April Fools Jokes - 2008
Flying Penguins
The BBC announced that camera crews filming near the Antarctic for its natural history series Miracles of Evolution had captured footage of Adélie penguins taking to the air. It even offered a video clip of these flying penguins, which became one of the most viewed videos on the internet. Presenter Terry Jones explained that, instead of huddling together to endure the Antarctic winter, these penguins took to the air and flew thousands of miles to the rainforests of South America where they "spend the winter basking in the tropical sun." A follow-up video explained how the BBC created the special effects of the flying penguins. YouTube Rickrolls its Visitors
YouTube UK and Australia "rickrolled" their visitors, rickrolling being a popular bait-and-switch-style prank in which people are baited into clicking on a link that sends them to a video of 1980s pop singer Rick Astley singing his hit Never Gonna Give You Up. All the "featured video" links on YouTube's front page sent people to a rickroll page set up by YouTube under the user name YTRickRollsYou. Over 7 million people were rickrolled by the site. (YouTube is owned by Google.) Categories: Music, Businesses, Websites, Australia, United Kingdom, 2008, Internet, Bait and Switch, Google. [Permalink]
The Paper Tree and Fern Spider
List Universe posted a list of the Top 10 Bizarre Genetically Modified Organisms. The list included the "paper tree":The paper tree has been developed to reduce production costs and loss of tree life in the paper manufacturing industry. The recent explosion in popularity of recycled paper products lead a Swiss based company to develop a tree which grows square leaves that, when dried, are already usable as writing paper. In the image above we see a company employee holding a dried leaf beside the trunk of one of the many Paper Trees now grown by the company.
As well as the Fern Spider:The fern spider is unique on this list as it is the only combined plant and animal. At the time of writing this is the only animal that has successfully been crossed with a plant. The spider is a cross between a common Italian Wolf spider (Lycosa tarantula) and the ponga fern (Cyathea dealbata). The purpose of this bizarre crossbreed was to study the survival rates of spiders with built in camouflage versus those without in a series of studies on Natural Selection at Massey University in New Zealand. The results of the study have not been published yet.
Other creatures on the list included the graisin (a giant raisin), the rubber cork tree, the Umbuku Lizard (a flying lizard), the Dolion (a cross between a lion and dog), the Tiny Piney (a miniature pine tree), and the Lemurat (a cross between a lemur and a cat).
Two items on the list were actually real. They were the GloFish (a bioluminescent Zebrafish) and the Grapple (a cross between an apple and a grape).
Super Pii Pii Brothers
ThinkGeek wrote about an unusual new Nintendo Wii game: Super Pii Pii Brothers. It was described as an "Amazing Virtual Pee Experience from Japan."Prepare yourself by strapping on the included belt harness and jacking in your Wiimote. A series of toilets are presented on screen and the challenge is to tilt your body to control a never-ending stream of pee. Get as much pee in the toilets as you can while spilling as little on the floor as possible.
Categories: Entertainment & Celebrities, Technology, Computers, Businesses, Websites, United States, 2008, Fictitious Products. [Permalink]
Energy From Starlight
The Norwegian energy company Statkraft released a video announcing they had developed a way to generate power from starlight:Our planet needs more energy — pure energy. And thanks to pioneering Norwegian technology we may be able to provide it. The energy source of the future is starpower...
When stars explode, gamma rays with vast amounts of energy are hurled out into space. Now game capturers will be placed in orbit around the earth to capture this energy. This pioneering breakthrough has been developed by researchers and engineers from Statkraft.
When stars explode, gamma rays with vast amounts of energy are hurled out into space. Now game capturers will be placed in orbit around the earth to capture this energy. This pioneering breakthrough has been developed by researchers and engineers from Statkraft.
Sleeper Cabins
Canadian airline WestJet announced it would be converting overhead compartments on its planes into sleeper cabins:WestJet (TSX:WJA) today announced that on April 1, 2008, sleeper cabins will be introduced onboard its existing fleet of 73 Boeing 737 Next-Generation aircraft. These sleeper cabins can be booked on all of WestJet's existing flights for a nominal incremental fee of $12...
"The overhead compartment has traditionally been a place where guests have placed their carry-on baggage. Given that the overhead bins on our fleet are among the most spacious of any airline, we made the decision to offer sleeper cabins in that space."
"The overhead compartment has traditionally been a place where guests have placed their carry-on baggage. Given that the overhead bins on our fleet are among the most spacious of any airline, we made the decision to offer sleeper cabins in that space."
Hillary Clinton’s Bowl Off
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton challenged rival Barack Obama to a "bowl off." She said, "today I am challenging Senator Obama to a bowl-off. A bowling night right here in Pennsylvania. Winner take all. I’ll even spot him two frames. It’s time for his campaign to get out of the gutter and allow all of the pins to be counted. And I’m prepared to play this game all the way to the tenth frame." The challenge was a joking reference to Obama's poor performance when he spent an afternoon bowling in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He scored a 37 out of a possible 300. Nestle’s Finger
Nestle put out a press release (with an accompanying website) announcing they were changing the name of the Butterfinger candy bar to "The Finger," in order to give the candy "a shorter, more contemporary name." gDay Mate
Google Australia debuted gDay technology "enabling you to search content on the internet before it is created":The core technology that powers gDay™ is MATE™ (Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation). Using MATE's™ machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques developed in Google's Sydney offices, we can construct elements of the future. Google spiders crawl publicly available web information and our index of historic, cached web content. Using a mashup of numerous factors such as recurrence plots, fuzzy measure analysis, online betting odds and the weather forecast from the iGoogle weather gadget, we can create a sophisticated model of what the internet will look like 24 hours from now. We can use this technique to predict almost anything on the web – tomorrow's share price movements, sports results or news events. Plus, using language regression analysis, Google can even predict the actual wording of blogs and newspaper columns, 24 hours before they're written!
Categories: Technology, Internet Technology, Time and Date, Businesses, Websites, Australia, 2008, Google. [Permalink]
Canada Buys Ely
The Chamber of Commerce of Ely, Minnesota announced that Canada had expressed interest in buying the town and moving it north of the US/Canada border. In response to the offer, the town launched a "Keep Ely in Minnesota" campaign. Other buyers said to be interested in the town were Kansas, Oklahoma, Uzbekistan and a private party who wanted to move Ely to the South Pacific. The Ely Tourism Board subsequently said it dreamed up the hoax as a way to remind tourists that "we're still here." Reportedly, one woman phoned up the Chamber of Commerce in a panic, worried about what would happen to her property once the town moved to Canada.