April Fools Pranks go High Tech – The Geek Girl Report

You know how the saying goes: you can't believe everything you read on the Internet. (Except for what you read on KFYO, of course!) That's especially true on April 1st, where a ton of of fake announcements and silly news stories flood the Internet.  Here are a couple of my favorite pranks from yesterday's hijinks.

Google

Google has always pulled some good gags on April Fools's Day, and this year was no exception. One of the best pranks Google came up with this year was the announcement of a Morse Code app, Google's answer to the standard QWERTY keyboard. Honestly, it's something I'd like to try out, even though it's a just a prank. Another fun prank Google pulled was on its Google Maps site. For one day, all the maps and functions were shown in an 8-bit, old-school video game style. If you happened to miss this prank, you can still check it out by going to Google Maps and clicking on "Quest."

YouTube

If you ever wanted to watch your favorite YouTube videos on DVD, you were in luck yesterday when YouTube announced the release of the YouTube Collection. The collection offered every video on YouTube delivered to your door for $5 per disc. The catch? It would take nearly 400,000 discs to store all of those videos, which means the whole collection would cost you upwards of $2 million! Still, it looked as though people were wiling to shell out that kind of money, as when buyers tried to purchase the collection, they were informed that the discs were on back order until 2045. I guess they'll have to watch all those videos for free now...

Think Geek

One of my favorite online retailers, Think Geek has a tradition of releasing a bunch of gag items of their site on April 1st. This year's offerings include, among other things,  a Hungry Hungry Hippos iPad game, complete with real working hippos, and an Admiral Ackbar (from Star Wars)  singing bass. The best part of the gag is that Think Geek usually takes the most popular items and turns them into actual products. And given Think Geek's usual product line-up, these items wouldn't be too far out of place.