prank

AUSTIN, Texas--If there's one man in the world who can convince thousands of people to take off their pants in the subway, to follow the disembodied instructions of a downloaded MP3, or to high-five a stranger on an escalator, it's Charlie Todd.

The brainchild behind Improv Everywhere, a New York-based "prank collective" that has been culture jamming society since 2001, Todd knows a thing or two about how to get a group of perfect strangers involved in something very unexpected and very funny.

Over the years, Improv Everywhere has grown from Todd and a couple of … Read more

Joseph Kaminski, Ariel Nunez, and Richard Peterson all chime in as guest hosts on today's episode while Jeff fends off Kings fans at E3 this week, so don't forget to check out all of CNET's show coverage this week.

We'll wait on Jeff's return to go over all the gaming news going on, but in the meantime we'll check out a couple stories from today's rundown. Joey joins us today to lend his parenting experience to the rumor that Facebook might starting allowing kids under 13 to sign up for an account.

Kids won't be able to just do whatever they want, however -- they'll have restricted access that links their profile to a parent's so they can decide who gets friended, and who doesn't.… 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

Aw, kids.

Sometimes they struggle to keep themselves occupied. Those little brains of theirs are so active. Those not yet fully-formed emotional avenues of theirs are not quite fully paved.

So they like to play pranks. Like, for example, sending random texts to people saying they've hidden a dead body.

One 15-year-old girl in Northern Arkansas tried this little jape and the random number happened to belong to someone whose sense of humor was occupationally impaired.

For this person happened to be a police detective.

The Associated Press arrested this tale and said that the girl, from Rogers, Ark., … Read more

Someone is having a little fun at Newt Gingrich's expense.

Visitors to newtgingrich.com, who probably are looking for information on Gingrich's campaign to become the Republican nominee for president, are instead being automatically redirected to other sites.

For instance, I just tried to reach newtgingrich.com and was sent to an article on The Atlantic Wire with the headline "Gingrich's Campaign Still Looks an Awful Lot Like a Book Tour."

Earlier, the .com address sent me to the site for Freddie Mac. And Mashable reports that other destinations for the redirects have included Tiffany &… Read more

Running out of creativity when trying to find gifts for friends and family? Here's a suggestion that almost guarantees some good fun, regardless of the gift: dummy gift boxes from prankpack.com.

These are regular rectangular cardboard boxes, about the size of a giant phone book, with professionally printed art and photos that suggest out-of-this-world, crazy products they have inside. The thing is, none of these products exists, and instead you just use the boxes to pack anything else that you want to give.

Just imagine the excitement, mixed with some bewilderment, your nerdy friend will have upon receiving … Read more

4chan, a site known for launching memes and harboring trolls, was down early today following an outage earlier this week that could be attributed to a digital version of a lunchroom food fight with users of Tumblr, according to a knowledgeable source.

The evidence is in what appear to be tit-for-tat online fliers circulating among users of the sites. One flier titled "Operation Overlord: Final Phase Tumblr" vowed to take down the popular microblogging site. It urged people to download the LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon) software so their computers could be used to overwhelm Tumblr with traffic … Read more

At first glance it appeared that the Web site of the LulzSec hacker group had been seized by the feds. But it turned out to be just another prank, the latest in a series of "lulz" that hackers do when they are not taunting Sony, FBI partners, and others.

Despite the official looking Justice and Homeland Security department symbols and notice saying "this domain name has been seized by ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) - Homeland Security Investigations," the page was a hoax. A search of Whois showed that the domain "www.lulzsecurity.org" … Read more

We all get fooled on a consistent basis. It's just that some decide to be slightly more guarded when it comes to April 1. And yet an anchor at a local Fox news station managed to fall for one of the more technologically inspired ruses of recent memory.

Her fellow workers at Fox 5 San Diego ran a story about a new app that lets you taste or sniff things on your iPhone or iPad. The app was called "Virtual Sip" and the technology behind it was christened "Piezo Electrics." Which, to my mind, sounds like a disreputable electrician in Napoli.

It was all rather cleverly done. First, the station ran a package that showed people sniffing and licking their phones. The anchor who wasn't in on the joke, Shally Zomorodi, looked appalled and said, "Wait a minute...are they licking their phones?"

She was then handed an iPad by a producer and encouraged to try the app. Still, when she didn't seem able to quite get any sniff emanating from it, she was persuaded (fairly easily) to lick it. Even though she had just declared: "I am NOT licking an iPad!"… Read more