Recently, the Internet has been getting less funny. Memes eventually get old, and GIFs don’t exactly make up for them. But thanks to April Fools Day, that changed for a brief, shining moment.
Most websites celebrated the holiday in some way, like creating a fake news story. However, some went above and beyond the digital call of duty and deserve recognition. Here are the ones that really stood out to me.
Google Maps for NES
Google is well-known for having great April Fools jokes, like Gmail Paper, the Virgle Mars program, and the gBall. But this year, Google “created” a version of Google Maps for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Through an ethernet cable port in the cartridge, the application connects to the Internet to view Google Maps in 8-bit pixels.
(4/3 Update) Even if you missed this on April 1st, you can still view the 8-bit map! Click here to experience the magic. Don’t know where to start? Look up famous landmarks. You’ll thank me later.
ThinkGeek sells fake, nerdy merchandise
ThinkGeek has also established a great April Fools Day tradition by putting up new products for sale. Among the cool, new items added yesterday were a Skyrim hoodie that does dragon calls, electronic Hungry Hungry Hippos for the iPad, and my personal favorite, an Admiral Ackbar Singing Bass. Don’t most of these look too good to be true? Well, they are. Try buying one of these, and you’ll be greeted with a “gotcha!” page from ThinkGeek. Don’t be sad that you can’t purchase your Keurig 5-Star meal, though; ThinkGeek has a voting page up, so your favorite fake item might make it to retail one day!
Conan O’Brien takes over Mashable.com
Immediately at midnight, tech site Mashable.com announced that it had been purchased by television host Conan O’Brien. The new CEO of Mashable acted quickly and posted videos about manual Tweets and stealing the new iTV. Thankfully, O’brien revealed that instead of buying Mashable as he thought, he actually bought a M*A*S*H fan site. Okay, I don’t find him funny, but I’m still impressed by the website redesign. Kudos to Mashable and Coco.
Woot replaces real writers with robots
Compared to other April Fools pranks that Woot has done in the past, this year’s prank isn’t so special. What does make it hit home, however, is that the company claims to have fired it’s writers and hired “Sales Copy Automation Bots” to write the product descriptions. As a result, the product description for the product of the day is poorly written and full of “computing errors.” Check out the picture and pray with me for a future where humans continue to write lame jokes on the Internet and computers know their place.
What are some of your favorite April Fools jokes? Share them in the comments section below.
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