April Fool's Day Archive, Contents:

Chilefoundry.com warned that the federal government was planning to classify Capsaicin (the component of chili peppers that gives them their heat) as a controlled substance. Seeds of any chili pepper capable of producing 1 millions SHUs (Scoville Scale heat units) would become illegal. The government made this decision after noting that after eating extremely hot sauces, people frequently talked about feeling a "high" afterwards.

Google debuted a new feature — Gmail Motion — designed to allow people to eliminate the use of keyboards and mice and instead write emails using only gestures, which Gmail would track using your computer webcam and a "spatial tracking algorithm." Command gestures were simple. To open a message, make a motion with your hands as if you're opening an envelope. To reply, point backward over your shoulder with your thumb. To reply all, point backward with both thumbs.

The home page for the new application featured videotaped commentary from experts such as Dennis Tooley, Ph.D. from the "California Center for Kinesics and Paralanguage," and Lorraine Klayman, M.Sc., an "Environmental Movement Specialist at Nevada Polytechnic College."

Google did note that safety precautions should be observed before using Gmail Motion. Users were advised to clear 4 feet of space around them and to take breaks every 30-40 minutes. link: Gmail Motion Beta.

The Huffington Post announced it was introducing a paywall, requiring all employees of the New York Times to purchase a digital subscription in order to view the content on its site. However, anyone who wasn't a New York Times employee would continue to have full and free access. NYT employees would be greeted by the following message when they visited the site:


The Huffington Post added that, "of course, stories that aggregate falsehoods to support an administration's efforts to take the country into a disastrous, decade-long war based on lies will always remain free." Link: Huffington Post.

Popular social news site Reddit changed its layout to resemble that of its rival, Digg. It also rebranded itself "Reddigg". It proclaimed: "At last, change has come to reddit. Let us rejoice."

The website HowStuffWorks described a new startup company, ReBubble, that was coming out with rechargeable chewing gum. The gum could be "recharged" by placing it in a special recharging station, the ReCHEWvenation Chamber, that plugged into either a standard power socket or connected to a computer via a USB cable. "After it finishes charging, the gum should have the same taste and texture as it did fresh from the package." The gum would eventually come in five flavors, although the only flavor currently available tasted like "grape with a hint of ozone." However, there were reportedly problems if people ate partially charged-sticks of gum. But the company was trying hard to prevent "catastrophic gum failure."

Yahoo! unveiled an "ideological search engine." Users could select between the Democratic and Republican ideology. Democratic results displayed in blue. Republican in red.

YouTube flipped its videos upside-down. The effect displayed for visitors who opened the home page and then went to a video from there. It was also possible to activate the effect by adding the code &flip=1 to the end of a youtube URL. YouTube wrote that it had introduced the new format because, "Our internal tests have shown that modern computer monitors give a higher quality picture when flipped upside down—kind of like how it's best to rotate your mattress every six months." To see the new format, it advised viewers to either 1) Turn your monitor upside-down; 2) Tilt your head to the side; or 3) Move to Australia.

The website smellr debuted, describing itself as "like Flickr, but for your nose":

Google unveiled Gmail Autopilot, a feature that automatically reads and responds to your email, saving you the time of doing this. It boasted that Autopilot could mirror any communication style, could also work for Gmail chat, and would work even if both sender and recipient had Autopilot on:

YouTube UK and Australia "rickrolled" their visitors, rickrolling being a popular bait-and-switch-style prank in which people are baited into clicking on a link that sends them to a video of 1980s pop singer Rick Astley singing his hit Never Gonna Give You Up. All the "featured video" links on YouTube's front page sent people to a rickroll page set up by YouTube under the user name YTRickRollsYou. Over 7 million people were rickrolled by the site. (YouTube is owned by Google.)

List Universe posted a list of the Top 10 Bizarre Genetically Modified Organisms. The list included the "paper tree":


As well as the Fern Spider:


Other creatures on the list included the graisin (a giant raisin), the rubber cork tree, the Umbuku Lizard (a flying lizard), the Dolion (a cross between a lion and dog), the Tiny Piney (a miniature pine tree), and the Lemurat (a cross between a lemur and a cat).

Two items on the list were actually real. They were the GloFish (a bioluminescent Zebrafish) and the Grapple (a cross between an apple and a grape).

ThinkGeek wrote about an unusual new Nintendo Wii game: Super Pii Pii Brothers. It was described as an "Amazing Virtual Pee Experience from Japan."

Google Australia debuted gDay technology "enabling you to search content on the internet before it is created":

Images of an 8-inch mummified creature resembling a fairy were posted on the website of the Lebanon Circle Magik Co. Accompanying text explained how the creature had been found by a man walking his dog along an old roman road in rural Derbyshire. Word of this discovery soon spread around the internet. Bloggers excitedly speculated about whether the find was evidence of the actual existence of fairies. The Lebanon Circle website received tens of thousands of visitors and hundreds of emails. But at the end of the day, Dan Baines, the owner of the site, confessed that the fairy was a hoax. He had used his skills as a magician’s prop-maker to create the creature. Baines later reported that, despite his confession, he continued to receive numerous emails from people who refused to accept the fairy wasn’t real. He later sold the fairy to an American collector for £280.

Google announced a new technology called TiSP that would allow it to provide free in-home wireless broadband service. TiSP stood for "Toilet Internet Service Provider." Users would connect to the internet via their bathroom's plumbing system. Installation involved dropping a weighted fiber-optic cable down the toilet and then activating the "patented GFlush™ system" which would send the cable "surfing through the plumbing system to one of the thousands of TiSP Access Nodes." Google promised that it would provide a higher-performance version of the service for businesses which would include "24-hour, on-site technical support in the event of backup problems, brownouts and data wipes."