Internet Jackass Day 2006

Posted by Andy Baio

Like every year, I’ll be rounding up my favorite pranks on Internet Jackass Day (aka April Fool’s Day). In case you’re thinking of getting involved, Anil’s got some advice for you. We’re a day early, but it’s April 1 somewhere, so let’s get started.

* ThinkGeek’s annual lineup of unusual new products

* Flickr goes catty on all “Explore” pages, in a timezone-sensitive hack; some screenshots

* Google Adwords unveils two new image sizes

* Google Rooms

* Bioengineering firm to create pet dragons

* Slashdot finds its feminine side (yawn!)

* Ask.com’s RhymeRank

* Yelp buys rights to the Pets.com sock puppet

* Bungie’s Pimps at Sea video game

* Yahoo buys Web 2.0, all of it

* Ars Technica reviews Duke Nukem Forever

* Google Romance (though Google isn’t far off entering the personals market, in reality)

* TeeVeePedia: TeeVee’s 10th annual entry carries on their tradition of the best written pranks ever

* SQL on Rails, don’t miss the screencast

* Gamespot previews World of Starcraft, among other news coverage

* Google Earth adds some visitors to Area 51

* Wordpattern, WordPress merges with Textpattern

* LinkFilter cribs Metafilter’s design

* Homestar Runner goes upside-down

* DeviantArt previews new Web 2.0 redesign

Comprehensive lists: If you feel like drinking from the firehose, try Urgo’s definitive list and Wikipedia’s rapidly-growing collection. As Greg put it, be prepared for “less than half-assed humor.”

Conclusion: Eh. The only two that made me laugh were the Flickr cats and SQL on Rails.

Comments

    The girlfriend already played a very mean prank on me 🙁

    Damn the fact she’s +8. I didn’t get it till she told me April Fools.

    http://www.mySiteFeed.com is adding new features to their automatic RSS Feed generator service. Instead of just scanning your website and creating a RSS Feed from the content, they will now also scan your answering machine, your spouse’s wallet, and your diary. To get the new service, create your feed(2 easy steps) and click on the “Gottcha” button.

    No hoax: Google released another April Fool’s joke after Google Romance — Aliens on Google Earth. Just search for “area 51” and scroll a bit to the left to find two blue aliens BBQ’ing and washing their UFO.

    A subtle one:

    Gullible.info, which usually has trivia that seems unlikely and is false, today has trivia that seems unlikely and is true. (Although I have seen the cat-falling study discredited.)

    My point of view; the most foolish is that Apple hasn’t announced any new product or any special event at that day, though it’s Apple’s 30th anniversary.

    Why is that YAWN?: Slashdot finds its feminine side (yawn!)

    ‘Males can express themselves online better than in real life?’ – is that the resoning behind that?

    So what if you’re a female that doesn’t feel comfortable in the real world then? Maybe men should separte the internet into MALE-SIDE/ FEMALE-SIDE then so they don’t have to come accross our FLUFFY pages??

    I wrote the “yawn” because I was disappointed and embarrassed by Slashdot’s stereotyping of girl culture as dumb and pink and flowery, which really only alienates more women from the geek community.

    If you want to see a great April Fool’s joke, do check out youtube’s “Featured Videos” today. That’s hilarious!

Comments are closed.