10 best April Fools' Day hoaxes on the web today
Ahhhahahaha...hahah...*sigh*
Ahh, April Fools' Day, just when we thought it had been milked dry of every last tiny drop of humour the whole technology world goes and give it one last twist.
Now obviously we object in every way to April Fools' Day and its bevy of distractions from real news, but, just to prove that we aren't in any way curmudgeons we have strung together a list of some of today's 'hilarious' pranks and/or japes.
Google releases Translate for Animal Android app. Our very own exclusive from the Big G and definitely one of the better ones. Not only did Google take the trouble to go and do a film at a farm, but they also actually created the Android App. So even though you won't be translating from donkey to human ("I love you") you can at least pretend you can to your mates.
Virgin Media using ferrets to lay broadband cables. Mark Craven at Home Cinema Choice was so adamant there was truth in this he actually sent us a link to an old BBC News story. We laughed, and then we cried. Then we went out and adopted a ferret in a high visibility jacket.
Swinton offers insurance against alien abduction. An obvious hoax, but, for people in the Todmorden triangle this might be worth probing into.
iWoot's PR rang up and told us we just had to hear about their iPad/iPhone prank. We put the phone down on them of course, but they emailed it through anyway so we felt honour bound to put it in the round-up because we felt bad about being rude.
iFixit – the tear-down legends – provided us with a look inside the Apple tablet. Of course they didn't actually say which Apple tablet. Nicely done guys.
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One of our favourites of the day was from gaming peripherals specialists Razer – who threw us a link to its Razer Venom professional gaming enhancement solution. We especially liked the "5 gold-plated various needle sizes for to suit your vein sizes" and the photo of the guy after 120 hours of gaming.
The Register also got a bit of Google love – and ran a story about how the company was to digitise the world and its dog, scanning every single person, in its pursuit of all the world's information.
The Daily Mail doesn't often get a favourable mention on….anywhere really, but its AA jetpack story raised a chuckle. Not in our office, obviously, but somewhere in middle England.
YouTube – not wanting to be left out following its shiny new redesign – showed off its text only mode. Amusingly it would probably have raised less objections than the decision to move the subscribe button a bit. Great video.
Last, but not least, Laptops Direct got in on the fun and suggested you put your baby to work. Good effort.
There's about a squillion more around – so put the best ones in the comments, and thanks to Anthony Grimley, Chris Hardstaff, James Pearson and David Isaacson for their various suggestions.
Patrick Goss is the ex-Editor in Chief of TechRadar. Patrick was a passionate and experienced journalist, and he has been lucky enough to work on some of the finest online properties on the planet, building audiences everywhere and establishing himself at the forefront of digital content. After a long stint as the boss at TechRadar, Patrick has now moved on to a role with Apple, where he is the Managing Editor for the App Store in the UK.