April Fools 2009 Roundup

On the 1st April every year we take the opportunity to make fun of people less aware of the date than us, but this has risen from a friendly tradition into a massive event where companies will try and come up with the most outrageous ideas and products, and hope that people will believe them.

This year is no different as the internet has become overloaded with fake news stories aimed to spark a little bit of humour into your day – so we have had a good look through them and have singled out some of the best technology related April Fools stories of this year:

Guardian: The Guardian newspaper today announced that they were halting the production of paper newspapers, and were going to make the newspaper available exclusively in 140 character articles on Twitter. This radical move was as a result of the increasing popularity of Twitter, and many quotes from ‘leading sociologists’ assured readers that 140 characters was in fact the optimum length for a newspaper article.

Palm: The telecommunications company Palm today announced the release of the PomeGranate phone which promised to add features that no phone had seen before and an uncompromisingly stylish package. The ‘marketing video’ shows the ultra thin phone being used as a projector, a language translator and even a harmonica – all within the oddly shaped pink phone with three flip out sections.

Opera: Not satisfied with just mouse and touch inputs Opera have taking a step into the future by introducing face gestures which allow you to navigate the web using nothing more than your face. By assigning certain facial expressions (such as blowing out your cheeks) you can tell the browser to go forward, backward, to home, to bookmark page and to zoom out as well as many other customizable options.

Expedia: Using their website Expedia today announced massive savings on their holidays… to Mars. With a saving of $3 Trillion ($3,000,000,000,000) you can now book your vacation to Mars for only $99 which will offer you a one-in-a-lifetime experience to visit the famous red planet. As the small Virgin advert says – red hot deals to a red hot planet.

Google: Today Google announced the ground braking CADIE (or Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity) which was the first working artificial intelligence tasked-array system which can be used to enhance your Google experience – from making Chrome 3D to brain searching…

Xbox 360: Ever wanted to immerse yourself in the Alpine world but haven’t been able to afford to go to Switzerland? Well now you can do it in your home with ‘Alpine Legend’ on the Xbox. Allowing you to Yodel and play (your horn) your way to stardom this game allows you to sample the mountains not only by multiplayer in the home, but by connecting to people from around the world. And if you’re feeling adventurous – try the Tri-horn and mountain goat add-ons.

There’s also the IGN April Fool which apparently showed some leaked details of Rockstar’s upcoming game GTA: Harbour City – essentially a follow-up to GTA 4, but set in Sydney in the 70s, definitely worth reading about!

If gaming isn’t quite your thing, then how about a more scientific April Fool, Science Base wrote about a whole new concept – Hydridic Oxygen Subhydrate, or should I say, Dehydrated Water!

Obviously this is just a small sample of what the internet world has been up to today (even Zath had it’s own April Fool in the form of the iPhone OS appearing on rival mobile phones), but I hope you enjoyed this little collection of the best from this year!

If you want to see some previous years’ April Fools, then take a look at Energy Wasting Day and some of Google’s April Fools 2007.

Related Pages:

1. Google April Fools 2007
2. iPhone OS To Appear On Rival Mobile Phone Handsets! (April Fool)
3. GTA: Harbour City Details Leaked (April Fool)
4. Zath’s Technology & Gadget Roundup (01/03/2010)
5. Zath’s Technology & Gadget Roundup (08/03/2010)

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