And now, back to some serious subject matters…

April 1^st – Breaking News

• Seven years in writing, J.K Rowling is ready to publish her Harry Potter Encyclopedia. Mugglenet has a preview of it and will be publishing the excerpts throughout the day.
• Google Australia has introduced a new feature, gDay^TM with MATE^TM, enabling you to search content on the internet before it is created.
• DevianArt has sold its soul to Mudkip, from now on every user’s avatar will be an animated Mudkip, which no one can change anymore without insulting DevianArt – “u don’t like mudkips?”
• If you’ve never heard of Rick Astley before, head of to YouTube, where every featured video on YouTube takes you to Rick’s greatest hit “Never Gonna Give You Up”.
• On the Type front: Comic Sans walked into a bar only to be told ‘We don’t serve your type here…’

On a lighter note, here are some Designer Jokes to brighten your gloomy April First ;-)

• What kind of relationships do typophiles prefer?
  The open type
• Typophile’s Favorite Song?
  I shot the serif by Eric Clapton
• Typophile’s Favorite Madonna song?
  Justify my love
• What did the child of a type designer say when she was asked to share?
  “My Fonts!”
• 1st Designer: “Wow, you always have so many fonts, where do you get them from?”
  2nd Designer: “Oh they come from Monaco, Geneva, Chicago, New York… I get them delivered at various Times throughout the day…”
  1st Designer: “By who?”
  2nd Designer: “A Courier!”
• Murphy’s graphic design laws:
  • If three designs are shown to a client, your least favorite will be chosen. If two designs are shown, a third will be requested. If provided, then one of the first two will be chosen.
  • Your best idea is already copyrighted.

and last, but not least, something that will make you feel better about yourself:

Tech Support jokes

• Tech support: Good day. How may I help you?
  Male customer: Hello… I can’t print.
  Tech support: Would you click on “start” for me and…
  Customer: Listen pal; don’t start getting technical on me! I’m not Bill Gates.
• Tech support: Your password is the small letter “a” as in apple, a capital letter V as in Victor, the number 7.
  Customer: Is that 7 in capital letters ?
• Tech support: What anti-virus program do you use?
  Customer: Netscape.
  Tech support: That’s not an anti-virus program.
  Customer: Oh, sorry…Internet Explorer.
• Customer: can’t get on the Internet.
  Tech support: Are you sure you used the right password?
  Customer: Yes, I’m sure. I saw my colleague do it.
  Tech support: Can you tell me what the password was?
  Customer: Five stars.

If you feel you can handle more humour and your boss is not watching, then head to the following pages to get some more laughs.

SOURCES:

April Fool’s hoaxes from Wikipedia’s 2008 collection

Type jokes: Typophile

List of design and font jokes

This ought to make you feel better about your computer skill

FUNNY Graphic Design Jokes and Humour

Funny Graphic Design Jokes, Humor, Satires, Parody & Anecdotes

Google’s new G’day MATE

HAPPY APRIL FOOL’S DAY!

• no configuration is needed – simply unzip the download file and copy to your plugins folder
• no template code tweaking is required
• no worries that with a release of a new Wordpress version this plugin becomes incompatible
• the latest stable version that would never need to be updated
• comes with some top-notch security features. No more worries about various security vulnerabilities like cross-site scripting and SQL injection.
• doesn’t take up much space on your server (less than 1 Kb) and doesn’t eat your server’s and database resources
• it is compatible not just with all future and past Wordpress versions, but also with all other blogging platforms that are available on the internet or would be created in future.

Drum Roll Please, let me introduce the best plugin ever – WP Do Nothing plugin. Hurry up over to RA Project for download and let me know what you think of it.

Wikipedia has an extensive list of April Fool’s hoaxes from 1999 to 2007. It’s interesting to note that Wikipedia has closed down the editing of all April Fool’s related pages: “Editing of this article by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled because of vandalism due to the fact that it is April Fools Day.”

So rather than posting 8 WWW bits for the past week, I present you with my collection 8 creative April Fool’s pranks of 2007:

1. Slashdot introduced a Digg and reddit-like rating system to articles, dubbed SlashRating, they even trademarked a new term “slashdottit”.
2. Technorati is cleverly rotating series of new April Fool’s logos from the TECHNORATI letters creating phrases like “rotaTe chin”, “haterTonic”, “ino chatTer”, “hoticeranT”, “ho cant riTe”, , “Threaticon”, “ricoTta hen”
3. Digital Inspiration released a hack to download movies, audiobooks and music videos and offers them for free from the iTunes store.
4. CollegeHumor re-designed their website to appear as if the domain name has expired and has been overrun with spammers. – however after 10 seconds you’re redirected to the live working site, and never see that page again.
5. ThinkGeek’s front page features many fake items for sale, such as SnūzNLūz – Wifi Donation Alarm Clock, an 8-bit tie, a Wii remote helmet, amongst other items. The page also features an iPhone which they are now shipping.
6. Uncyclopedia replaced their main page with a page similar to Wikipedia’s, linking to semi-related articles. It also claims Wikipedia is a parody of the site.
7. newsaskew – Everything on the home page is backwards.
8. reddit.com changed it’s logo to ‘redacted’ and added a censorship to the titles and comments of submitted articles. This prank annoyed many reddit users who ask for the April Fool’s day to end early.

For more 2007 April Fool’s hoaxes check Wikipedia’s 2007 collection, Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes Of All Time from Musemum of Hoaxes, and Urgo’s list of April Fools’ Day Jokes on Websites.

Have a Happy April Fool’s Day everybody :-)

Geeks might appreciate this funny image from GeeksInLove:

Or if you seriously want to find out more about the history behind the St. Valentine’s Day, then make sure to check out the video over at history.com