2008-04-01

[ewx]

So what April Fools have people seen?

• LJ has a new team member
• A Push to Stop Swiss Cats From Being Turned Into Coats and Hats
• fanf's modest proposal for the improvement of Daylight Saving
• US to scrap dollar and join the euro
• Penguins
• Binary transport for XMPP
• Unusual banking trojan
• Body Advertising
• Warrington to be demolished
• Teacher's head explodes due to Wi-Fi, mobe radiation
• IBM unveils nano-projector based VirtuaHuman with 1TB of memory
• EDSAC, TITAN, Phoenix and Janet X.25 all DOWN (Java required; screenshot if you can't see it)
• New Hero Class Revealed: Bard
• Quechua conclusively linked to Phaistos Disc
• Youtube's featured videos
• www.chu.cam.ac.uk
• imc is leaving LJ for Facebook and Myspace
• The mechanism of poltergeist activity
• Acid 3: Opera first to 106
• An Inconvenient Truth About Privacy
• GURPS MMO
• SimPE cease-and-desisted
• D&D errata
• Tagging taken to its logical conclusion
• Several fools reported by the Telegraph
• Tauren marines in Starcraft II
• Thinkgeek have a bunch of made-up products.
• Airlines announce new fees for seats, restroom use
• Endless cake items on kotaku.com
• Further commercialization of the Internet
• A joke character encoding specification (that isn't WTF-8)
• A flurry of Google fools:
  • Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes
  • Google Talk goes green
  • Custom Time
  • gDay

Also various webcomics are fooling around; these may not make sense except to regular readers:

• McAwesome's Parasailing And Chocolate Bakery
• Diesel Sweeties without pixels
• YAFGC in the style of OOTS
• XKCD/Questionnable Content
• Qwantz/XKCD
• Wondermark changes style
• Darths And Droids

(No more please, or at least don't expect me to add them to the list above if posted after the end of April 1st!)

Comments

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

LJ 2009 (http://news.livejournal.com/107460.html)
Swiss cats (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/world/europe/01cats.html)
Another Google Fool: Gmail Custom Time (http://mail.google.com/mail/help/customtime/)

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

US to scrap dollar and join Euro (http://www.virginmedia.com/money/features/us-to-scrap-dollar-and-join-euro.php?vmsrc=vmhpld)

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Penguins (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23qDl1aH9l4).

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

http://xkcd.com/
http://questionablecontent.net/
http://www.qwantz.com/

[covertmusic.livejournal.com]

Youtube - any of the featured videos.

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/bodyadvertising/

http://www.manchesterconfidential.com/index.asp?Sessionx=IpqiNwTiNwIiIDy6IHqjNwB6IA
(If the query string doesn't work, go to the main site and click on City News)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I kind of expected http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/04/bottle_liquid_s.html to be, but the art of security spoofs is definitely dead by now, real life is far ahead of all humour, even the onion.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

The trackbacks on the Google Talk post will send you in the direction of Rick Astley many more Google fools, including ones translated from Japanese and Korean...

[uisgebeatha.livejournal.com]

World of Warcraft introduces new Bard class (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/features/bard/bardclass.xml). |-)

[uisgebeatha.livejournal.com]

Oh, and go to Youtube and click on any of the featured videos... :D

[lnr]

You missed imc's threat to leave LJ for Facebook and Myspace and then emigrate to San Seriffe.

[gerald_duck]

I suspect Wondermark's claim that he's stopping doing Vicorian-engraving comics is a hoax.

[hotbadgerdeluxe.livejournal.com]

Opera scores 106 on Acid 3 (http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2008/04/01/acid-3-opera-first-to-106).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

ROFL. It sounded perfectly sensible until I saw the guitar, and then a really marvellous image :)

[damerell.livejournal.com]

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/archives.html?m=April&y=2008&d=1 - GURPS MMO

[pne.livejournal.com]

SimPE shut down due to cease-and-desist letter from Microsoft (http://sims.ambertation.de/en/)
c't article Windows: Klickprofile für weniger Fehlermeldungen

[uisgebeatha.livejournal.com]

Good isn't it?

I also found a site charting all the April Fools (http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/2008.html), which is eating vastly into my work time...

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

The Daily Mail are yet to fess up about their article where Alistair Darling had his chauffeur park up the ministerial car so he could buy a scratchcard, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's not quite genuine, somehow. Lots of outraged comments from readers.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

That idea about daylight saving time is actually something I've thought about seriously before—not as a serious proposal for our culture, but as a potential different way of measuring time other cultures might adopt. In the Jewish calendar, days start at sunset, and then the daylight hours are divided into twelve equal intervals between sunrise and sunset. Starting the day at sunrise, but then using standard seconds struck me as a compromise between that system and our own, to enable to use of standard-length time units across the year.

Another AF

[emperor]

Darths and Droids goes live-action

[j4.livejournal.com]

Apologies if you've already got these in comments (are you updating the original list?) but:

Australian Google fool (http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/gday/index.html)
Various news stories linked from the Telegraph's roundup (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/01/napril201.xml)
web standards (http://www.webstandards.org/2008/04/01/new-initiative-in-hyper-localized-social-tagging/)
Local April Fool by me and rejs :-) (http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/f2f.xml)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I'm updating the list from time to time.

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

Fafblog is back. (http://fafblog.blogspot.com/)

[joane.livejournal.com]

Have you seen today's Thinkgeek catalogue? http://www.thinkgeek.com/ - all today's featured products are jokes.

[armb.livejournal.com]

Google roundup:
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-04-01-n71.html

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

US airlines are to charge economy passengers extra if they want to sit down during cruise, for airsickness bags, and for using of the toilet in-flight. (http://www.elliott.org/blog/airlines-announce-new-fees-for-seats-restroom-use/)

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

Kotaku posted no less than 22 cake related items instead of their normal gaming coverage, including pre-release shots of cake mix (with a complaint that the next gen hasn't delivered on its promise of moving past all that tired old mixing bowl and spoons stuff).

They clearly have too much time on their hands.

http://kotaku.com/tag/april-fool.s-day/

RFCs

[pne.livejournal.com]

RFCs 5241 Naming Rights in IETF Protocols (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5241) and 5242 A Generalized Unified Character Code: Western European and CJK Sections (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5242)

[mhoulden.livejournal.com]

No URL for mine because it was on the intranet, but BT are going to abolish rubbish bins and issue staff with bags for life so they can take their rubbish home.

The Graun had one suggesting Carla Bruni-Sarkozy would advise Gordon Brown on making Britain more stylish (http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/apr/01/7). I bought the Times and the Independent as well but I haven't had a chance to look through them yet.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

The Daily WTF changes its name again, this time to The Daily What The Heck (http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Announcement-WebsiteRenameTo(The-Daily-WTH).aspx)

[bellinghwoman.livejournal.com]

Just found another one:
Peter Jackson to make The Hobbit as a musical (http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/news/arc/2008/nz12465.php)

[emperor]

Moo.com announce the mighty card

[uisgebeatha.livejournal.com]

Blizzard announce Molten Core console game (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/moltencore/). One for the retro console enthusiasts...

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

My attempt (http://rochvelleth.livejournal.com/526299.html?view=2025435#t2025435) was quite feeble really.