April Fool's Day Archive, Contents:

The American grocery chain Whole Foods Market revealed a new product on its website: organic air. It came in .02 oz bottles in four varieties: original, sea breeze, mountain wind, and salt & vinegar. The grocery chain also announced that it was opening a new store in Antarctica, and that it was offering a free spider with every purchase of 50-lbs of organic bananas.

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

Nestle put out a press release announcing they were changing the name of the Butterfinger candy bar to "The Finger," in order to give the candy "a shorter, more contemporary name."

PopXpress, a UK chain of stores dedicated to iPod and MP3 accessories, unveiled the iPop Bra, a product designed to help people keep "abreast of music":

Retailer Gear4 unveiled the iRon:

The German software company Application Systems Heidelberg debuted an iShave attachment for the iPod, allowing you to transform your iPod music player into an electric razor. The website boasted: "Now with your iPod you can not only hear good music everywhere, you can also get a smooth shave to look good."

Virgin Mobile announced that it would be offering a left-handed Sony Ericsson LH-Z200 mobile phone: "Designed with a reversed keypad layout, the buttons are switched from right to left instead of standard left to right… This simple but clever design makes dialling, texting and menu navigation quicker and easier for anyone left-handed." A number of technology sites fell for the joke.

Thinkgeek.com, an online retailer of offbeat gadgets, continued a multiyear tradition of posting fake gadgets on April 1st. This year's roster included a PC EZ-Bake Oven: "It fits in a 5 1/4" drive bay and plugs right into your power supply with the included Molex connector… The PC Ez-Bake oven can even be used to cook your Pop Tarts, Bagel Bites, or any tiny or flat food. YUM!"

The Remote Control Gastron Hunger Elimator: "Simply swallow the tiny non-digestible Gastron base station and use the remote to adjust your personal hunger level. The base station inflates to fill your stomach, giving you that satisfied full feeling with zero calories."

CaffeDerm caffeine patches: "They easily apply to your shoulder and provide a steady dose of caffeine throughout the day. These calorie-free fixes are just enough to keep you from ripping your teeth out without generating any brain fuzz so you can actually present yourself as a sentient!"

Thinkgeek.com introduced the George Foreman USB iGrill, the "low-fat, high-bandwidth solution to your networked cooking needs":

Dunlop Tires announced the introduction of personalized tire treads:

"For hundreds of years people have been monogramming their clothes, and there's certainly no shortage of personalized license plates, so why shouldn't they be able to add a personal touch to their tires too?' said Ian McIntosh, General Manager of Advertising & Marketing Services, Dunlop Tires (Canada)...

Dunlop Ident-a-Treds are the product of more than a decade of top-secret work at the company's remote Canadian research and development facility in Serit Polnud, NWT. Researchers at the Serit Polnud lab created the new, ultra malleable and highly adhesive tires by combining sticky sap from Canadian maple trees with traditional rubber compounds. Dunlop Ident-a-Tred tires are available with initials, symbols, designs or logos engraved onto the tire treads, combining superior traction and handling with unique style."

Car-maker MINI placed ads in several Australian papers describing a new space-saving technology: the Vertical Parking Locator (VPL), which allowed MINIs to park vertically on the side of buildings. Their press release stated:

To demonstrate the technology MINI also placed one of their cars on the side of the Woolworths building in George Street, Sydney.

Online retailer ThinkGeek.com debuted a Desktop Zero-Point Infinite Power Generator, at a price of only $199.99, although the item was permanently "On Backorder".

"At the quantum level, all matter in the universe vibrates constantly - even at absolute zero! The Desktop Zero-Point Power Generator takes advantage of this seething abundant energy by converting naturally occurring EM energy into 120 Volts / 200 Amps of electricity.
The generator is 8 inches square, and weighs just under 3 pounds. When activated, the generator will generate power indefinitely! The unit emits a very quiet whirr, and less than 600 rem of residual ionizing radiation! ThinkGeek recommends you drain the unit's non-volitile waste chamber once every three months, and dispose of the tritium/deuterium slurry at a licensed disposal facility.
Sorry, not available in 220V."

A ThinkGeek spokesman later told Wired magazine that long after posting the generator for sale, they continued to receive numerous requests to purchase it: "We've had people e-mailing us from all over the world telling us they were very interested in it."

The Sunday East African Standard in Kenya printed an advertisement and a back-page story profiling a new mobile phone service provider called Kencom Limited. The new mobile phones would come with built-in scratch cards, internet service, videocams, and TV screens. What's more, service would cost a low rate of only four shillings per minute. To make the service even more attractive, a coupon was offered with the enticement that the first 3,000 people to submit the coupon would receive free phones. By noon, over 5,000 entry forms had already been submitted to the East African Standard Town Office in Nairobi. Among the hopefuls dropping off coupons were said to be top military personnel, politicians, and businessmen.

The Daily Mail announced that Esporta Health Clubs had launched a new line of socks designed to help people lose weight. Dubbed "FatSox," these revolutionary socks could actually suck body fat out of a person's feet as they sweated. The invention promised to "banish fat for ever." The socks employed a patented nylon polymer called FloraAstraTetrazine that had been "previously only applied in the nutrition industry." The American inventor of this polymer was Professor Frank Ellis Elgood. The socks supposedly worked in the following way: as a person's body heat rose, and their blood vessels dilated, the socks drew "excess lipid from the body through the sweat." After having sweated out the fat, the wearer could then simply remove the socks and wash them, and the fat, away.

Red Herring Magazine ran an article profiling a revolutionary new internet technology called Orecchio (Italian for "ear"). This technology used the TIDE communications protocol (short for "Telepathic Internet Data Exchange") to allow users to compose and send e-mail telepathically. To e-mail telepathically users would wear a device nestled between their ear and skull. The company developing this device was Tidal Wave Communications, led by Yuri Maldini, a computer genius from Estonia. Adding credibility to the story was a reference to some real research at Emory University in which researchers had allowed a paralyzed man to move a cursor across a computer screen by implanting a device in his brain. Mr. Maldini, who had once been employed by the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, claimed that he had developed the idea for Orecchio from the encrypted communications systems he had put in place during the Gulf War and the conflict in Somalia. Nevertheless, despite the revolutionary potential of telepathic e-mail, skeptics abounded. Clarence Madison, managing partner of New World Associates, was quoted as saying, "I know crap when I see it. This is crap." Ignoring such critics, Mr. Maldini was pressing ahead with his plans to commercialize Orecchio. He even was anticipating future features such as telepathic web browsers and word processors and the ability to receive e-mail telepathically as well as send it.

At the end of the Red Herring article the reporter recalled a moment when he asked Mr. Maldini how big the market for such a product might be: "Mr. Maldini falls silent. He stares vacantly for several moments out his office window and then says, 'I just sent you an email with my answer.' Upon returning to our office, we find the response waiting: 'It's going to be huge,' reads the email. 'Simply huge.'" Red Herring received numerous letters from readers admitting they had been fooled by the article.