Notes of pranks
Posted: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 1:09 PM by Will Femia
Though it's usually the case that I only find out about April Fool's sites after people write in on April 2nd to point out that I missed a joke, this year my skeptical eye is better prepared. Eventually someone usually writes up a massive hoax link round-up so I'll link to that when I come upon it.
ADDING: Looks like
this may be it though it's struggling with the traffic.
ProBlogger Launches PayPerTweetSearch tomorrow’s web, today! (Oops, that's part of the long list here:
Google April Fool’s Jokes Galore)
Speaking of time travel,
Dodo: Web-based time machine!YouTube RickRolls users. In case you're reading this after April 1,
here's the description.
Live, from New York, it's...Mark Zuckerberg?Flying penguins found by BBC programme (The Telegraph does more
fake story round-up here.)
Google Seeks to Organize All of Human IgnoranceIt's
the ThinkGeek stuff that gets me every year.
ADDING: One more worth noting, popular online comics have
traded home pages for the day.
Top 10 Harmless Geek PranksAl Qaeda talk show guest frustrated that his hard work planning the 9/11 attacks are discounted by conspiracy theorists. (It's always April Fool's at the Onion.)
Darth Vader attacks Jedi church leader. Help them Obi Wan, you're their only hope. (I don't think this one is a joke.)
Remember a while ago we debated whether it was worth trying to capture for energy production purposes the air pushed by a subway in a tunnel? In this more creative use, the air is used
to inflate a little bear. Strangely creepy. I prefer the second video with the garbage bags coming to life.
More of that Web justice. In this case a guy's car was stolen by a prospective buyer with a fake ID. Members of the victim's car discussion forum spotted the car, photographed the thief in the car, posted the photos, yadda yadda yadda Web justice, video of the arrest posted on YouTube.
OK, let's quickly cram a bit of utility into this post:
The 101 most useful websites - That's a pretty big boast and a pretty big list. Ironically, I'm not sure the list itself is very useful because the items are so different. Still, worth a scroll.
Speaking of lists worth scrolling,
The Best Online Tools To Help You Know Everything About Web Sites - This is a list of sites for researching things like who owns a Web site. Next time there's a mad scramble for background info about an online prostitution site that ended a governor's career, this is a good place to start.
Since I've got a number list thing going here,
The Ultimate Writing Productivity Resource - I keep an eye out for these in the hopes that they'll be helpful translating my very non-digital writing habits to digital efficiency. The danger is in spending too much time playing on the computer with tools and aids and not doing any actual writing.
USA 2008: The Great Depression - This one's inspiring a lot of debate. Like the tent villages near L.A. story I didn't know anything about the food stamp situation in the U.S. "Great Depression" still seems a little extreme. Surely this isn't what the actual Great Depression was like.
