April Fool and Google Part 2: A Round Up of ALL of Google’s April Fools Jokes

Ok....this post I think will contain all of the pranks I could find  for today. After my last post here
http://rkrants.blogspot.com/2012/04/april-fool-and-google-my-favorite.html

Last Time I reported Only a handful of the pranks..
Understandable, as it was only the morning. After that I stumbled upon more of them Which I am gonna round up here.


Now staring with the list. The very first one is obviously our favourite

Google Maps Quest

The above is their official video.

In a post in Google Plus they say about it as follows 

Today +Google Maps announced Google Maps 8-bit for NES. With#8bitmaps, you can do everything you'd normally do in Maps—search for famous landmarks and sites around the world, get directions and even use Street View.

Just in time for April Fool's Day, Google has introduced Google Maps Quest, a retro 8-bit version of its mapping tool that is... totally awesome.

In a characteristically whimsical video, available above, Google employees introduce the new version for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), replete with finicky cartridge and 8-bit music.

"With Google Maps 8-bit, you can do all the things you already do on regular Google Maps," writes Tatsuo Nomura, a Google software engineer, in a post on Google's official Maps blog. "Search for famous landmarks and sites around the world. Take an epic journey with 8-bit Street View. Get detailed directions to avoid dangerous paths, and battle your way through a world of powerful monsters and mystic treasures."

To use Quest (from your computer, of course), head over to Google Maps and simply click the "Quest" box in the top right corner. Then, you're whisked away to 8-bit land of maps. Be sure to try Street View in Quest mode. 

The 8-bit Google Maps hides some monsters from the Dragon Quest series.

Next in the line stands

Google Really Advanced Search

Now this one is interesting.....but it would be such a shame to disclose it's workings just here.

So just head over to http://www.google.com/js/reallyadvanced.html

And have a pinch of that advanced search.

GoogleReally Advanced Search has you covered for the following:

• Rhyming slang for
• This exact word or phrase, whose sum of unicode code points is a mersenne prime
• Font
• Content that is true
• will have been modified
• Embarrassing grammatical faux pas
• Looping midi music in the genre of

Not enough? You can also “tickle a unicorn”; “download our ranking code so you can run Google at home”; and “search by odor”.

Fittingly, clicking on any of those, or the blue Advanced Search button will take you to the search results page for “april fools”.

Then we have

Chrome Multitask mode

This is another masterpiece from Google.

According to their official blog which you can read here

Multitask Mode lets you have access to multiple mice at the same time, so you can make a chess move while you watch a dance move, or draw a horse while you draw on a friend for relationship advice.
Chrome can handle as many mice, touchpads, styli, joysticks, trackballs, and other pointing devices as you can plug into your computer, so you and your friends can browse dozens of sites at the same time.

And whats more amazing is that they also have the toy so that you can play with it :P

Just head over to http://google.com/chrome/multitask and play with it :)

Now tying into its very real self-driving car project, Google Co-founder Sergey Brin himself announces Google’s partnership with Nascar to answer the question of “what if you built a self-driving car capable of navigating a track at speeds upwards of 200mph while surrounded by other cars?”
Its answer? Google Racing.

Google Racing

In their own words

We spend a lot of time at Google trying to answer "What ifs?" What if you could find any info you need, the instant you need it? Google Search. What if you could view some of the world’s most renowned art online? The Art Project. And what if you built a self-driving car capable of navigating a track at speeds upwards of 200mph while surrounded by other cars? Our answer to that last one is Google Racing, a partnership with NASCAR to design and build autonomous stock cars. Find out more at google.com/racing.

They really outdid on this one. Head over to the website to gain more insight.

Google Weather Control

Google: “Don’t like the weather? Now you can change it in your region by selecting from the dropdown to change precipitation and setting your own temperature.”
Choose the temperature along with whatever weather conditions (e.g., sunny, foggy, windy, rain, thunderstorm). Then click the “Update weather” button. Google explains that it will take 45 minutes to update and you must agree to be responsible for the weather (if you’re too afraid, you can click “Dismiss”)!

And then comes the Gmail Tap

Gmail Tap

Google has revealed its futuristic binary language made up of dots and dashes for Android and iOS users on the go: Gmail Tap, which reduces 26 keys to 2.

 

Gmail also introduced multi-email, allowing power users to double their productivity by typing multiple emails at once, predictive text mode, and optional audio feedback.

Then we have

Click To Teleport

Phone calls and website visits are so old-fashioned. Now when people click on a search ad, Google will teleport through time and space – directly to a business location.

For advertisers, Google says you should:

• Optimize for closest location: Least disorienting for visitors, and helps you maintain a local feeling.
• Optimize for conversions: Teleports visitors to locations where your customers are most likely to convert.
• Rotate evenly: Teleports visitor to a random business location and helpful for avoiding overcrowded business locations.

Good news for advertisers: offline sales have increased by a whopping 3,600 percent. Bad news for users and businesses: while Click-to-Teleport is in beta, there is no “teleport back home” option.

Google Street Roo View

To provide panoramic pictures of the Australian outback, Google has announced Google Street Roo. The search giant plans to equip more than 1,000 kangaroos with 360-degree cameras powered by solar panels stitched into custom-made “roo jackets” to capture images as they hop around during daylight hours. The goal is to capture images of 98 percent of the area within three years.

The Youtube Collection

The title explains it all. I don't need to re-iterate it. Just head over to the video uploaded to the Official Youtube channel.

Just click the "home" button from the YouTube player to watch a demo.

The GORO

Solving the increasingly frustrating problem of accessing mobile internet on rotary phones across the US, Google is announcing GoRo. GoRo aims to fix the problem that 100% of people using rotary phones have, accessing a website. My grandparents will find this particularly useful.Click here to find a Rotary Site developer. Expect big monetization opportunities here developers.


After that comes

Google Fibre

Google Fiber (bar). Yep, we’ve all been wrong, Google isn’t working on Fiber optic ultra-fast Internet but rather Fiber Bars, yes dietary fiber. Google’s bars come with 100 times more fiber than any source of fiber available today

Then comes

Google Voice For Pets

 Thanks to Google’s own “special Voice Communication Collars” you can now record audio directly from your dog or cat’s vocal cords. What’s more, a tiny micro-LED emitter built into the collar projects a keyboard onto the floor, so your pet can tap their front paws to send text messages. A little far fetched but there’ll be a few numbskulls out there who fall for this one

You can visit them here http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.ca/2012/04/google-voice-expands-to-new-markets.html

Then comes

Google Jargon Bot

This little beauty turns all that business jargon at the workplace into coherent no-BS understandable English. This is how it works, with a few fine examples:

You can see it in action here http://googleenterprise.blogspot.ca/2012/04/introducing-jargon-bot-for-google-apps.html

Google Inter-Planetary Analytics

interplanetary reporting on Google Analytics. The new feature takes Analytics far beyond just your run of the mill Earth-bound visitors. Want to find out about visitors coming from neighbouring stars and planets – with Google Analytics, now you can!

And among all others I did notice the below few

Google Japan also came up with a simplified IME for Japanese (Google Translate) that only uses a single key: space.

Google China changed the search results page for [Qingming], but you'll only see the beautiful animated wallpaper if you use Chrome. "The Qingming Festival (...) is a traditional Chinese festival on the 104th day after the winter solstice (or the 15th day from the Spring Equinox), usually occurring around April 5 of the Gregorian calendar" (fromWikipedia).

"Use the Chrome browser, Google's search box, enter "Qingming", the results page is the past is not the same? Greeted by swaying willow branches, a symbol of spring in the air. "Green little Liulv the Yula have Qingming, the page will float to the surface ripples from time to time, and click a fish tail out of the water continued to click, but also do not like surprises! The bottom of the page are two cowboy, riding a piper playing in the back of a bull, quiet and lightly." (machine translation - Google China Blog)

Don't miss the underwater image search experience developed by Google China. It's so much fun to type your query.