Internet Jackass Day 2006
Like every year, I’ll be rounding up my favorite pranks on Internet Jackass Day (aka April Fool’s Day). In case you’re thinking of getting involved, Anil’s got some advice for you. We’re a day early, but it’s April 1 somewhere, so let’s get started.
* ThinkGeek’s annual lineup of unusual new products
* Flickr goes catty on all “Explore” pages, in a timezone-sensitive hack; some screenshots
* Google Adwords unveils two new image sizes
* Bioengineering firm to create pet dragons
* Slashdot finds its feminine side (yawn!)
* Yelp buys rights to the Pets.com sock puppet
* Bungie’s Pimps at Sea video game
* Yahoo buys Web 2.0, all of it
* Ars Technica reviews Duke Nukem Forever
* Google Romance (though Google isn’t far off entering the personals market, in reality)
* TeeVeePedia: TeeVee’s 10th annual entry carries on their tradition of the best written pranks ever
* SQL on Rails, don’t miss the screencast
* Gamespot previews World of Starcraft, among other news coverage
* Google Earth adds some visitors to Area 51
* Wordpattern, WordPress merges with Textpattern
* LinkFilter cribs Metafilter’s design
* Homestar Runner goes upside-down
* DeviantArt previews new Web 2.0 redesign
Comprehensive lists: If you feel like drinking from the firehose, try Urgo’s definitive list and Wikipedia’s rapidly-growing collection. As Greg put it, be prepared for “less than half-assed humor.”
Conclusion: Eh. The only two that made me laugh were the Flickr cats and SQL on Rails.
Myspace removes 200,000 objectionable profiles
— sounds like a lot, until you realize it's less than one day of new signups (via) #
Zug's Michael Jackson prank
— I've been reading John Hargrave since the dawn of time, and he's still entertaining #
Interesting Facts About Domain Names
— now that I'm at Yahoo, I should try to score the complete domain list to rerun my dictionary domains (via) #
Birdy Namnam
— four French DJs that treat each turntable as a discrete instrument and play as a band; watch the videos #
YouTube adds 10 minute duration limit to prevent piracy
— expect people to start splitting large videos into multiple parts #
Star Wars Kid case goes to court on April 10?
— interesting news buried in 10th paragraph; anyone have more info? #
Batman onomatopoeia
— screen grabs of the visual sound balloons from Batman's campy fight scenes (via) #
Steve Ballmer "brainwashed" his kids to avoid Google and iPods
— and I'm sure they use MSN Spaces instead of Myspace or Livejournal? (via) #
Kotaku finds sponsored editorial previews on Gamespot and Gamespy
— yay, investigative game journalism! (via) #
The Great Outdoor Fight
— unbelievably elaborate fan-written backstory to this excellent Achewood story arc #
Plaxo apologizes for contact spam
— he links to the Techcrunch entry on Jigsaw for his contact info, which is cute #
Brandon Hardesty's Re-Enactment Series
— remaking scenes from classic movies with a camcorder and himself in every role (via) #
The Last Record Shop
— Austin music collectors buy Ohio record store that closed in 1970, frozen in time; don't miss the photos #
37 Signals responds to Caterina Fake
— David says it's a great time to start a business, as long as you're not playing the Web 2.0 Lottery #
The Tuttle Conspiracy
— e-mail hilarity between CentOS developers and the city manager of Tuttle, OK (via) #
The Dent shuts down after 10 years
— one of the longest-running fan sites, and the winning logo I made in August '97 is still there #
Caterina says it's a bad time to start a company
— when the barrier to entry is low enough, anyone with a little skill will have at least one startup (via) #
The Kleptones' 24 Hours
— new album by the genius behind Night at the Hip-Hopera and Yoshimi Battles the Hip-Hop Robots #
Similicio.us, find similar sites
— it uses EasyUtil as its recommender engine, which is a great first test case #
Is Amazon S3 the first Tier 0 Internet Service?
— along with EasyUtil and the Mechanical Turk, I sense an important emerging trend #
NitroTracker, music sequencer for the Nintendo DS
— make your own old-skool chiptunes with the touchscreen #
Backing up Flickr photos with Amazon S3
— outsourcing storage with 25 lines of Python and $0.15 per GB/month (via) #
Metalog's Most-Linked Blogs from September 2000
— that's basically my daily reading list from 2000 (via) #
Katamari team disbands
— interesting to hear Takahashi was coerced into making the Katamari sequel (via) #