Posts tagged internet humour
How Has the Internet Changed Our Lives? Part 1
Apr 20th
There is little question that the internet has changed our lives. But sometimes, when you’re looking from afar at a forest, it’s difficult to see the trees! Today we begin a multi-part look at the specifics of how the internet and web marketing have changed our lives, right down to the nitty-gritty.
Things were very different before the internet...
- The word “Google’ entered our vocabulary as a verb – to “Google” something
- The net has made it possible for us to buy whatever we need, from pretty much anywhere in the world. As long as you’re willing to pay the delivery charge, of course.
- We can now hunt down (no, not ‘stalk’!) old friends from school, thanks to the one social networking site that just about everybody on the planet uses – Facebook.
- We can also keep in touch with people we have no interest in stalking far more easily via any social networking site.
- The internet has made the world seem a lot smaller. Prior to the real development of the online environment, we depended on the television news (or the little-read ‘World’ section in the Saturday paper) to get our overseas news. Now we can get intimate details about almost any other country’s politics, culture, challenges and people.
It’s amazing to think of a world without internet and web marketing now – we continue our overview of life pre-W3 next time!
Best Web-Based April Fools Hoaxes
Apr 1st
The internet has made loads of things so much cooler. Sitting in front of a computer all day and all night, for example! Web marketing has unlocked the door to business success for many … the web in general has unlocked the door to much frivolity and humour. Not to mention the fact that a good prank can get you a lot of traffic, a lot of links, and a lot of SEO juice in general! Today we check out some of the best April Fool’s pranks on the web in recent times.
The internet ... letting us think outside the square for April Fool's Day!
Youtube videos flipped
The Ebutouy prank was pretty cool … when you clicked on a Featured Video from the Youtube home page, the layout of the screen remained the same, but every element was flipped upside down. Would this have been possible to do in school? Nope!
Wikipedia – Every editor fakes it
Wikipedia put up an entirely fake home page for April Fools, including stories about NASA monitoring diamonds falling from the sky, the Irish Prmie Minister streaking in public, and ‘The Museum of Bad Art’ in Boston.
Pi Devalued
Spread by email rather than the internet, this hilarious 1998 April Fools prank comes courtesy of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter (affiliated with the current New England Skeptical Society?), which published an article stating that the Alabama State legislature had voted to change the value of Pi to the ‘biblical’ number of 3.0.
Hotels.com on the moon
Hotels.com once put out an April Fool’s press release telling people that they could book the first rooms on the moon. Price not including travel, of course. Speaking of the moon, in 2004 Google published fictitious job opportunities on their lunar base, Lunax.
Gmail Paper
Google got a bit more crafty in 2007 … many ofhteir early April Fool’s pranks were pretty easily identifiable, after all. This year they brought out the ‘Gmail Paper’ hoax, which was supposed to be a free service whereby your chosen messages were printed out at Google, on 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum (:-D), and mailed to you via normal post. The service was going to be supported by big red ads on the backs of your messages.
Dishonorable mention
: The Conficker virus which was supposed to ‘go off’, destroying the web with a giant botnet, last April Fool’s Day. It was a fizzer … luckily.