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  • » Name: Amanda Bassa
  • » Location: VA
  • » Member Since: 09/21/07
  • » Bio: student, future change maker, and everything you wouldn't expect me to be.
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The Undisputed Truth

Viewing Posts Tagged "google"   View All

Technological April Foolery


April 03, 2008 | Tags: google

In case you didn’t figure it out by now, the best April Fools’ Day prank is one that is based on something that is realistic. Something plausible. Something that the person you want to prank will whole-heartedly believe until you flip shit and make their jaw drop.

Just ask my mother. She somehow manages to get me every year. Mostly because I barely know what day it is 99% of the time, but also because she’s actually kind of good at it.

Or maybe I’m just gullible. Who knows?

Anyway, as I was in the process of logging into Gmail on April Fools’ Day to sift through my sickeningly disorganized inbox and hope to find some gem of a track or a laugh-inducing e-mail, I noticed something new.

(Right click and view image to see the full size thing. Shake makes me put tiny pictures on here so I don’t mess up the page. Shame on me.)

Gmail Custom Time! It’s another one of Google’s classic April Fools’ pranks. It’s funny as shit, and when you click on it, it takes you to this page:

Too bad after that you can’t click on anything. But anyway, the faux-concept works in a fairly simple manner. Let’s say you had a deadline for an application that you had to turn in via e-mail. Gmail Custom Time would allow you to set a custom timestamp on your e-mail, so that the person receiving the e-mail thinks you sent it earlier than you really did. Thus, you would have met your deadline even though in reality you were late. The possibilities for this concept run rampant. Google even mentions that they won’t let you timestamp it any earlier than April 1, 2004, which is the day Gmail was launched. These corporate nerds think of everything, don’t they?

Sure, this was a joke. But I’m sure technology is (and has been) at the point that this really wouldn’t be difficult to pull off. The point that I’m slowly leading into is that despite all the good that technology does for our lives, it leaves a hell of a lot of potential for harm as well. With people putting more personal information into cyberspace than ever, identity theft is running rampant. Not to mention all the homemade porn hitting the internet that surely has resulted from quite a few bitter breakups*. The guys that make up the subject matter on To Catch a Predator, the credit card fraud, album leaks**, surveillance…the issues and controversies are seemingly endless. And the list only seems to continue growing.

Earlier I mentioned that the best pranks are the ones that can be perceived as reality, but reality ain’t no joke. And to quote a favorite Daoist passage of mine, “true sayings seem paradoxical”.

 

 

 

*Speaking of that, don’t even front like you didn’t fall for the 2dopeboyz Jay and Beyonce tape. Just admit it.

**OK, I admit, the album leakage is one of those things where it’s only bad if you’re on a certain side of the issue. Yeah…once again, shame on me.

 

 

 

 

Since I don’t feel like typing up two separate blogs and posting them twice, let me just throw in a couple announcements.

Arafat Yates of the M1 Platoon that I mentioned a while ago threw me a new track the other day, and it’s not bad. So since it’s the end of the week and it’s rainy and dull, I’ll throw you a freebie in hopes of brightening your day just a little bit.

“The Oath” (ft. Phocuz and Nathaniel Grey, produced by Arafat)

Also, for anybody in the area, a reliable source (what up, Mannie!) let me know that this will be worth my time, and thus yours as well.

Gotta love finding things to do for free, right? There also may be free food lurking somewhere around campus since it’s Friday, so if that’s the incentive that you need to make it out there then so be it. Come check it out. And don’t ask me what to expect because I really truly don’t know.

There’s also the Stussy DC Chapter grand opening party going down tonight somewhere in the District. And that should most definitely be worth your time.

*Flyer swaggerjacked from Sneakaman Dan.


The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the writer and not necessarily those of HipHopDX.com or Cheri Media Group.

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