NathanHJones.comjust thinking outloud

In a bold move, Google is planning to roll out AdSense for conversations to help you monetize your daily interactions with…well…everyone. The new AdSense system displays contextual advertising on an “unobtrusive screen” (below) mounted to your head. Apparently, when you sign up for the service they’ll send you an adjustable screen that you can customize.

If there aren’t any relevant ads displayed, they suggest repeating yourself or to continue rambling on until the system picks up your conversation. They’ve implemented a pretty neat click process – they transport you directly to the site with their Teleportation Technology. They also mention that you can opt to have the product placed directly in your hands, though they are not clear what kind of setup configuration is required for this.

I think AdSense for Conversations is by far the best April Fools joke Google managed today. However, I will admit that I enjoyed the fact that they admitted to using the e-flux capacitor to solve causality issues in Gmail Custom Time.

(photo credit: AdSense blog)

Is Google creating a time machine? I logged into Gmail this evening (let’s be honest, it’s now morning) to do a little work and was greeted by a new link which is not live. Well, it’s visible but it doesn’t navigate anywhere but a 404, page not found. Great, no offense Google but it kind of kills the joke when it’s a dud after I find it.

Some of you may remember last year’s Gmail April Fools joke – Gmail Paper. Basically, they offered a free service for you to print all your email and they would send it to you on paper. Where do they come up with this stuff?!?

So how will Gmail Custom Time play out? I’m guessing a ‘service’ to let you set times emails will be sent (I can actually see a use for this) or when an email should have been sent.

Here’s a shot from my Gmail account.

UPDATE: The link in Gmail is now live and it’s pointing to a page with a similar format to last year’s April Fools. The joke this year is a feature that allows you to set the time emails are ‘sent’ as I predicted above. Now I can tell my boss that I sent him that email hours ago even though I didn’t. “Hey boss, refresh your inbox, I know I sent you that TPS report.” Obviously this wouldn’t really work (it’s like printing “hundred of thousands” of emails and having them delivered)…let’s hope they have something else for us when I wake up.