If you’re like me, you have a love/hate relationship with April Fools Day. Every April 1st, the internet is abuzz with new products, news, and speculation. Some of these are funny, so are a little too serious, and some of them you can’t tell whether they’re joking or not. Sometimes, a poor company just happens to make a press release on April 1st about something serious and nobody takes it seriously. This year showed us some doozies:
- Youtube’s 1911 Mode – Youtube made on option available to its users on April first where you could watch all their content in black and white with no sound… like a classic silent film from 1911.
- Gmail Motion – A concept that follows in the footsteps of the Kinect, users can now control they’re inbox using body motions.
- Grooveshark’s 3D Shark theme – Grooveshark introduced a new theme for their site, hopping on the 3D bandwagon. Now (assuming you have so old school one-red-lense-one-blue-lense 3D glasses) Grooveshark will now pop out of your screen at you while you listen to your favorite tunes.
- Friday or Die – Funny or Die changed their site to be Rebecca-Black-centric, flooding the site with videos pertaining to the pop star everyone wishes they’d never heard of.
- Apple Store Playset – Every year, Thinkgeek showcases a handful of “new” products. This years highlight was the Apple Store playset (minifigs included!)
- RFC-5984 – Every year people submit RFCs to the IETF, my favorite this year was RFC-5984: Increasing Throughput in IP Networks with ESP-Based Forwarding which basically outlines a protocol using Extra Sensory Perception to create a zero latency network.
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