April 1st is the one day in the whole year that you can make jokes, sometimes cruel jokes, and can still be forgiven by your co-workers, friends and families.
The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, enemies and neighbors, or sending them on fools’ errands, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible.
Given that many of us practically live on the Web, April Fools’ Day has gradually become a special occasion for people to spread fake advertisements to attract Web readers and communicate fake personal stories to trick friends and families.
I Got Fooled.
This morning I got fooled by GMail’s announcement of a new feature called “Custom Time“. Supposedly this feature allows users to custom the time when they want their email to be sent. Without noticing this is a hoax, I was looking for a clickable link to “Custom Time” in my GMail account. After 5 minutes, still unable to find the link, I realized that it was an April Fools’ joke.
April Fools’ on Facebook.
A friend of mine and his girlfriend announced that they are engaged and the girlfriend is pregnant. They changed their Facebook profile information and status the night before. Also, they published few photos of an engagement ring etc. Not too surprised. Friends on the network called them and inquired whether the news is for real.
Wii Got Fooled.
My wife called me this morning and told me that she saw Best Buy selling Wii Fit, and asked whether she should go wait in line for a Wii Fit. Without a second thought, I say “Yes! Go Now”. Moments later, I discovered that she had tricked me. I should have remembered that Wii Fit is not available until later this year. I got fooled again!
Nintendo announced a new game controller called Wii Balance Board. This new controller is specially designed for games that involve physical exercises.
The centre piece of the whole shebang is the Balance Board, a device that looks a bit like a slim set of bathroom weighing scales. By applying pressure to it (by standing or pushing with your arms during press ups etc.), it can measure your actions and relay them to your Wii. Examples showed stepping, push ups, hula-hoop motions, heading and dodgying soccer balls, dancing, yoga and simple ball-rolling exercises where weight is shifted from one foot to other.
I think this new controller will further push Nintendo’s market share. First, it will encourage more people to buy Wii just because they want to exercise while being entertained by video games. Second, parents will be more willing to buy Wii than other game consoles because Wii has a healthier image. Third, Wii’s innovative game controls are user-friendly to all ages.
Wii is not only good for entertainment and physical exercise but also for brain rehabilitation. According to Edmonton Journal, doctors are experimenting the use of Wii to treat patient with movement and balance issues.
Dr. Grigore Burdea, a world leader in computer-based virtual reality techniques in rehabilitation therapies, said in five years, he believes every hospital and rehab clinic will have embraced the gaming technology for their patients.
Burdea said some hospitals have used the Wii gaming system to help boost and entertain patients during their hospital stay. But he said the Glenrose is the first hospital he knows of where occupational therapists are guiding patients through golf swings, tennis serves and baseball strikes to help them not only gain lost movement, but to teach their brains to respond quickly to fly balls or swinging fists.
Wiimote Music is a wiki page on WiiLi.org that showcases the use of Wii remote controls for playing and mashup music. In those showcased YouTube videos, Wii-motes sometimes are used a replacement for traditional music instructions (e.g., a guitar), and other times are used as input devices for mixing and mashup tunes.
Kotaku has some photos of chocolates that are made in the shape of Wii-motes. Don’t rush to your nearby supermarket yet. No candy company has yet declared partnership with Nintendo to make Wii candies.
What you see in the photos are made from empty plastic packaging of Wii-motes and Nunchunk controllers. It’s a very creative idea.
I’m not too surprised to see people losing weight after long hours of playing Wii Sports. Though Wii is not currently marketed as an exercise or a workout machine, but I definitely think it has the potential to be marketed as such. Imagine a new Wii console that comes with bikes or real sandbags!
Wii laptop is amazing not because it played any better than the one that is connected to my big screen TV in the living room. It’s amazing because it demonstrated the ingenuity of its creator Ben Heckendorn. By inspecting the design of the Wii laptop, you can tell Ben has spent a great deal of effort to complete this project. He definitely deserve a round of applause — “Well done, Ben!”
A Wii user reported the discovery of a flaw in Wii’s web browser that could allow hackers to run arbitrary programs on a Wii machine. This problem caused by a JavaScript flaw in Opera implementation. A more technique description is as the follows.
A flaw exists within Opera’s Javascript SVG implementation. When processing a createSVGTransformFromMatrix request Opera does not properly validate the type of object passed to the function. Passing an incorrect object to this function can result in it using a pointer that is user controlled when it attempts to make the virtual function call.
Exploitation of this vulnerability would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the affected host. The attacker would first need to construct a website containing the malicious JavaScript and trick the vulnerable user into visiting the site. This would trigger the vulnerability and allow the code to execute with the privileges of the local user.
This exploit could possibly be used to run code on the Wii!
Personally, I have crashed the Opera browse in my Wii at least once when I was trying to load a Flash/JavaScript game. Though I think there is no real financial incentives for hackers to attack people’s Wii machines — maybe to steal people’s Wii points, but just to be on the safe side, you as a Wii user should be very careful about the sites that you visit.
Nintendo announced a new game controller called Wii Balance Board. This new controller is specially designed for games that involve physical exercises.
Kotaku has