Most folks are simply seeking out lighthearted pranks. To wit, the interest in “easy april fools day pranks” far outweighs lookups for “elaborate april fools day pranks.” And what could be easier than sending an April Fools’ Day text. Lookups for examples of prankster text messages are up more than 50%. So, you should probably take any mysterious messages you receive tomorrow with a grain of salt.

In terms of proposed targets, co-workers seem to be the most popular marks. Web searches on “how to trick coworkers” and “best april fools day office pranks” are both surging. Mashable offers plenty of ideas, including tricking your co-workers into thinking that their computers have been equipped with speech-recognition technology. (Watch them talk to their monitors like, well, fools.) Just remember that it’s not a good idea to: a) make the victim cry, and b) do anything that will get you in trouble with HR.

You should keep your wits around you when watching TV or surfing the Web. Companies like to have a little fun with the gullible public on April 1. Remember back on April 1, 1998 when Burger King announced their newest creation: The Left-Handed Whopper? Or in 1992 when NPR told its listeners that Richard Nixon was planning on running for president? Bottom line: Trust no one.

Also hugely popular–the history of the holiday. Why does everyone lie, trick, and prank one another on the first day of April? Nobody knows with absolute certainty, but the urban legend experts at Snopes.com speculate that the tradition started when Pope Gregory XIII introduced a new calendar that declared January 1 as the first day of the year. Previous to this, the year started on April 1.

It took a long time for the news to travel (no text-messaging back then), and people who still celebrated the new year on April 1 were called “April fools.” Tricks, pranks, and jokes were apparently played on them.

Finally, there are significant searches for “april fools day quotes.” The best we can find comes from Mark Twain, who remarked: “The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.” april fools day history.

Afraid someone might take something out of your wallet? If you have $825 to spend, fear no more. Dunhill is selling the new “Biometric Wallet”, Dunhill claims that it is virtually indestructible and can only be opened with your fingerprint. The Dunhill Biometric Wallet can be linked to a mobile phone via Bluetooth and set to sound an alarm if your phone and wallet are separated by more than fifteen feet. Providing a brilliant warning if either the phone or wallet is stolen or misplaced.

biometric wallet

Virtually indestructible, the dunhill Biometric Wallet will open only with touch of your fingerprint. The exterior of the wallet is constructed from highly durable carbon fibre that will resist all but the most concerted effort to open it, while the interior features a luxurious leather credit card holder and a strong stainless steel money clip.

Dunhill’s latest wallet, the Biometric wallet is a thing of marvel. This wallet is built to be durable. It has a carbon fiber shell, leather interior, and stainless steel money clip. Besides looking ruggedly stylish and handsome, this high-tech wallet protects your money using high-tech security – Biometric security. The card features a biometric that detects your finger before allowing you to open it. Thieves and robbers who manage to steal the wallet off you will be hard pressed to get to the cash without the use of your finger. Security and style won’t come cheap though. At $826, this wallet will usually cost more than the amount of cash you’ll keep inside it.

Would you invest more than $800 into a wallet?

The Solarball, a water purifier, was developed as a sustainably viable solution for those living in impoverished regions who don’t have access to clean drinking water. The device, which takes advantage of the sun’s natural purifying abilities, can produce up to three liters of clean water a day.

solarball

“After visiting Cambodia in 2008, and seeing the immense lack of everyday products we take for granted, I was inspired to use my design skills to help others,’ said Liow, a student at Monash University in Melbourne Australia.

The Solarball works by absorbing the heat from sunlight, which causes dirty water contained inside to evaporate. During the evaporation process, contaminants are removed from the water, leaving behind condensation that can be collected and stored for drinking.

The design is user-friendly and durable, with a weather-resistant construction, making it well suited to people in hot, wet, tropical climates with limited access to resources. But most importantly, the technology was created to be an affordable option for the 900 million people who don’t have access to clean water.

It’s been estimated that over two million children die each year from diseases caused by drinking contaminated water.

“The challenge was coming up with a way to make the device more efficient than other products available, without making it too complicated, expensive, or technical,” Liow said.

The invention was a finalist in the 2011 Australian Design Awards and will be exhibited at the Milan International Design Fair in April 2011.

Google has announced the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than their last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. One will be able to find links, which can be blogs, forums or news post in a faster way once it gets published than before.

Many of us don’t know that when we search Google, we are not searching the live web. Instead we are searching Google’s index of the web which, like the content section or index section in the books which helps you with the exact information you need.

The question which comes to our minds is that why is Google creating a new search index? The content online is already spreading like anything. It’s just not increasing size but also with the advent like videos, news, images, etc. it has actually become more complex. Apart from it, people expectations have increased tremendously, and they want exact and relevant searches for their keywords.

To meet these rising expectations of increasing users, Google has built – Google Caffeine. The image below illustrates how our old indexing system worked compared to Caffeine.

With Caffeine, Google analyzes the web in small portions and updates the search index on a continuous basis, globally. As and when Google finds new pages, or new information on existing pages, they add those straight with the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before-no matter when or where it was published.

Caffeine index web pages on a massive scale. In fact, every second, Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day.

Caffeine has been built keeping the future in mind. It’s a robust foundation that makes it possible for Google to build a faster search engine that meets the increasing expectations of people, and delivers even more relevant search results. So, we can say that new Google Caffeine will be:

• Fast.
• Relies more on keywords.
• Improve indexing speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness.
• Search is moving into real-time. News, information and social media results are set to be boosted by Caffeine, with this all being part of the large effort to make real-time search a reality.
• Crawling and indexing may change.
• Powerful, flexible and robust in the way pages are indexed.
• More importance will be given to the exact matching domain names.
• Local results even if you are not logged in. Your location may be detected based on the IP address or ISP.
• Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches when compared to the old search.

The Messages claiming to be users’ first ever Facebook status updates are being posted on users’ walls by a rogue application, designed to earn revenue from surveys.

Although these messages seem to be posted by your friends on facebook, they are not. The messages are being posted by the application itself.

If you click on the link you are taken to a rogue Facebook application, which asks you to give it permission to access your profile, which includes giving it the ability to post from your account in your name.

facebook 1st status

Sadly, many people are all too quick to give permissions to rogue applications like this free reign to their Facebook account – allowing scams like this to spread rapidly and virally between Facebook friends.

If you are foolhardy enough to continue, you are taken to a webpage which contains a survey. This is where the scammers behind the scheme make their money.

facebook first status

Every survey which is completed earns them some commission. In some cases they might also ask for your mobile phone number in order to sign you up for an expensive premium-rate service.

And you? Well, you’ll find that the rogue application has meanwhile taken the opportunity to post a message on your Facebook page, which is now being seen by all of your online friends. When I deliberately infected a test account with the rogue application it got my first status message incorrect, as well as the date that I first posted to the Facebook account.

So, in other words, it’s a complete confidence trick. It doesn’t tell you your first status message on Facebook – and it’s only intention is to drive as many people as possible into sharing the link across Facebook, earning the scammers money.

Don’t fall for this scam on Facebook. Don’t allow the application to have any access to your facebook account. If you are that curious about your very first facebook status, do the investigating on your own.

iTunes Logo

iTunes spearheaded digital distribution, and iTunes has shaped one of the most successful business models in the online home entertainment industry, with over 10 billion songs and 2 million movies sold to date, as well as over 3 billion apps (applications) downloaded.

iTunes has always been a service that was based on per-item purchases, but now it seems Apple may be considering an alternative, subscription-based model for iTunes. How much would you pay for a monthly subscription to iTunes? Legally download music to your computer for one monthly subscription fee.

The New York Post says, Apple is in talks with major music labels in regards to a new subscription-based pricing structure for iTunes that would allow unlimited access for a monthly fee. Pricing for the new service could be broken down into tiers, ranging from between $10 and $15. Is Apple taking a page out of the NetFlix playbook? The big difference between iTunes and Netflix, is that iTunes ships no merchandise, all music, apps, etc… are downloaded.

The talks involved iTunes executive Eddy Cue, and may have been as recent as a few weeks ago, says the New York Post. The negotiations are also believed to be the result of the low number of song downloads, which have been surpassed by purchases of whole albums.

Every few years, buying a new computer and love how quickly expensive to start, manage programs and web pages load. It is inevitable, even if it starts to decrease, until finally we kidding waiting to perform routine tasks.

I love my computer

Why is this? It turns out that the answer is very simple and does not even need to be “technical” to understand the causes and solutions.

The good news, not the hardware that is the problem. In most cases, the hardware we have is perfectly capable of being restored to its original splendor and maintained in good working quickly with minimal effort.

Rather, the problem is with the changes that occur in the PC software. The two most common causes of delay (along with simple solutions) are:

Registry errors – the most common problem

Every time you (or your kids) to load a game, program or file, registery PC software is updated with new instructions to use this item. However, when the item is removed, these states tend to stay in your PC. Each time you run the computer tries to execute these instructions, but not because the program can be found, due to an error in the registry. The team is doing a lot more work than it should be and the result is a much slower machine.

One of the best ways to handle this is a neat little tool a Seattle-based company called Advanced Registry Optimizer 2010 (ARO for short). This program scans, detects and corrects registry errors – resulting in a team that is much like the first time I bought. In addition to the amazing results it delivers, it is easy to install and use, which recently received a coveted 4.5 stars (out of 5) with the wording of CNET.

Now you can get a free version of software that works, scan the entire PC and identify all registry errors that may be the swamp. The free version removes the first 100 if you have more errors and mistakes to be cleaned or want to configure the program to run on a regular basis (recommended) you can easily upgrade to full version for only $ 29.95. After recording errors will not be a problem.

Spyware and viruses

Spyware and viruses are software programs that are loaded on your computer without your knowledge or permission. They have different purposes, including:

Change the default search engine in the browser
Tracking your browsing habits on the Web and displays targeted advertising
Using the e-mail program to send spam to other email accounts
Steal your personal information

Most spyware and viruses get into our computers via files downloaded from Internet or attached to email. They tend to take a large amount of computing power and therefore slow down your computer significantly.

The simple rule is to never download free software from companies that do not know and trust, especially screensavers, emoticons and the like. Also, never open any email attachment unless you are not 100% sure that you know and trust the sender. In addition, make sure you have a good anti-virus and spyware removal software running at all times.

Follow these tips and your PC should be fast and safe.

Risto KÕIV invented “Intelli president” after searching sonification – the use of sound to convey information – with your colleagues at the University of Bielefeld in Germany in the northwest.

“Four touch sensors in the seat of the presidency and another four in the back of the chair to detect how the user feels,” said KÕIV. “The data we collect is sent to a computer via Bluetooth.”

If the president believes that its occupant is seated in the wrong place or has been sitting for a long time, makes a noise to say it’s time to change positions.

The physicist and computer scientist Thomas Hermann, the president said Intelli is intended primarily for use in a home office, but may be useful elsewhere.

“It could be used in class, or large offices to optimize the workflow to determine when employees need to take a break,” said the 40-year-old.

Luxury Cruise

If you have ever dreamed about taking a cruise, but have been unable to do so, because of the cost, I have some great news for you. Due to the recession and significant overcapacity in the travel industry there has been a slowdown in travel. Travelers can now book once-in-a-lifetime cruises at insanely low prices.

Over the past few years, cruise companies have invested billions in jaw-dropping super ships, and now 50% of these ships are not booked to capacity.  Even if you’ve cruised before, you probably have not experienced anything like these new Luxury Cruise Liners.

luxury cruise ships

Many of the deals are 75% off the brochure price, because of the economy. It is possible to book a great cruise at 75% off, through a company called Vacations To Go (VacationsToGo.com), one of America’s Largest Cruise Agencies.

wwwVacationstogo.com is a 25 year old company and is an online service to help people learn everything they need to know about the best possible cruise vacation at the best possible price.

Many of the top-brand cruise vacation providers, have teamed up with Vacations2Go.com and are selling available space on these Cruise Liners at rock bottom prices. Because of the huge costs involved in building and operating today’s luxury ships, cruise lines want their ships to sail with as few empty cabins as possible.

Vacations To Go offers the “excess” inventory cabins at deep discounts, allowing the cruise companies to still get full fare on the travel packages that they sell directly.

What this means to you, is the opportunity of a lifetime, to take a luxury cruise for a price that makes it affordable on any budget.

Vacations To Go also offers a Best Price & Service Guarantee that guarantees they will meet any other authorized price.

People are realizing that a cruise vacation is now one of the great values in travel, and won’t last long. As soon as the economy rebounds, the excess cabins will be a thing of the past. Book your luxury cruis before it is too late.

volkswagen passat bluemotion diesel

The trip started from Kent, England with a full tank of diesel fuel, the 1.6-liter TDI-equipped VW Passat BlueMotion accomplished a feat that even few hybrids can match. The VW Passat was a production model and featured Stop/Start technology and low rolling resistance tires, which both aid fuel efficiency.

The drive was an average of 45 miles per hour and attempted to drive from Kent to the South of France and back. The Passat finally ran out of fuel around Calais. Despite being unable to make it back to England, the car was able to set a Guinness World Record.

The new Passat BlueMotion technology is only rated at 64.2 miles per gallon, this drive resulted in an overall fuel consumption of 89.83 miles per gallon. For all American readers, this is equivalent to driving from New York to Los Angeles with a single stop for diesel.