Dad With Teeth

Wasted Bandwidth

OK, this has nothing to do with school so feel free to skip this post.

If you are still reading then perhaps, like me, today you have too much time on your hands. Washington Post tech writer Rob Pegoraro noted a few clever and well crafted April Fools Day jokes from the internet. Here are three favorites:

1) Google Romance A tour of this online dating service explains how it all works. The FAQ is particularly funny:

"When you do a Soulmate Search, your deeply personal and potentially life-altering search results are produced solely by computer algorithm, without human intervention of any kind. Note: Depending on your personality, you may or may not find this reassuring."

I think the best part of the site is the self-effacing humor about the ads in Google.

2) Not unlike the send-up for Google Moon where as you zoomed in closer you discovered it is really made of cheese, the folks at Google also planted a treat for users of its Google Earth software. Pegoraro instructs us to search for "Area 51," zoom in, pan to the left until you see two fighter jets on the tarmac, and you'll also spot two friendly visitors. (If they have removed it by now, this blog post has screenshots.)

3)The last one I am afraid must be gone by now. Pegoraro writes that,

“The prolific tech-news site Slashdot made itself over for the day, changing its traditional dark-green banners and heading graphics to a shade of hot pink. Its usual ‘News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters’ motto was replaced by ‘OMG!!! Ponies!!!’”

The entire article is worth a quick read.

Finally, I would guess many of you saw the Openoffice.org announcement that Microsoft (BillG, specifically) had purchased the application. For those Linux users who were a bit slow on the uptake, the mailing lists were buzzing with the news.

posted by Drew Keller @ Tuesday, April 04, 2006