April Fools Day Jokes
I suppose it has something to do with today being Sunday, and the likelihood of me seeing many people on a Sunday being rather low, but April Fools Day is almost over and it hasn’t been overly noticeable.
That being said, there were a few good jokes today. Harold Borton from London (who wrote the only Letter To The Editor to date…you can write one too letters@samuelgordonstewart.com) tricked 2UE’s John Kerr this morning. He claimed that a London radio station near the bottom of the FM dial was rebroadcasting the 2UE webstream, that John should add London to the list of cities he does weather forecasts for, and offered to give details of the station in case 2UE wanted to follow it up and have the illegal rebroadcasting shut down. John put the email aside so that he could find out from the engineering staff if such a thing was possible.
Harold later sent in another email to inform John that he had been fooled, but that he would like to see a 2UE relay station in London.
Over at The Spin Starts Here, Caz has announced that she is quitting blogging (again), that the site will be turned in to a forum (screenshots available of the forum as “evidence”) and that she will start another blog in a few months with a different focus. Unfortunately Caz, I don’t believe a word of it, although the week long lead-up of having “The Hack” post instead of you to make you appear distant and uninterested was a nice touch.
Correction: I was overly cynical and fooled myself. Caz and The Hack are actually leaving The Spin Starts Here and it seems that my words touched a nerve. I apologise to Caz and The Hack for any undue stress or concern that my cynicism may have caused, I especially wish Caz all the best with her health problems, and I hope their next venture works out the way they want it to.
Slashdot have got news (via german tech-site heise.de) of Mozilla Foundation suing Microsoft over the introduction of tabbed browsing in Internet Explorer Seven. Makes a good headline, but it falls apart in the detail. Mozilla didn’t invent tabbed browsing, and people working for companies don’t usually get the intellectual property rights to their work, which completely destroys the notion of an ex-Opera developer now working for Mozilla giving Mozilla the patent.
One that did catch me out was Gmail Paper…Google printing your emails and photos for you, sticking ads on the back in big red letters, and delivering them. I started to become sceptical when I couldn’t find any answers to my questions about whether or not Australia is part of the print-and-deliver program, or where I need to enter my address. It became very flimsy when I discovered that there was only one page of information…Google love to spread everything out over pages and pages and pages…and the Beta User Testimonials (since when do Google run Beta programs without telling anyone?) absolutely gave it away, especially this one from Mayumi M., Associate:
“Now that I have Gmail Paper, I understand the difference between labels and folders. I had one message with two labels, but when I tried to stick the paper version into two filing cabinets at the same time, it just wouldn’t go.”
Still, they tricked me at first, and well done to them for it.
Of course Mike Frame had a good one last year on 2CC’s Saturday morning show when he announced that the government were going to have a $1000 handout to the long term unemployed so that they could enjoy life a bit (or something to that effect). The great thing about radio is that even if the majority of people realise it is April Fools Day, you will still get a flood of callers who want to scream their lungs out over the silly idea…Mike played with the first caller for a while before getting him to check the calendar.
So, did you play any good tricks on people or have some tricks played on you? If so, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.
Samuel
2 comments April 1st, 2007 at 10:05pm