[FAO] Google April Fools' Day 2009 ~ ForAngelsOnly

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Google April Fools' Day 2009

Like last year, many Google services and local sites created their own hoaxes for the April Fools' Day.

The most significant announcement is that Google has a new boss: CADIE (Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity), the first artificial intelligence tasked-array system. Google found "a powerful new technique for solving reinforcement learning problems, resulting in the first functional global-scale neuro-evolutionary learning cluster". CADIE managed to create a blog by extracting patterns from the social web pages indexed by Google.

Google Mobile launched Brain Search, which "uses CADIE technology to index your brain to make your thoughts and memories searchable". Google mentions some use cases for the new application: you can recall "the name of that guy across the room, where you put your car keys, why you started dating this woman in the first place".

There's even a CADIE-powered version of Google Earth, which lets you "see ocean terrain imagery from the world's most advanced sub, be among the first human entities to explore the deep sea, soar with CADIE in real time and find CADIE's recommended summer vacation". You can see CADIE's favorite places in Google Maps too (don't click on "Redmond, WA"!).

Google Docs helps you create better documents, spreadsheets and presentations. "Essay due tomorrow? CADIE's already read the book, along with the last five hundred published papers referencing it. Can't remember supporting details for your meeting notes? CADIE can extrapolate reams of impressive corporatespeak from existing context clues. CADIE can help with everything from thesis completion to fact checking and footnoting." It can even add subliminal messages to presentations.

Gmail released AutoPilot, a service that generates contextually-relevant automatic replies. "As more and more everyday communication takes place over email, lots of people have complained about how hard it is to read and respond to every message. This is because they actually read and respond to all their messages."

Google Chrome became the world's first 3D web browser. "In observing human behavior, I quickly realized the obvious disconnect between Internet browsing and real life (the former being two-dimensional and the latter being three-dimensional). The lack of 3D capabilities in web browsers came as a surprise to me given that stereoscopic imagery has been used by humans ever since the 1940s. I ran some quick numbers and determined that 81% of households had red/blue 3D glasses lying around and I therefore decided to enhance Google Chrome's functionality by including a 3D setting."

YouTube turned the video pages upside down in an effort to improve the user experience. "The biggest part of the new watch page is the real-time disorientation you'll get when you've clicked on a video from the home page. The new watch page lets you know what's happening right now in your world -- and it feels kinda funny." If you don't see the change, just add &flip=1 to the URL of a video page. For those who are curious, there are many sites that let you flip a text using alternate Unicode characters.

Google Code Search's homepage appears to be hacked since it includes examples like "IM IN YR LOOP" and it supports a special programming language named lolcode.

Google Australia launched gBall, a special gadget for Australian football. "With inbuilt GPS, motion sensor and artificial intelligence capabilities, the gBall has a number of amazing features, including the ability to measure kicks, get kicking tips, notify talent scouts and locate your lost ball on Google Maps."

Google Japan developed a technology that generates senyrus, humorous Japanese poems similar to haikus. "Recently, the search engine is something I lack, and can not sleep knowing that something was spent. Search engines are now missing, it is the heart of a seventeen-syllable verse. Starting today, sleep in peace now," mentions one of the beta testers.