Yesterday was April Fool's day, the one international holiday on which it is okay to lie, cheat, and insult, so long as you end your lies, cheats, and insults with the phrase, "April Fool's."
Fortunately, the web development industry is not immune to these prankish jokes, some of which were really very funny. I've listed my favorite web-development related April Fool's Day 2010 jokes, and I hope you'll point me to a few more in the comments at the end of this post.
Microsoft Drops Trident from Internet Explorer
The folks at SitePoint published a report that Microsoft would stop using its Trident rendering engine in version 10 of IE. Web designers and developers have been pleading with Microsoft since about 2003 to update its rendering engine to match other engines like Gecko or Webkit, so some readers were taken in by the prospect of a more compliant IE.
The post said that Microsoft would use a little known rendering engine called, Lynx, that was the fastest available, so fast, in fact, that "vendors never include Lynx in performance comparison charts because it beats all competitors by a considerable margin."
Lynx, of course, is a text-only web rendering engine.
Google Changes Name to Topeka
The world's largest search engine company and provider of awesome code libraries, and other products announced that it was changing its name to "Topeka."
"Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka," the Official Google, err, Topeka blog said.
"We didn’t reach this decision lightly; after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name. But the more we surfed around (the former) Topeka’s municipal website, the more kinship we felt with this fine city at the edge of the Great Plains."
JooPressPal Released
The TechJoomla blog, which focuses on all things Joomla, announced the release of JooPressPal, "The amazing new CMS which integrates Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal to create the world's most amazing, stable, bug free & feature rich CMS."
"You must have read about many articles, blogs which discuss what is better : Joomla, Wordpress or Drupal. It's always a competition between these three. This competition is there since each system has something unique that the other lacks at in some way…We decided to get all the best features of these CMS Powerhouses together to create the most powerful CMS available in the world."
Free Aviary Image Processing Tools Maker Turns to Ecommerce
Aviary, the Internet's free-to-user alternative to Photoshop and Illustrator, announced that it would finally make money, selling birds.
"When we announced that Aviary was going free recently, some people didn't understand how we could stay in business," the company said. "What they didn't know is that we had a killer business model in mind all along. As of today, April 1st, we are finally proud to roll that out. Announcing, Aviary's new marketplace for ultra-rare birds: http://aviary.com/birdstore.
Sexy Romances Distract Hackers from Data Theft, Sophos Research Proves
Security and data protection software maker Sophos sent out a press release about "Protection Through Distraction," which argued for putting fake data or romantic stories into your databases so that malicious hackers would be distracted reading the non-sensitive information.
"Sophos's latest research has revealed that hackers can be significantly distracted from stealing information, if they find a file that is more interesting to them than, say, a database of credit card numbers.
"Computer simulations run by Sophos experts has revealed that a variety of types of content can distract hackers for different periods of time - but the most successful content for the purpose is romantic literature.
"By flooding your network with romantic stories, you can build an additional level of defense against hackers. Not only will they find it harder to uncover your confidential information, but they will also be distracted (by over 1.4 hours in some situations) by the romantic stories."
Opera, the First Web Browser in Space
Opera Software, makers of the innovative Opera web browser and the popular Opera Mini mobile web browser said yesterday that it was the first company to put a web browser in space.
According to the company, "Opera Space Edition features advanced technologies developed under the Future Opera Operations in Lunar Surroundings program. Due to the classified nature of these innovations, access to the beta of Opera Space Edition is strictly controlled."
You'll notice that "Future Opera Operations in Lunar Surroundings" can be shortened to "FOOLS."
GIFtuts+ Launched
Envato, a leading web design and development publisher, announced the launch of a new site, GIFtut+.
"Creating GIFs is a topic that we often get asked about. Whenever we’ve published a tutorial on creating GIFs on Psdtuts+, like our Animated Snowman Tutorial, it’s been very popular. We thought it was about time we gave this in-demand but under-served aspect of design education its own dedicated Tuts+ site."
New Research: Increased Conversion is Under Your Nose
Ecommerce video experts, Invodo, reported that the Moustache Effect could double conversion rates for online retailers. The idea is simple: Use a spokesperson with a moustache in product videos and watch sales rise.
