Your tech round-up for the week ending April 4, 2014.
Google Pranks Everyone. Again. And Again. And Again. And… – Google has a history of pranking us on April Fool’s Day since the year 2000. This year they had 19 different pranks running including:
AdBirds – Tying your advertisement to birds and releasing them to the world!
Shelfie – Share your selfie photo with your friends via custom Gmail themes.
Auto-Awesome Photobombs – Automatically inserts David Hasselhoff into your photos.
Google Maps Pokemon Challenge – Google updated Maps on Android and iPhone devices to help you capture Pokemon all over the world
Amazon Releases FireTV – Amazon’s FireTV is a direct competitor to Apple TV, Roku and other streaming television products. Their commercial (featuring a hilarious / terrifying Gary Busey) really focuses on the voice control system, which seems cool, but I’m still not sold on the necessity of it. Their other angle for Amazon is gaming. This seems like a great way (and perfect excuse) for them to break into the gaming market. They tout free games, exclusive games and a $0.99 starting price for “blockbuster” games. What does “blockbuster” quite mean? I’m not sure yet.
OKCupid Asks Firefox users to use a different Browser – If you navigated to OKCupid using Firefox this week, odds are you saw a letter from the dating site asking you to switch browsers. This was due to the new Mozilla CEO, Brendan Eich, supporting California’s Proposition 8 (an anti-gay marriage bill) back in 2008. OKCupid pulled the letter down on April 2, but certainly did some damage to Firefox’s user-base. Brendan Eich resigned from his position on April 3, making his reign as Chief Executive Officer the shortest in company history.
Apple iPhone 6 leaks – It’s been awhile since the release of the 5S and 5C models of the iPhone, so rumors of the next version are running rampant. The latest and greatest photos were taken (supposedly) by an Apple subcontractor. It shows a thinner, rounder iPhone with a screen that reaches the edges of the screen. Still no word on the technology inside.
T-mobile Will No Longer Sell Blackberry – After April 25, T-Mobile will stop selling Blackberry products. T-Mobile and Blackberry got into a bit of a disagreement when earlier this year T-Mobile sent an email to Blackberry users to entice them to change to iPhones. The split seems amicable, but there must be quite a bit of animosity between the two.
