April Fools isn't just for the students at this school. Watch as an orchestra teacher and student play a prank on the rest of the class. Where were these kinds of teachers when we were in high school?
Today, Google released a new and revolutionary feature that is expected to send shock waves through silicon valley. Registered Google users may now use Google Translate to talk to animals. Also, it's April 1st.
Once the top bulldog, Jason Calacanis had climbed back to No. 2 on Twitterholic, outranked only by Barack Obama — only to be struck from the ranks. Twitterholic is a favored popularity index among The 250 and their many spam-loving followers. The reason for the booting? An April Fools' stunt which was never reversed, putting Robert Scoble back in second, and first in the key chubby, aging white-man demo — and giving us one more reason to hate April Fools' Day.
We reported Google layoffs at DoubleClick would start yesterday, but they only began today. Why? A DoubleClick employee said that Google pushed the cuts back "because yesterday was April Fools' Day." Ah, make the peons wait a day while Larry and Sergey have their fun. A quaintly botched approximation of mercy, no doubt. Today, our source tells us: "People are getting calls and start crying when they are told that are being let go." Would they have laughed if they'd been told yesterday?
As the dust settles and the smoke clears after April Fools day, and we begin to piece our lives back together, it's hard to trust anyone or anything. Grandma wasn't really dead? You didn't actually get fired, so there was really no need to stab that maintenance man? What's real in this world? What's up and what's down? Well it may be cold comfort, but I can assure you of this: celebrities still love to take drugs and have sex with each other, and hissy gossip people like to write blind items about it. So find whatever solace you can in that and cancel that hearse. She's not dead, really. Yet. Now, listen to what Ben Widdicombe has to say to you: "Which lead actor in a hit ensemble TV show brags that a female conquest isn't complete unless at least one of his hotel room neighbors calls security about the noise?" [NYDN] Two more after the jump.
For some of the Web's more respected names, it's a really special day. They get to treat their readers and fans with the contempt they hide most of the year. Below, five pranks today that show just how much the Internet hates you. And I do mean you.
After Valleywag reported that Yahoo would shut off its shuttle bus service Yahoo CFO Blake Jorgensen allegedly told employees "Don't believe everything you read in Valleywag, but yes, we are cutting off the shuttles." Hiring managers have since told new recruits the buses are here to stay. In an April Fools' stunt, Jorgensen outlined a new plan for getting Yahoos to work. Check out the clip: It's something to do with Google and "locking arms with colleagues to appear larger to oncoming traffic." If only Jorgensen were as creative in coming up plans to win over Wall Street.
Why do corporations and executives participate in April Fools' pranks? To make them seem human, for at least one day. Here's the suddenly likable Yahoo CFO Blake Jorgensen showing how well that can work. Fresh from laying off hundreds of their colleagues, he announces to employees that this morning Yahoo made an unsolicited takeover bid for a gossip website. After the jump, the internal announcement posted on Yahoo's Backyard intranet, leaked like just about every other memo posted there:
Nate Westheimer, a New York entrepreneur best known for holding a Silicon Alley popularity contest, attempted to persuade Valleywag to participate in an April Fools' joke. We said we'd cover it, so here's the story: Right about now, if Westheimer's prank goes as he told us, Mashable, CNET blog The Social, and Silicon Alley Insider should be attempting to persuade you of the existence of a new startup called Urlrurl.com. The website converts long Web addresses into shorter ones, as TinyURL does. Unlike TinyURL, its shorter URLs all redirect users to a YouTube page with a Rick Astley video, a silly stunt known as "rickrolling."
April 1, 2008: The day a meme died. Go to YouTube. Click on any of the Featured Videos entries. Every one of them redirects to the same Rick Astley clip. The gag is called "rickrolling," a variant of duckrolling. I'm sure a thousand April Foolsters planned to rickroll you today. But thanks to YouTube, we can all move on.
Two years later, Sun's tinkerers converted the CEO's space into a golf course, complete with a sand trap and a peeing angel fountain.
Sneaky blogger Phillip Lenssen uncovered Google's answer to Microsoft's annoying animated assistant, Clippy. His name is Cliply. Lessen found him in the source code of a Google Docs document. Google developers told Lenssen Cliply is an "Easter egg" and not a planned part of Google's annual April Fools' joke, they said. At least, not any longer, he isn't.
