Top 10 famous internet April Fools’ funny pranks

Posted at April 1, 2009 // April's fools

#10. UN Votes To Shut Down The Internet (1 April 2005)
Habitable Zone posted an announce that the UN had voted to shut down the internet:

“In special session, the United Nations General Assembly voted 165 to 6 with one abstention to shut down the Internet. The reason given was that the rapid and uncontrolled flow of information was destabilizing the governments of many of the member states. Furthermore, the Internet has increasingly become a vehicle for fraud and scams. Finally, the Internet produced the infamous “DOT COM” debacle which had disastrous repercussions for the World economy… The six countries that voted against the shutdown were Nigeria and five Caribbean banking havens. The Nigerian representative stormed out after the vote saying that the shutdown would destroy his country’s largest source of income.”

#9. Wave for the Google Satellite (1 April 2005)
Slashdot announce people to stand outside and wave at 10 am so that their picture could be taken by the new Google satellite passing overhead:

“Google’s recent purchase of Keyhole and its jaw-dropping 3D earth-browsing software has apparently netted them ownership of an imaging satellite as well, now named ‘gSat.’ This Friday, April 1st, gSat will be capturing a new dataset (neighborhood of 1meter/pixel), passing over each time zone between 10 and 11AM. If you stand outside and wave you will supposedly show up as a blurry fleck.”


#8. Drunk Driving on the Internet (1994)
John C. Dvorak, author, columnist and editor, writes for PC Magazine, PC/Computing, and PC Magazine as well as other publications. His hoax was about a bill going through Congress that would make it illegal to use the internet while drunk, or to discuss sexual matters over a public network. The bill was supposedly numbered 040194 (i.e. 04/01/94), and the contact person named Lirpa Sloof.

“I know how silly this sounds, but Congress apparently thinks being drunk on a highway is bad no matter what kind of highway it is” said Dvorak laughing.

#7. The iShave (1 April 2004)
The German software company Application Systems Heidelberg start manufacturing the iShave, working as an attachment to the iPod. This is the original declaration:

“Now with your iPod you can not only hear good music everywhere, you can also get a smooth shave to look good.”

#6. Downloadable Money (1 April 2001)
Abbey National, a British bank, revealed an April Fool’s Day joke that never comes true. It planned to offer its clients the ability to download and print money from their home computer. An Abbey National employee said:

“We were going to say that it would suit all those couch potatoes who don’t want to go to the bank to get their money out. We would make available a system where you could download money from your personal computer and print it out on paper at home.”

However, the Bank of England, citing concerns about encouraging forgery, strongly advised Abbey National not to proceed with their joke. Typically Britain.

#5. Telepathic E-Mail (1 April 1999)
Based on some real stuff and of course on the human being desire to use the telepathic method to manipulate the reality, Red Herring Magazine ran an article profiling a revolutionary new internet technology called Orecchio (Italian for “ear”). This technology used the TIDE communications protocol (short for “Telepathic Internet Data Exchange”) to allow users to compose and send e-mail telepathically. To e-mail telepathically users would wear a device nestled between their ear and skull. Clarence Madison, managing partner of New World Associates, was quoted as saying, “I know crap when I see it. This is crap.” Red Herring received numerous letters from readers admitting they had been fooled by the article.

#4. The 5 Megabyte Hard Drive (1 April 1982)
In 1982 a 5 megabyte hard drive for a portable computer seemed so outlandishly large to the editors of Byte magazine, who announced the introduction of a 5-megabyte hard disk drive for the portable Timex/Sinclair 1000. They didn’t imagine that anyone would believe their story.
A big reaction follows the announce and Tons of readers wrote to the magazine requesting more info and hard to convince that whole story were made up.

#3. Britannica Buys Wikipedia (1 April 2005)
Wikipedia announced that it was being taken over by Encyclopedia Britannica:

“On 1 April 2005, Encyclopædia Britannica announced its immediate takeover of the Wikimedia Foundation (to be known henceforth as Wikimædia) and all of its projects, including Wikipedia (now Wikipædia), Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, and Wikinews… Despite the board’s confidence, some Britannica investors privately indicated financial concerns about the deal, noting that ‘the Wikipedia wasn’t really a free encyclopedia after all.’ Economy measures expected to be implemented as part of the agreement include an immediate restriction on previous contributors to Britannica. It’s expected that to create or edit a page will now cost users £99.97/page in ®nglish. Affordable fee localization will be provided for Wikip¾dias of economically troubled states.”

#2. Napster Buys Microsoft (1 April 2002)
GigaLaw.com reported that the penniless file-swapping company Napster was purchasing Microsoft for more than $328-billion. Here the original message:

“Napster Inc., the start-up music file-swapping company shuttered by the courts that has never generated a single dollar in revenue, today announced that it has bought Microsoft Corporation, the world’s largest software company, valued at more than $328 billion. Following antitrust approval by either the Federal Trade Commission or the Federal Communications Commission — the two agencies have not yet decided which will review the acquisition — Napster said it would file a copyright infringement lawsuit against itself, a tactic legal observers believe creates the most likely scenario for the embattled company to prevail in court.”

#1. Pigeonrank (1 April 2002)
Google revealed the secret of the heart of its search technology: Pigeonrank. Clusters of pigeons trained to compute the relative values of web pages:

“PigeonRank’s success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation… By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings. When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user’s results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.”

So, if you’re still wondering how the search engine is working you know today the answer :))

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