April Fools Jokes?

DanDaMan · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 6:56 am

Hey all,

We know HomestarRunner.com does April Fools jokes, but do you have any fun websites with jokes to share?

I'll start off with my all-time fave site for tech-related april fools:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/

This year and last year this site dressed up their main page as "PNN":
http://www.hpana.com/

I can't think of any other good April Fools fun. Anybody got any sites they've stumbled onto today?

Dan "da Man"

Rob · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 7:01 am

http://www.mugglenet.com/

At first it seems that it has been shut down by the court, and then after like 10 seconds it redirects to the proper page.

Oh and see the featured article on Wikipedia. Make sure you read all of the article! For today it is called a "Nihilartikel" instead of it being called "Featured Article", sort of defeating the purpose of the joke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Oh, and see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Britannica_takeover_of_Wikimedia. It's funny (and linked from the Main Page). Don't forgot, Wikipedia is now called Wikipædia!

DanDaMan · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 7:22 am

Dang,

You beat me to finding the Wikipedia takeover story.

But here's one from Google:
http://www.google.com/googlegulp/index.html

Speaking of Google, it's hard to believe that it was just one year ago that Google announced Gmail. Web e-mail has changed so much since then.

Dan "da Man"

DanDaMan · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 7:27 am

Ohh, one more.

It seems that within the next 12 hours these guys are going to release a book. They've been talking about it on their site for a while, but it seems to me like it may or may not be real. Of course, considering the rest of the content on the site, it probably is real and will poke lots of fun at the dignified business world:
http://www.despair.com/

We'll see how that one turns out.

Dan "da Man"

CtrlAltDestroy · **Joined:** Wed Mar 16, 2005 4:59 pm **Posts:** 31

http://www.vgmusic.com/phpBB2/ <-GENERIC'D!

http://www.samusforum.co.uk/ <-WORD FILTER'D!

http://www.ocremix.org/ <- EA'D!

ed 'lim' smilde · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 2:26 pm

I remember some old google ones:

And their new "mentalplex" technology! (link)

But seriously, the wiki should have done something today...

InterruptorJones · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 2:54 pm

Y'know, I'd totally believe the Google Gulp! one if not for the poorly-designed logo. And the tongue-in-cheek "BETA".

But the FAQ bits about "Auto-Drink" are freakin' hilarious. Though only if you're a geek and know what it's in reference to.

I still can't figure out if the Gmail thing is an April Fool, though. I mean, obviously the "Infinity+1" thing is bogus, but right now it says I have 1,357MB, and I wouldn't put it past them to keep jacking up the storage...

Also enjoy Google April Fool's Search (it really works).

The ThinkGeek stuff is brilliant.

And Wikipedia is just rife with, um.. stuff.

The Penny Arcade strip (warning: language) is cute, though not strictly an April Fool, and reminds me of the most recent episodes of two J.J. Abrams shows which shall remain nameless (yes, I'm addicted).

ModestlyHotGirl · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 3:47 pm

InterruptorJones wrote:

I still can't figure out if the Gmail thing is an April Fool, though. I mean, obviously the "Infinity+1" thing is bogus, but right now it says I have 1,357MB, and I wouldn't put it past them to keep jacking up the storage...

Methinks it's real, friend. I currently have 1392 MB. At the bottom of the main page, they acknowledge that the Infinity thing is a joke, but if you click the link, it says that eventually all users will have 2GB of storage. I guess the count-up will continue throughout the day. Maybe I'm just being suckered, but the rich text features work, so...

The Google Gulp made me laugh, too.

InterruptorJones · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 4:07 pm

ModestlyHotGirl wrote:

Methinks it's real, friend. I currently have 1392 MB. At the bottom of the main page, they acknowledge that the Infinity thing is a joke, but if you click the link, it says that eventually all users will have 2GB of storage.

Oh, brilliant. I think you're right.

John Batelle says (and he's a guy that knows) that Google intends to remove the limit entirely. Honestly, I love that, and the fact that Google is admitting to the world the open secret that massive storage really doesn't cost all that much is a big coup against its competitors, who have been pretending all these years that space is a scarce resource and 100MB is a lot.

Stu · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 4:36 pm

I would be willing to argue that the only problem with giving people lots of space is that it is expensive when they all try to move lots of stuff at the same time. It doesn't really even have to be the same time...

For instance... if both you and I have 5 GB of data, and we want to download it to our home computers... it is going to cost a little more then 10 GB of transfer for both of us to do that(with all of the communication and error correction that takes place)

Now say you are google and have hundreds of thousands of users... then you give them as much space as they want... and then they all start to use it. We are talking thousands (upon thousands) of GB's of transfer every day.

So while you can go out and buy 15000rpm SCSI drives for a couple hundred bucks, bandwidth still costs money...

Anyway...

InterruptorJones · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 4:42 pm

I think Google has long past reached the point where they're paying for bandwidth by the gigabyte.

The resource that is really hardest to come by for Google is power. They recently built a new data center in The Dalles, Oregon because there's a big hydroelectric dam there -- they had enough processing power, they just didn't have enough electricity to run it. No, I'm not kidding.

DanDaMan · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 5:36 pm

Yeah, I like those ThinkGeek ones a lot. Just in case you haven't seen these, they also have their archive of april fools pages from the recent past:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/looflirpa/2001.shtml
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/looflirpa/2002.shtml
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/looflirpa/2003.shtml
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/looflirpa/2004.shtml

Dan "da Man"

Stu · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 6:05 pm

InterruptorJones wrote:

I think Google has long past reached the point where they're paying for bandwidth by the gigabyte.

The resource that is really hardest to come by for Google is power. They recently built a new data center in The Dalles, Oregon because there's a big hydroelectric dam there -- they had enough processing power, they just didn't have enough electricity to run it. No, I'm not kidding.

I remember talking in one of my cs classes about google and their power issues.

They had/have a building in their california division that was using too much power. The city refused to allow more power to one building, so they cut the building in half.

I am not joking

Van Mundegaarde · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 6:08 pm

Glad to know I'm not the only Harry Potter fan here. I caught that MuggleNet one and almost fell for it.

ed 'lim' smilde · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 6:20 pm

Last year my newspaper, the Grand Rapids Press, made up an article about how there were going to be uppercase numbers coming out soon. Pretty convincing, except the fake writer's name was "April Lirpa". (Another palendrome!!!)

StrongRad · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 6:22 pm

Nationstates the country simulator (for lack of a better description) has a really good one. Go there and you're a terrorist. LOL

Cmarbagoi · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 8:26 pm

I'm suprised ThatGoblin didn't mention the NSFW vgcats April Foo' joke.

http://www.vgcats.com

JumbleCaper · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 9:43 pm

http://www.truenuff.com/

Waffle_on_One · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 11:28 pm

http://www.jwfan.com

It's a fansite for the composer John Williams. And supposedly, they've been "confiscated" by Lucasfilm, lol. And then there's a bunch of other random fool threads.

Rob · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 11:43 pm

I think my favourite would be the Wikipedia one, mainly because all through the day it kept adding more jokes. Wikipedia probably went too far, but it was so funny.

porplemontage · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2005 11:51 pm

I did something for the occasion.

Cmarbagoi · **Posted:** Sat Apr 02, 2005 12:14 am

Even Maddox did an april fool's prank. But it was just like last year's. He basically made fun of all Xanga users.

Rob · **Posted:** Sat Apr 02, 2005 12:16 am

Oh, and see SpongeZone. It's not that funny, though.

TheTinyGiant · **Joined:** Sat Nov 27, 2004 7:48 pm **Posts:** 459

CtrlAltDestroy you go to vgmusic??!? I have a couple MIDIs there! Several years ago they linked everything to the hamster dance or something.

$10 bills, er, PORPLEMONTAGE I see what you did! You can stop w

nking at me!

Welcome to the forum, Dan! Any time you need to add something real quick just click the edit button to your last post so we can see all the awexome links in one post! Thanks!

Cmarbagoi · **Posted:** Sat Apr 02, 2005 1:08 am

Aha! I was wondering who that ten dollar guy was. I was expecting Porple to put an April Fool's joke on his site.

Rob · **Posted:** Sat Apr 02, 2005 1:20 am

Ten Dollar Bills wrote:

I did something for the occasion.

I didn't even notice that! I looked on your site and saw nothing. And then I realised! Ten Dollar Bills.

Cmarbagoi · **Posted:** Sat Apr 02, 2005 1:35 am

That's odd, it says your username is with-held. Stupid low-bandwith...

ed 'lim' smilde · **Posted:** Sat Apr 02, 2005 1:38 am

Ten Dollar Bills wrote:

I did something for the occasion.

Rob · **Posted:** Sat Apr 02, 2005 1:45 am

I was thinking of doing something like Administrator, but that would be like, misleading.

PS: Nice sig. I gotta drink more gulp.

Homeschool Winner · **Posted:** Sat Apr 02, 2005 1:45 am

porplemontage wrote:

Ten Dollar Bills wrote:

I did something for the occasion.

Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

April Fools Jokes?

Who is online