Geeks love April Fools' Day. Once a year, we get to take advantage of our non-geek friends' and co-workers flimsy grasp on technology. The best geek pranks involve making a gadget or a piece of software appear broken. Since the tech savvy will quickly notice these pranks, they are best performed on the inept, the perpetually preoccupied and the woefully unaware. >>

TestTube is the YouTube ideas incubator where YouTube engineers and developers test recipes that aren't fully developed. Currently two new services are available for testing AudioSwap and Streams. AudioSwap allows users to create song tracks for their videos by adding songs from artists and record labels. While, Streams lets several users create an online YouTube room where they watch and interact with each other in real-time while sharing videos. >>

Many users describe the popular social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace as addictive, which is why they say giving up these 21st-century temptations is a sincere sacrifice, as the Easter approaches."It's been hard, especially in the beginning," said Kerry Graham, who says she gave up Facebook for Lent. During the first days of Lent, she admits she had to stop herself from typing the site's Web address nearly every time she checked her e-mail. >>

Think you can juggle phone calls, e-mail, instant messages and computer work to get more done in a time-starved world? Several research reports, provide evidence of the limits of multitasking. The findings, according to neuroscientists, psychologists and management professors, suggest that many people would be wise to curb their multitasking behavior when working in an office, studying or driving a car.

In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.


“Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes,” said David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan. >>

According to an report by London's Royal Academy of Engineering states that someday a terrorist will be able to read personal details from a distance and set a bomb to go off when a particular person gets within range. It's already widely acknowledged that unencrypted data stored on an RFID chip in a passport can be read covertly by anybody with a pass-by reader. With a RFID reader, we can pick up whatever the RFID chip is sending out passport number, name where an individual was at, at what time, address, Social Security number. >>

Our home computer may be committing a crime at this very moment. It might be sending out Spam. It might be helping attack the Internet itself, silently and invisibly. The Web, has been turned into an operating system for criminals. Computer viruses that hijack PCs and turn them into electronic robots, or bots, have become the killer application. >>

FindSounds.com allows us to find sound effects and musical instrument samples on the Web. It provides powerful features, yet is simple and easy to use, and suitable for all ages. It also has FindSounds Palette an software program that lets us search more than one million sounds on the Web and to organize and search our own sound collection. >>

A new software has been published on the Internet that could be used to exploit a known flaw in Internet Explorer. The code posted to the Milw0rm.com web site, exploits a recently patched flaw in MS Internet Explorer. It could be used to run unauthorized software on a computer that was not updated with the latest Microsoft patches, security experts warn and the Milw0rm code works on IE6. >>

BusinessWeek lists down the best young tech entrepreneurs, aged 30 and under, most likely to shape the world's digital future. The list represents tech's best and brightest, culled from a long list of nominees by the top U.S. venture-capital firms and BusinessWeek.com editors. This year's hot areas include Web applications and digital music. >>

Ever wondered what will be on the other side of the world, Just checkout this dighole map powered by Google Maps to find out exactly what resides the other side of our zone. >>

Forbes reports that there's no need to rely on the rumor mill to find out what Google is up to. Just head to the company's online job listings, where the company declares that it is "experimenting with a few wireless communications systems," adding that "we are building a small team of top-notch logic designers and analog designers aimed at nothing less than making the entire world's information accessible from anywhere for free." The company's own job listings, for instance, have allowed Google watchers and followers to spot advance signs of everything from its online office suite to a possible foray into the travel business. >>

YouTube has launched the first ever YouTube Awards with 70 videos in seven categories.Viewers can vote to pick their favorites of 2006. Winners will receive trophies and special promotion on YouTube's front page. Watch them and vote for your favorite video. >>

A study finds out people who play crash-and-bang car-racing video and computer games may be more aggressive, risky drivers in the real world. A series of studies found a consistent relationship between dangerous driving in the virtual world of video screens and aggressive feelings and actions behind the real wheel, German psychologists report. The researchers also noted that children start playing such games at age 10, on average, potentially creating future generations of dangerous drivers. >>

Video games, like movies, are worth preserving and studying as cultural artifacts. So says Henry Lowood, curator of the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University, who together with game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky; academic researcher Matteo Bittanti; and game journalist Christopher Grant came up with a list of the 10 most important video games of all time. >>

Tux Paint is a free open source drawing program for children ages 3 to 12 with a Mac-like interface. It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program. Kids are presented with a blank canvas and a variety of drawing tools to help them be creative. It also has several special effects tools like "Grass," "Bricks," and more. Sound effects are given while the kids are using the tool. >>

PC World has picked out the 10 worst PCs of all time. The systems that were overpriced and underpowered, parts that failed two days after the warranty expired, marathon phone calls with brain-dead tech support staff over the years we've suffered more than our share of ills, and so have millions of other innocent PC users. >>

KeePass is a free, open source password manager which helps us to manage our passwords in a secure way. We can put all our passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key-disk. So we only have to remember one single master password or insert the key-disk to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secured AES and Twofish encryption algorithms. >>

phoronix.com takes a look back at all of the Ubuntu releases to date and exploring how ubuntu Linux distribution has evolved so quickly over its short lifespan. While Debian has been around for over a decade, Gentoo for five years, and Mandriva/Mandrake for nearly nine years, in less than three years of existence Ubuntu has received the most attention and generated the greatest amount of publicity in the Linux limelight. >>

osalt.com lists down the best open source software alternatives for the commercial software. We can browse through the software categories and compare pros and cons of both commercial products as well as open source software. It helps us to find an alternate open source software in various categories like databases, development, graphic applications, multimedia, security, web development. >>

Workrave is an free and useful program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury [RSI]. The program frequently alerts us to take micro-pauses, rest breaks for our coffee time and restricts us to our daily limit. It runs on both Linux and Windows platforms. >>

ShowYourself is a simple utility to help establish our identity across the web. It helps us to combine all our web 2.0 account profiles like Flickr, Twitter, Technorati, Digg, Mybloglog and other popular profiles on the web into one attractive widget. We can put the widget on our blog, Myspace or anywhere on the web. >>

Google has announced that it will start making its records about user searches anonymous. Until now, Google has indefinitely retained a log of every search, with identifiers that can associate it with a particular computer. Under the new policy, unless Google is legally required to retain them longer, server logs will still be retained but will be "anonymized" after 18 to 24 months so that they can't be identified with individual users. >>

yBook is an ebook reading software to provide a paper book experience on the computer screen. It display our book on side-by-side or single pages and allows to resize the pages, adjust the margins, set text and to set paper colour. With yBook we can read html files, text files, rtf files and palm document format. >>

McAfee says more than 10% of all Web sites registered out of Tokelau, identifiable by the ".tk" at the end of their Web address, will expose users to spam, viruses and spyware. Spammers constantly change domains to avoid filtering and blacklisting by e-mail service providers, anti-spam programs and Internet service providers. The report lists down the world's riskiest web domains.

World's Riskiest Web Domains:

• Tokelau (.tk)
• Information (.info)
• Samoa (.ws)
• Romania (.ro)
• Commercial (.com)
• Business (.biz)
• Russia (.ru)
• Network (.net)
• Families and Individuals (.name)
• Slovakia (.sk)
  

Checkout the full list. >>

regain is a search engine similar to Google web search engines, written in Java and thus applicable on all Java compatible platforms. It's available in two versions, the desktop search and the server search. The desktop search is to be used on a normal desktop computer and it offers you a fast search for documents or intranet webpages. The server search allows us to install on it on web servers. It provides searching functionality for a website or for intranet fileservers. >>

The emoticon has started off as a basic smiley face 25 years ago, it has evolved to include symbols for everything from worry to surprise to heartbreak. Here are some of the many emoticons available to users of Instant Messenger. >>

Also checkout the full list of Google Talk emoticons. >>

TrueCrypt is an free open-source disk encryption software for Linux and Windows. It supports On-the-fly encryption which allows data to automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved, without users intervention. It helps to encrypts an entire hard disk partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive, using the AES-256, Blowfish [448-bit key] algorithms. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read [decrypted] without using the correct password/keyfile or correct encryption keys. >>

update: from Patrick Free Open Source Data Encryption for Windows Users

MyToons.com is an online animation community, where people who really love animation from seasoned industry pros to rabid animation fans can upload and share their creations and animated favorites with the entire world for free. With MyToons, we can upload, view and share all of our favorite animations, art and pics and embed it on any websites like MySpace page, and other sites. >>

Here is a list of tips to find a person's favorite language by looking at his keyboard:

• C Programmer: Their '*' and ';' keys are worn out.
• C++ Programmer: Their '>' and '<' keys are worn out.
• Java Programmer: Their 'p', 'u', 'b', 'l', 'i', and 'c' keys are worn out.
  
• Ruby Programmer: Their 'e', 'n' and 'd' keys are worn out.
  
• Python Programmer: Their tab key is worn out.
  
• PHP Programmer: The key mapped to '$' is worn out.
  
• Perl Programmer: Their punctuation keys (all of them) are worn out. And the letter keys are crisp and clean.
  
• XML Programmer: Their '>', '<', and '/' keys are worn out.
• Windows programmer: The Ctrl, Alt and Delete keys are worn out.

Checkout the full list. >>

Microsoft has unveiled a new file format called HD Photo which offers better image quality, better preservation of data, and advanced features for digital-imaging applications. The HD Photo format recently renamed from Windows Media Photo is taking aim at the JPEG format. It preserves the original image fidelity with high dynamic range, while allowing for significant improvement in compression size. >>

GizmoSMS allows us to send free SMS messages to any mobile phone anywhere in the world. We can send our SMS messages which are up to 120 characters. No charges for sending the messages and only the receiver may incur charges depending on their carrier. >>

Adobe currently develops a photo-authentication suite which makes it possible to match a digital photo to the camera that shot it, and to detect some improper manipulation of images. Adobe plans to start rolling out the technology in a number of photo-authentication plug-ins for its Photoshop product beginning as early as 2008. With the advent of Photoshop and its variety of tools has made it easier for photographers to tinker with images after they're captured. >>

The Optical Finger Mouse from Logisys opens a whole new dimension to navigating our computer. It is strapped comfortably to our index finger with elastic fastening tape consisting of a strip of nylon with a surface of minute hooks that fasten to a corresponding strip with a surface of uncut pile. Our hand is left free to do as we please, yet always be within a slight hand movement of moving our cursor. >>

NetHaggler is a shopping companion that combines the power of an innovative toolbar with a vibrant community of savvy shoppers. It offers innovative ways to save money while shopping by tagging and wait for a price drop for a product and Nag a merchant for a lower price and We can also haggle as a group for bargain deals. >>

Microsoft soda which is been offered for free in the lobby of Microsoft’s conference center for their employees.

3B is a fun new way to experience web, it allows us to take any web sites or photos and place them in a personalized 3D space, to create our 3B village. 3B is incredibly easy to use consists of groups like 3B Miss Teen, 3B comics, 3B Teen alternative and we can also create our own music. It's simpler than uploading a photo to the web and the 3B is FREE. >>

The average amount of time that a person spends looking for a misplaced things over the course of a lifetime is one year according to a report. But with Smart Finder we can quickly locate our lost items. It's available in four color coded receivers which can be attached to things like keys, wallets, purse, mobile phones, hand bags, TV remotes and anything even our the kids!. >>

PC World has listed down the top 50 VIPs on the web, who are shaping what we read, watch, hear, write, buy, sell, befriend, flame, and otherwise do online. The first top ten VIPs are:

1. Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin Executives, Google
2. Steve Jobs CEO, Apple
3. Bram Cohen Cofounder, BitTorrent
4. Mike MorhaimePresident, Blizzard Entertainment
5. Jimmy WalesFounder, Wikipedia
6. John DoerrVenture capitalist, Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers
7. Craig NewmarkFounder, Craigslist
8. Peter LevinsohnPresident, Fox Interactive Media
9. Marissa MayerVice president for search products & user experience, Google
10. Chad Hurley and Steve ChenFounders, YouTube

Checkout the full list. >>

Zapr allows us to create links to any files in our PC. We can then send these links to others via email or IM and they can get the files directly from our computer via their browser. Viewers are not required to download the Zapr application or register to view the files but only people with the links can see them. It is very secure to use due to its highly secure architecture. Only draw back it requires Windows XP with .Net Framework 2.0 support. >>

Tim Berners-Lee, the father of World Wide Web has told that it's critical to shield his seminal innovation from control by a single company or country. That means ensuring anyone can use the web regardless of what software or hardware they're running, which Internet service provider supplies their connection, which language they speak, and what disabilities they have. >>

Stanford university researcher Manu Kumar has created an alternative technology to the mouse called Gaze-enhanced User Interface Design [GUIDe] that allows a person using a computer to click links, highlight text, and scroll simply by looking at the screen and tapping a key on the keyboard. GUIDe uses software called EyePoint that works with standard eye-tracking hardware. It works without a person needing to control a cursor. >>

Adobe will be launching it’s beta version of new runtime called Apollo that will allow rich Web-based applications to run offline, said to be threaten the popularity of programming platforms such as Java and Microsoft .NET. The Apollo runtime must be installed on the desktop or embedded directly in the application to enable it to run locally, similar to how the Flash player runs Flash applications in the browser. Apollo will be available for free to both users and developers. >>