April Fool’s Day (AKA, Christmas for Geeks)
Posted on Mon, Apr 04, 2011
By Katie
Some may have shuddered at the thought of what prank they would fall victim to, but for us, April Fool’s Day was a great chance to see some of the smartest and most innovative people in the tech industry get really creative.
It was an excuse to be cheeky, to be shocking, and to just be downright impossible. Some of our favorites this year:
- NetApp acquired EMC? (*Gasps heard round the office.* Bravo, Storage Newsletter.)
- Ryanair announced that its Irish airline will offer child-free flights beginning in October. (Just kidding; we love kids.)
- The Huffington Post installed a paywall, which applied only to New York Times employees. (Aw, poor fellas.)
- YouTube videos went back to 1911. (It is unclear how this will fare for those babbling twin babies.)
On April Fool’s Day, I immediately check Google’s homepage every year. This year, Google made the option for Chrome users to browse solely in Comic Sans. (This font is apparently the bane of Web developers’ existence.) They also posted a job listing for an “autocompleter.” If that isn’t brilliant, I don’t know what is. But the big prank? Gmail Motion. On the heels of video games that use no controllers and are operated entirely by the player’s body movements, Gmail creatives came up with the future of e-mail. Imagine a world where you “Reply All” by waving both hands behind your head. Ah, the ease with which we could communicate. Well, maybe.
Some of us recorded our re-enactment of the most commonly used phrases in Gmail Motion. Enjoy!
What prank did you play this April Fool’s Day?