama, are back. This time, their target is no other than Google (and its lost of mojo).

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Epicenter

After some intensive analysis, we’ve come up with a number. Standing on the shoulders of giants—libraries and cataloging organizations—and based on our computational resources and experience of organizing millions of books through our Books Library Project and Books Partner Program since 2004, we’ve determined that number.

As of today, we estimate that there are 129,864,880 different books in the world. That’s a lot of knowledge captured in the written word! This calculation used an algorithm that combines books information from multiple sources including libraries, WorldCat, national union catalogs and commercial providers. And the actual number of books is always increasing.

Link via Cool-O-Rama | Photo by Flickr user Nrbelex used under Creative Commons license

If you Google my nom de bullshit, Mister Jalopy, all the top hits are for web pages that I control. And my e-mail address is right on the front page of all of them. For detractors, fans and spam scraping robots alike, I am super easy to find.

Despite my almost annoying ever presence, people are always asking for my business card. I understand. It is not so much about my contact information as a physical token of us having met. An artifact to record the moment. So, now I have a business card!

Just Google me!

Links: Google Mister Jalopy | Or for you old-school web surfers: Mister Jalopy’s official website – via Dinosaurs and Robots

Previously on Neatorama: 10 Geeky Business Cards

Are you tired of people asking you questions that are easily answered by Google in the first place? If Let Me Google That For You isn’t enough of a hint for them, why not play a little harmless prank? Behold Google Gravity, a lil project by Mr.doob – via Gearfuse

The effect doesn’t work on Internet Explorer, which is undoubtedly the browser used by people who don’t know to use Google first, so it’s sadly kind of ironic.

Thanks to a partnership between Google and the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, a full, 3D, accurate model of the upcoming memorial is visible on Google Earth. Even though the memorial isn’t slated to be finished until at least next September, visitors to Google will be able to see what awaits them next year. The model includes the 1,776 ft tall Freedom Tower, the two reflecting pools that serve as “footprints” of the twin towers, and even the 400 white oak trees that will grace the 16-acre memorial.

So razor-sharp and up-close are the visual details that family members will be able to hone in on the nearly 3,000 bronze nameplates that will identify the innocents who were massacred in the 2001 attacks.

Link to story. Link to virtual tour. – via gothamist

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

Google’s celebration of Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary was fun, enabling people to play Pac-Man on their main search page, either as a one- or two-player game. And people certainly took advantage of the opportunity, spending approximately 4,819,352 hours on the game alone. The result is approximately $120 million in productivity lost, in one day.

Thankfully, Google tossed out the logo with pretty low “perceived affordance” – they put an “insert coin” button next to the search button, but I imagine most users missed that. In fact, I’d wager that 75% of the people who saw the logo had no idea that you could actually play it. Which the world should be thankful for.

Link – via gizmodo

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

With $70 billion in advertisements placed on television each
year, Google can easily turn a profit from getting into the TV business. Google has been meeting with many electronic and retail CEO’s to work out their newest creation. Google TV shows great promise if it is as wondrous as some their other ideas. Link
 

– via informationweek

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by sshuggi.

It may be long (nearly 50 minutes), but Conan’s recent appearance at Google was full of insight, hilarity, and general Conan-ness.

At one point (around 23:30) he leaves the stage to let an audience member touch his hair. This is shortly after his "impression of rapper Ludacris" after being asked about Jay Leno.

The program was hosted by Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering, who allowed Conan to poke fun at him, Google, and anything else.

– via blogs

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

I know from experience with this blog that redesigns are fraught with uncertainties - new things may break, people fear change and get attached to a particular style, and so on - so I'm watching the Google redesign with particular interest.

Google is rolling out a new look (you may or may not yet see the new design) that's sleeker and, well, different. It's actually their 8th iteration - though previous changes had been subtle that most users didn't even notice. Not this one, though. Marissa Mayer, VP of Search calls it "particularly large and particularly important."

Helen Walters of Bloomberg BusinessWeek has the inside scoop of the redesign process:

Google has long had advanced search capabilities, but they were difficult to find. The goal of redesign eight was to surface them and integrate them into the main results page. Users now get results with an extra column of tools to drill deeper into information. That means a query can be quickly refined to show only results from shopping sites, say, or just videos on a topic, or the latest news results. Add in a new logo and a splash of colorful icons on the left side of the page that guide users through the new options, and the look is noticeably different (right).

Given that the shift of a few pixels can affect Google's profits, why would the company ever mess with the most successful product in the history of the Internet? "The Web is always changing, evolving, and innovating," says Mayer. "It's important even for sites that people use every day and are very familiar with, like Google, to update their look."

Now, without going further into the functionalities of the new Google, let me ask you a simple question:

Previously on Neatorama: 10 Neat Facts About Google

In this purely scientific exploration of speed, we get to see who the real speed demon is in the browser wars. Google Chrome beats out the mighty potato canon like it was nothing. Lightning doesn’t even stand a chance.

– via gizmodo

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by calebkraft.

Giggling at Google

Google is known for announcing ridiculous news stories, such as telepathic search engines and job openings on the moon, on April Fools’ Day. The thing is, when you are known for this sort of tom foolery, it makes it difficult to be taken seriously when you have real news on April 1^st.

Humorously enough, the company has decided to take advantage of the viral marketing people give to the news they announce that day, so they have actually made announcements for real products and services at the same time. In 2004 (the same year they created job listings for the moon), they announced the release of Gmail. While this may not seem all that funny, many people still thought it was a prank because the idea of a mail service with one full gigabyte of storage seemed preposterous –at the time, Hotmail only offered 2 megabytes. They followed the success of this announcement by announcing the increase of the mail service’s storage to two gigabytes the next year, also on April Fools’ Day.

In a company that plays such major pranks on the nation every year, it seems likely that the employees must play some really great jokes on each other come April 1^st. As such, when an employee’s pet ball python escaped its enclosure on the holiday, the news was met with some disbelief. Unfortunately, this time the news was real. An email was sent out to the entire staff that started out, “The timing of this email could not be more awkward.” It then moved on to say:

“Tempting as it might be, this is not an April Fool’s joke! We are sending this message to alert you to the situation and to let you know what to do in the event you see the snake. “

At least the sender recognized the humor of the situation. In case you were worried about the critter, he was eventually found and returned to his owner’s house a few days later.

Image via Char1iej [Flickr]

Dimming the Guiding Light

Whereas Google has mastered the art of cleverly announcing real news on April Fools’ Day in order to play with the minds of the public, CBS obviously has a lot to learn about making serious announcements on April 1^st. Last year, they infuriated a number of loyal viewers by announcing the cancellation of the seventy-two year old daytime soap Guiding Light on April Fools’ Day. As one angry commenter wrote on TV Squad:

“If it’s true, you’re jerks for announcing it today. And if it’s not true, then everyone who believes you was a jerk for believing such a story on April Fools’ Day.”

A Depressing Day For Death

Unfortunately, not all real news on April Fools’ Day is as minor as a lost python or canceled TV show. There are many situations where people do not believe a person has died, simply because of the date. Unfortunately, the three best examples of this are all so strange that it’s not surprising that people believed the news to be a hoax.

In 1984, one day before his 45^th birthday, Marvin Gaye was murdered by his own father after intervening in an argument between his parents. Many fans refused to believe the news because it seemed so odd that his dad would have been the murderer. It wasn’t until the news was confirmed officially that many people stopped believing the murder was more than a cruel April Fools’ Day joke.

Surprisingly, Marvin Senior was only found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to five years imprisonment because his son beat him before the shooting.

Not A Set Up For A Tasteless Joke

If you heard a NASCAR champion nicknamed “The Polish Prince” died in a Hooters corporate plane on April Fools’ Day, would you believe it? A lot of fans thought they were hearing a bad joke in 1993 when racing star Alan Kulwicki was announced to be dead in exactly those circumstances.

Image via jbspec7 [Flickr]

A Funny Day To Announce An Unfunny Death

Is there a more fitting day for a comedian to die than April Fools’ Day? While Mitch Hedberg actually died on March 30, 2005, the news wasn’t spread to the media until very late on March 31^st. Not surprisingly, many people thought the death was merely a prank or a bad publicity stunt put on by Mitch himself.

Don’t Doubt The Danger Warnings

Perhaps the only situation that is worse than one person dying on April Fools’ Day is the so-called April Fools’ Tsunami of 1946, when over 100 people died, largely because they believed storm warnings were a joke. The incident occurred after an massive earthquake on the Aleutian Islands near Alaska, which caused a series of massive tidal waves that spread all the way to South America. Most of the damage hit Hawaii though, where the tsunami reached up to 45 feet tall. Unfortunately, because so many people doubted the news of the impending tidal wave and refused to evacuate, over 165 people died -159 of them in Hawaii.

Interestingly, perhaps this was a bit of a sick prank on the part of Mother Nature, because scientists are still unable to find any reason the 7.8 magnitude earthquake was able to launch such a massive tsunami. It was originally thought that the waves were intensified by a major underwater landslide in the area, but scientists have still found no evidence of this hypothetical landslide. One of the researchers who recently mapped the ocean floor looking for a landslide in the area summed up the matter by noting, “almost 60 years after the event, the 1946 tsunami is still making fools of all of us.”

What about you, readers? Have you ever thought something that happened on April 1^st was actually a joke, only to find out later that it was actually 100% true?

This is a guest post from D. Salmons over at TestFreaks - website for real geeks, where you can find everything from dvd players to wii games

One of the ways of getting your business (or yourself) out there to the masses is with business cards. Whether you're passing them out at conventions, conferences or business lunches, your business card can make a great first impression.

Some of the most innovative, creative business cards just so happen to be the geekiest. So check out these 10 geeky business cards that are sure to leave a lasting impression:

Pop Up Geeky

Source: Geekologie

Source: Gina Trapani's Harvard Business Review Blog

Source: Cardonizer

Source: A Cape Town Blog by Chris M

Source: Abhinav Dapke's Coroflot Portfolio

Source: Neville Hobson

Source: Guardian

Saving my favorite for last. Bringing out the child in all of us are the Lego employee's business cards. A little miniature Lego of yourself - how awesome is that?!?!

If these business cards don't inspire you to create a unique and, well... geeky business card, I'm not sure what will. Just have fun with it. No one will soon forget you, I'm sure.

Is this a scene from Finding Nemo? Or Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds? No, this bird was caught absconding with a piece of lunch on Google Street View, specifically on John Street in Brighton, England. Link -via reddit

If you just finished looking at the Google Street View of Stonehenge, it might be time to take a trip to the World Famous San Diego Zoo. All from your computer, of course.  The paths can be a little difficult to navigate and some of the animals are hard to see from the street map distance, but it’s definitely awesome to be able to check out one of the best zoos in the world from your home. When you first load the site, it drops you right in the heart of the zoo’s newest exhibit, the Elephant Odyssey.

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Inexplicably, as Santa made his way through Toronto that night last year, the mapping software began identifying the city as being in the United States. Instantly, NORAD Santa’s dedicated Gmail account “just lit up” with messages from irate Canadians, Martin said, and quickly, the Google team fixed the problem.

But not before Martin’s run-in with Canadian Lt. Gen. Marcel Duval. “He said, ‘I understand that you have a new American city,’” Martin recalled. “It was a slightly tense moment for me, standing in front of a three-star general explaining to him why one of his cities had been designated as a United States city.”

Read more about how the NORAD Santa Tracker came about and the technology used in the program today. Link -Thanks, Vince d’Eon!

“Promoting a band is hard. And all the while I’ve been working on the album I’ve been trying to think of how I can promote it — how I can get noticed.

“When Google announced that Street View was coming to Saskatoon, a light bulb went on,” he said. “I just thought Street View would allow anyone on any corner to be seen by any number of people anywhere.”

Hatching the plan was one thing, execution was another.

“I figured Saskatoon’s not that big, I could probably find the Google car if I really wanted to,” he said. “So I built a sign, and kept it in the trunk of my car.”

Heagy said he enlisted friends to keep an eye out for the vehicle and to call him if they spotted something with a large camera mounted on a tripod on the roof.

As it turned out, Heagy was having lunch one day and saw the Google car himself. He rushed to his own car to catch up to it and figure out where it would be going.

Link via Gizmodo | Musician’s Website | Image: CBC

I just discovered this, and it should prove a handy and effective tool for answering questions in the future.  From Lifehacker:

If you’re a power searcher, or other people think you are, and you’re getting tired of constant requests for answers to questions that a quick Google search would provide, try Let me google that for you. Enter a search term, click the Google Search button, and a link appears that you can copy, paste and send to your friend. When they click the link, an animation displays the complicated process of searching Google for information, and then directs the user to the actual search results page from Google.

Here’s a dry run I easily did that took almost no time.  Say someone asked me where I could find the neat side of the web.  Here’s my reply – http://lmgtfy.com/?q=where+is+the+neat+side+of+the+web%3F (tinyURL also available).

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