April Fool's Day Pranks

Wednesday should be a fun: it’s April Fool’s Day.  Google’s pranks are always elaborate and entertaining. Lifehacker did a “Top 10 Harmless Geek Pranks” the other day…

Install the Blue Screen of Death Screensaver


Make your co-worker think their PC crashed when they get back from lunch. The BSOD (“Blue Screen of Death”) screensaver is a free download from Microsoft (ironically.) For other operating system “support,” check out the Linux BSOD ‘saver with support for Apple, Windows, and Linux crash screens.


Huffington Post did a piece on the History of April Fool’s Day (and a top five list), and the Museum of Hoaxes list top 100 of all time.

Wikipedia has a collection of Google pranks. My favorite is from 2007: the Google TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider):

For years, data carriers have confronted the “last hundred yards” problem for delivering data from local networks into individual homes. Now Google has successfully devised a “last hundred smelly yards” solution that takes advantage of preexisting plumbing and sewage systems and their related hydraulic data-transmission capabilities. “There’s actually a thriving little underground community that’s been studying this exact solution for a long time,” says Page. “And today our Toilet ISP team is pleased to be leading the way through the sewers, up out of your toilet and – splat – right onto your PC.”

Users who sign up online for the TiSP system will receive a full home self-installation kit, which includes a spindle of fiber-optic cable, a TiSP wireless router, installation CD and setup guide. Home installation is a simple matter of GFlushing™ the fiber-optic cable down to the nearest TiSP Access Node, then plugging the other end into the network port of your Google-provided TiSP wireless router. Within sixty minutes, the Access Node’s crack team of Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs) should have your internet connection up and running.

“I couldn’t be more excited about, and am only slightly grossed out by, this remarkable new product,” said Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. “I firmly believe TiSP will be a breakthrough product, particularly for those users who, like Larry himself, do much of their best thinking in the bathroom.”

Comment ( 1 )

  1. CadieReply

    Yup, it's CADIE: Google Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity

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