Rapid Web News

Firstly, happy April Fools’ day to you!

There have been a crazy amount of April Fools’ jokes flying across the Internet today. Here are a few of the best from some of the biggest names.

Google Animal Translate

Google have supposedly released an ever so sneaky version of Google Translate that can translate animal noises in to English! This is a mobile application, suprisingly for the Android platform and is (not) available in the Android App Store.

Take a look at the video below or visit the ‘official’ Google Animal Translate application.

Firebox Do It Yourself Carbon Freezing Kit

Firebox is heavily known for its extravagant and crazy gadgets and gizmos. However, this one is quite a kicker – take a look at Firebox’s DIY Carbon Freezing Kit.

‘The freezing process itself is simple: just remove your clothes, lie down in the chamber, set the timer and…well, the next thing you know it’ll be 2040.’

Google goes into Nuclear Power Production

As part of a green initiative by Google, they intend to start producing super efficient nuclear power plants as soon as possible via a newly acquired company. Surely you will be able to Google Search the nuclear isotopes soon enough.

‘Google has acquired a company that has created a new process for highly efficient isotope separation, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. The primary use of this technology, say experts we’ve spoken with, is uranium enrichment.

Enriched uranium is a necessary ingredient in the creation of nuclear energy, and one source we’ve spoken with at Google says that this is part of the Google Green Initiative. The company will use the new technology to enable it to design and possibly build small, mobile and highly efficient nuclear power generators. “Google has already begun building an enrichment plant,” says a high ranking IAEA source.’

Sourced from an ‘exclusive’ TechCrunch article.

ThinkGeek iCade – An Arcade Holder for the iPad

In a bit of funny move from ThinkGeek, they have released a product called the iCade, which is effectively and arcade machine shaped holder for the new Apple iPad. Over recent product releases include:

• moodINQ – A programmable electronic Tattoo system
• Tell Me Your Secrets Bear – A cuddly bear which had a microphone and camera allowing parents to spy on their children and their secrets.
• Canned Unicorn Meat – Which is… well, exactly what it says on the tin, apparently.

Plenty more…

It is still April Fools’ Day here and as such there are plenty more April Fools’ Day jokes and pranks going on worldwide on the Internet. If and when we find more hilarious pranks, we’ll be sure to keep you up to date.

• Google renames to Topeka – ‘Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture. Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka.’
• Google Annotation Gallery – GAG is a open source libary for Java that allows programmers to easily express their emotions in the code… ‘The Google Annotations Gallery is an exciting new Java open source library that provides a rich set of annotations for developers to express themselves. Do you find the standard Java annotations dry and lackluster? Have you ever resorted to leaving messages to fellow developers with the @Deprecated annotation? Wouldn’t you rather leave a @LOL or @Facepalm instead? If so, then this is the gallery for you.’
• Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he’s from the future – He’s a time traveller from the future apparently, come here to stop the LHC experiments. When asked which country he came from, he answered: “Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I’m here to stop it ever happening.”

Happy April Fools’ Day!

Web visibility is of vital importance to any web business, be it e-commerce or otherwise. The visibility of your website is one of the key focuses of search engine optimisation.SEO will increase your web visibility through by improving the rankings of your websites in search engine results pages (or ‘SERPs’).

SERPs are the pages you land on, as an Internet user, when you enter search terms into an online search engine. They present a list of web page results which are linked is order of relevance, from most relevant to least relevant, in accordance to the keywords you have entered. Obviously, having a having ranking in these results pages will increase your website’s overall web visibility, whilst a lower ranking will decrease its visibility.

If you want to increase your web visibility in SERPs, you need search engine optimisation. For more information about search engine optimisation, take a look at some of the following blog posts.

• SEO Tips
• Ideal Keyword Density
• Social Networking and SEO

Alternatively, you can view all our search engine optimisation articles, read about the SEO services we provide, or simply contact us directly.

Google is highly likely to be shutting down Google Search in China, after discussions with Chinese authorities regarding censorship laws appear to have reached an impasse.

Last Friday, the Chinese government challenged Google directly, stating that it refused to compromise its censorship laws to prevent Google from leaving China. Google’s removal of censorship occurred after a number of ‘cyber-attacks’ has occurred to Google’s systems from an apparent Chinese origin.

Li Yizhong, the Chinese minister for industry and information technology, has this to say on the topic:

“If [Google] takes steps that violate Chinese laws, that would be unfriendly, that would be irresponsible, and they would have to bear the consequences.”

“[Google] has taken 30 per cent of the Chinese search market.”

“If you don’t leave, China will welcome that, if you don’t leave, it will be beneficial for the development of the Internet in China.”

In an update to our previous post on Google Buzz, we now have a screenshot to show of the Google Buzz interface within Gmail. The following screenshot shows the Google Buzz Welcome screen, as shown the first time you access Google Buzz.

Google Buzz welcome screen

Google has tried social networking in the past, with ventures such as Orkut and Google Friend Connect, however neither have really become very popular. In fact, I imagine many of you reading this article may not have heard of Orkut at all. Google Friend Connect on the other hand is a API for web developers to put Google hosted social networking features directly into their websites via a iframes, JavaScript and AJAX.

Anyway, I’m here to talk about Google Buzz, which is a new social network that Google are releasing to all Gmail users. It combines elements of Twitter and Facebook and is integrated directly into the user interface of Gmail. Google started the launch of Google Buzz to a small selection of Gmail users yesterday (9th February 2010) and is continuing to release Google Buzz to more and more people over the next few days.

Take a look at this Google Buzz demonstration video. It is obvious from Google Buzz, that many elements of the service are inspired heavily by existing microblogging and social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter and identi.ca.

Google Buzz on Google Apps?

Google has stated that Google Buzz is not yet available for users of Google Apps for Domains yet, but it is being worked on. Based on this, it can be anticipated that Google Buzz for Google Apps will probably be released within a couple of weeks, towards to end of the Google Buzz launch for regular Gmail users.

Google Buzz and Search Engine Optimisation

I may be discussing Google Buzz more as this service develops and is released to more and more users. As Google Buzz listing will appear alongside Twitter results in Google search engine results pages (SERPs), Google Buzz may also create a buzz in the search engine optimisation community.

If you’re interested in search engine optimisation for your website from a team who really know what they’re doing, take at look some of the search engine optimisation work we do and see examples on our live SEO results page. If you just want some more about this intriguing new product from Google, take a look at the official Google Buzz pages.