April Fool’s Day has come and gone, but in its wake are several tech pranks.

Here are the top online and offline April Fool’s technology pranks that ruffled feathers and made headlines this year – measured in 1-5 whoopie cushions.

5: ‘xkcd,’ ‘Dinosaur Comics’ and ‘Questionable Content.’

What Happened?

The authors of these three popular Webcomics (Randall Munroe, Ryan North and J. Jacques, respectively) switched things up for All Fools’ Day, literally. xkcd.com redirected to questionablecontent.net, questionablecontent.net redirected to qwantz.com (Dinosaur Comics) and qwantz.com redirected to, you guessed it – xkcd.com. The three authors happen to know each other and collaborated for the prank.

Prank-o-meter:

Two out of five whoopies. It’s a pretty ingenious way to confuse regular readers without losing them – many fans read all three of the comics, and it’s also a smart way to gain new readers too. It scores low because a Digg user cracked the prank so quickly many people heard about the prank before they could even be fooled.

4: Digg

What Happened?’

When users ‘dugg’ any story on digg.com, instead of the number of diggs updating accurately, they got a random mathematical or Greek symbol, ranging from ? to ?.

Prank-o-meter:

Two out of five whoopies. Creative, but boring. With so many users, Digg could have gone all out and done something to truly baffle them. Though props for using the ‘sum’ symbol outside of calculus and fraternities.

3: Think Geek

What Happened?

Thinkgeek.com has a tradition of making fake products on its Web site every April Fool’s. This year’s included: The Betamax to HD-DVD converter, for converting one dead format to another. Then there was the USB home pregnancy test. From the description: ‘All you need is a USB port and some pee, it’s that easy!’ Another gem is the ZapCam YouTube Tazer, a hybrid video camera and tazer that uses Bluetooth and WiFi to automatically upload your hilarious videos of you tazing bros right to YouTube.

Prank-o-meter:

Three out of five whoopies. The fake products ranged from the clear jokes to the mildly credible – a banner advertised, ‘Wii Games on your iPhone’ – which could fool the less tech savvy. The creativity is pretty apparent too.

2: Google/Gmail

What Happened?

This year Google’s annual prank introduced the fake feature ‘custom time’ to Gmail. Clicking the link took you to a well done page that appeared to showcase Gmail’s new service for the forgetful. ‘Couldn’t remember to send a paper on time? Use custom time so it appears you sent it in two days ago!’

If only it were true. What makes this prank so great is Google appears so god-like it’s hard to put anything past them at this point.

Prank-o-meter: Four out of five whoopies. It fooled some people I know, and according to tech news site techcrunch.com, it started an editing war on Wikipedia.

1: YouTube

YouTube had different pranks on several different localizations of its Web site, but the best by far was this –

‘Never gonna give you up

Never gonna let you down

Never gonna run around and desert you’

– that’s right, the ‘rickroll.’ Those are the lyrics to Rick Astley’s hit cheesy ballad ‘Never Gonna Give You Up.’

For those unfamiliar with this annoying and hard-to-kill Internet gag, it’s a popular joke on forums/in AIM conversations/e-mails to pretend you’re sending someone a link to, say, a video of a cat doing something funny, and it turns out to be a video of Astley wailing his sappy song.

YouTube took it to the extreme, all links under featured videos redirected the user to a ‘rickroll’ video. Hopefully this will put an end to the annoying fad once and for all.

Prank-o-meter: Five out of five whoopies. This was unexpected, creative, annoying, and it still made most people laugh. It shows YouTube hasn’t sold out yet.

Bonus: The Prank that Should Have Been

Facebook.com

What should have happened?

In short, anything. Facebook’s owners had limitless options to temporarily scare the living crap out of their users, and they didn’t. I’m sure Zuckerberg is scared to do anything too drastic since the outcry about News Feed and privacy issues, but c’mon man – take a chance!

How awesome would it have been if Facebook declared you could now change your relationship status to ‘Baby momma,’ or ‘Knocked up, but single.’ What if they switched every users profile picture to a lolcat? The possibilities are endless, and frankly, I was disappointed I didn’t open my account to see something absurd there.

AJ Chavar is the tech columnist for The Daily Orange where his columns appear every Wednesday. He can be reached at ajchavar@syr.edu.

Other online pranks:

Espn4.com: Election deathmatch coverage

Google.com: Virgle, a joint between Google and Virgin to go to Mars

Onlinedating.typepad.com: ‘eHarmony founder finds love on Match.com’

Infoworld.com: Microsoft and Yahoo agree on a buyout price

source: aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com

Published on April 1, 2008 at 12:00 pm