april fool's day

Microsoft and Google have both gotten in some April Fools' Day zingers against each other.

The two competitors often trade insults about each other's respective search engines, online office suites, and other products. But April Fools' Day inspired them to create a couple of full-blown Web pages to make fun of each other.

Microsoft laid its prank at its Bing search engine.

Surf to Bing and type Google in the search field. A Bing page pops up spoofing Google's pure white and stark home page. Hovering over the small boxes that populate the Bing page displays tips that … Read more

Here at Crave, we've seen some mighty impressive interior decorating from geeks over the years: offices inspired by "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," apartments and home theaters that are dead ringers for a "Star Trek" set. Well, if the "Thermosaurus" radiator is for real, it could make for some pretty hot "Jurassic Park"-themed abodes.

Design firm Art. Lebedev Studio posted renderings of the gadget on April 1 -- yes, that date gives us pause -- saying the device is a "heat exchanger" that "installs like your regular central-heating radiator" and "is highly efficient and energy-savvy, thanks to its complex structure that includes a skull, spine, ribs, legs, and tail bones." The studio also posted a nice page of sketches and other ephemera that supposedly went into the design of the Thermosaurus.… Read more

Fakery on the Internet? You've got to be kidding.

No, no; it's true. Especially on April Fools' Day, when the World Wide Web and mischievous geeks all over the planet celebrate leg-pulls and pushovers.

This year, Google kicked things off a day early with a supposed port of Google Maps to Nintendo's 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System. What follows is a rundown of other 2012 Fools' Day shenanigans, in case you foolishly missed them. (We've tossed in a few related stories for good measure too.)

We'll be updating the list as April Fools' Day rolls along.… Read more

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One of my favorite pastimes has to be pulling pranks around the office. The pranks may leave a sour taste in the mouth of the recipient for a few days, but in the end they often lead to some good laughs and classic memories.

April Fools' Day naturally lends itself to a flurry of random jokes and pranks, so I took the liberty of rounding up some tech-inspired pranks. I hope you find a way to put one, if not all of them, to use--heck, it doesn't even have to be on April 1!

Here, let me Google that for you Do you have a co-worker who refuses to look anything up on the Internet for himself? Do you often feel like your name should be "Google"? On April 1, send the lazy Web searcher a link to LMGTFY; perhaps he'll learn a thing or two.

To use LMGTFY, visit the site, type in a search query, and click on either search button. You will then be presented with a link to copy and send off to the unsuspecting recipient. The link you send will then open a Web page with an animation teaching the recipient how to use Google. After the site automatically fills in the search bar with the query and clicks on the search button, he will be redirected to the actual Google search results. … Read more

Scott Stein fills in for Wilson, who is spending a sick day at home trawling WebMD on his iPad. Or maybe he's at a job interview for Grand Theft Auto V. Today's show discusses a phenomenon known as "Netflix hoarding," how to buy an online girlfriend using a new service called Cloud Girlfriend, and we suggest a few April Fools' Day pranks for nerds.

If you work on the Internet, it seems like you either love or hate April Fools' Day, which has become just about any tech company's excuse to make fake product announcements or attempt to mislead readers. This year was no exception: Though there was no "Hotelicopter"-like prank that actually fooled reputable news sources, fake news was more ubiquitous than ever.

Most of 2010's gags, to be honest, aren't all that funny if you don't get the tech industry in-jokes referenced. But a few, like the In-N-Out Burger prank in New York, were pretty darn good. Also worth noting: we haven't seen a single Rickroll.… Read more

Every year the tech world trips over itself to create a myriad fake products for user chuckles and some easy press. There's also a very small percentage of companies that decide to launch real products. We've rounded up six of those sites and services below, as well as some honorable April Fools' Day-related news events.

1. Google Gmail

One of the most notable April Fools' Day launches was Google's Gmail in 2004. Back then, a gigabyte of storage for a Web e-mail service was a big deal. This was especially true given that competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo were charging for extra in-box space.

Gmail wasn't open to everyone though. Its small, 1,000-user private beta test, which expanded through the company doling out user invites from time to time, became a hot tech ticket, and one that spawned an entire ecosystem of invite-trading economies.

Gmail has since continued to expand how much service it gives users, which is now up to 7.4GB.

2. Yahoo Sideline

Yahoo launched its Twitter tracking tool Sideline exactly one year ago, and it's still up and running. The Adobe Air-based app lets users keep an eye on Twitter in real time. Users can enter in search queries, and see them stream in across multiple tabs. The software is meant to be running all the time, though it cannot do some basic things like allow you to post to Twitter, or quickly follow a user that shows up in the results.

See our hands-on with it from last year.

3. Scribd's "Paper to iPaper"

A scanning-by-mail service from a digital documents service? It seemed too outlandish that a company would eat the cost of scanning a giant stack of your documents in order to get them in its database. But that's just what Web document-sharing tool Scribd launched on April Fools' Day in 2008. We thought it was a joke and so did our readers.

The service, which was quietly killed off last year, worked pretty well in our testing (see the result). The only big downsides were that you never got your physical documents back, and you had to pay for it to be shipped to Scribd's scanning headquarters.… Read more

April Fools' Day isn't particularly special for The 404 since we prank each other all year, but that doesn't stop the rest of the Internet (or Natali Del Conte) from participating. Google continues its tradition of April Fools' Day hoaxes with a new Android app that finally bridges the language gap between humans and our furry friends. It's called Translate for Animals and uses the microphone to analyze and transcribe common phrases of your household pets. In related news, Google has also appointed this guy as its newest chief engineering officer.

Google isn't the only one pranking the Web; Razer also introduced its new Venom gaming enhancement solution that might actually appeal to the most hard-core gamers. The Razer Venom comes with its own IV drip bag and a variety of gold-plated needles to suit your vein sizes; just inject the serum additives Oxymialterxin or Doctixillin into your veins and you'll never let stupid things like sleep or hunger interrupt another precious gaming minute again.

April Fool's aside, the big news of this week is the upcoming release of the Apple iPad, and Natali Del Conte is on hand to tell us about her first date with the device on this morning's Early Show. She only spent a brief amount of time with it, but her first impression is that the giant screen is perfect for her favorite recipe app Epicurious. She also gushes about a Marvel comic book app and addresses our concerns about the durability of the screen and aluminum casing.

Keep the e-mails and voice mails coming everyone! Call us up at 1-866-404-CNET or send a message to the404(at)cnetcom and let us know what's on your mind. We're starting to read listener e-mails on the air now, so make them good! As always, sticker pictures are appreciated as well, and don't forget about Steve Guttenberg's ongoing "Audiophillie" awards--we've already received submissions but you still have plenty of time to send yours in before the April 12 deadline, so get to work!

Google has finally chosen to be socially conscious.

Oh, of course I'm kidding. Just like those deeply witty Googlies who have reportedly decided to make an April Fool's jape out of jail.

Fast Company appears to have accessed an April 1 amusement, in which the repression-averse company claims it will make jails a better experience for the masses. Which presumably includes mass murderers.

The idea is Google Jail for Communities. And, in the reported words of the company for whom doing evil would constitute doing time for life, this experiment comprises an attempt to bring the finest aspects … Read more