Tuesday 1 April 2008

April Fools

Even those of you who don't pay much attention to your calendars can't have failed to noticed that today is 1st April. Why? Well, the absolute glut of April Fools pranks and jokes circulating around the internet today. It's hard to be sure what is real news and what isn't. Google by themselves have practically filled the internet with various pranks and hoaxes.

Below are some links to a few that particularly caught my attention.

Blogger Buzz: Announcing Google Weblogs (beta)
BMW's War on Dog Wee
Video exclusive: First-ever images of the world's only flying penguins
gDay with MATE
Introducing Gmail Custom Time
Who Galactica TV Crossover Movie
The Facebook Tool which turns oour mobile into a snoop
Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes
A Fool and his Money: Chancellor tries his luck on the Lotto scratch cards

I also received an email from Pizza Hut offering me the services of the delivery driver who brings my pizza to clean my home whilst I eat. Realising (after a moment) they were joking I clicked the link anyway to see how far they were taking the prank. Not very far was the answer!

Other sites have very correctly removed their pranks after mid-day. The BBC's site had a link on the front page to the flying penguins video (are the Mirror in on the joke, or did they fall for it?) and Digital Spy had a story about Fearne Cotton being made Controller of ITV (also now gone). Everyone else seems to have expended too much time and energy to remove their pages so lightly. At least it is over for another year, and we can go back to reading the news without wondering if it is true or not...