Hoax Museum Blog: Technology

Lazy Guide to Net Culture — Stewart Kirkpatrick of Scotsman.com presents the Lazy Guide to Net Culture: Hoax, Line and Sinker. "Idiotic hoaxes abound online, and are taken very seriously indeed by people who are not usually idiots."

Mobile Phone Birth Control — This one had me going for a while before I figured out it was a joke. The EETimes reports on a small Belgian company called Prophy-Lectric that has developed a cellphone add-on, dubbed the Nippit 3000. This remarkable device "projects a high-intensity ultra-sonic electromagnetic 'sound cone' that is inaudible to the human ear but fatal to any sperm cell within a range of six meters, or about 18 feet." In other words, just place it next to the bed during moments of intimacy, and that's all the birth control you need. As an added benefit, the high-pitched sound also keeps the dog away. I've noticed that quite a few websites have linked to this story without any acknowledgment (or apparent recognition) that it's a joke.

Fake Background Noise — Liars and chronic excuse-makers now have a new weapon of deception at their disposal. SounderCover will add fake background noises to a cellular call. So if you're sleeping in late, but you want your boss to think that you're stuck in traffic, just play the sound for background traffic while you lay happily in bed. You can even create and use your own sounds. Ingenious.

PC — The hoax that everyone was linking to last week was an article on overclockers.com written by a guy who claimed that he had received a brand new dual-processor Apple G5 for Christmas, but because he had been hoping for a PC, he gutted the computer and installed a cheap PC motherboard into it instead. For those who don't know computers, that's a little like getting a Ferrari and replacing its engine with that of a Geo Prism. The Mac community hit the roof when they heard about what this guy had done. But of course, as the guy now explains, he was just kidding. Wired has an article detailing the hoax and the reaction to it.

Rewind Your DVDs — Digital Velocity wants to rewind your DVDs for you. Just enter your credit card information on their website (Just $1 per DVD), then insert the DVD into the CD tray of your computer, and fifty-nine seconds later your DVD will be rewound. (Thanks to Tracey for the link).

Phantom is not a Hoax — Back in August I noted there were rumors that the Phantom game console was just a hoax. Turns out it's real.

Mario 3 Time Attack Video — A 'time attack' video has been going around that appears to show someone completing every level of Mario 3 perfectly in 11 minutes. If you're a fan of Mario 3 it's apparently quite impressive. Unfortunately, the video is a fake.

Vixen Love — If you're ever instant messaging on AOL and strike up a conversation with a 19-year-old female from California named Vixen Love, watch out. You're not really talking to a teenage girl. Vixen Love is actually a computer program. Quite a few people apparently have failed to realize this.

Hold the Button — Talk about sheer useless stupidity... Holdthebutton.com challenges you to see how long you can hold down the button of your mouse while keeping it positioned over a small rectangle. I managed exactly seven seconds, though they say that the average time is 4 minutes (do people really have nothing better to do?). But this is the part that I'm convinced must be a hoax. They claim that the record is over 13 days. Unless someone wedged something over their mouse button and then left it there for 13 days, I don't see how that would be possible.

AMD Crop Circles — Last month Advanced Micro Devices debuted its new 64-bit micro processor. Apparently it helped promote the launch of this new processor by hiring a group of crop-circle experts to create circles throughout the UK and America. Pictures of their efforts can be seen here (Thanks to Geoduck for the link).

Apple Promotes Ancient Greek — Here's an odd hoax, brought to my attention by Patrick Georges who lives up the road from me in Carlsbad. It appears that a message has been circulating amongst the Greek community, suggesting that Apple Computer has created a program to teach Ancient Greek online. This program will be hosted by CNN on a page titled Hellenic Quest. The text of this message can be read at the GrecoReport website. The supposed logic behind this move is that learning Ancient Greek promotes creativity and Apple is all about promoting creativity because creative people use Apple Computers. Might be true. I took a couple years of Ancient Greek in high school, and here I am, years later, using an Apple Computer. I never thought the two were related, but now I see that they must be.

Primate Programming — From the company's website: "Primate Programming Inc. is dedicated to the advancement and gainful employment of non-human great apes within the United States information technology sector."

Beta-7 and Sega ESPN NFL Football — I don't have much time to examine this fully, but a visitor (Rocketboy_X) just alerted me to a possible hoax involving a guy named 'Beta-7' who claims to have been a beta tester for one of Sega's new video games, ESPN NFL Football, until he began to experience blackouts during which he would engage in unpredictable behavior (such as randomly tackling people). On his website (or rather, a website devoted to publicizing his claims), Beta-7 claims that the game (which was just released a few weeks ago) causes this reaction in a small percentage of people, and that Sega knows about this and is trying to cover it up. Of course, this all smells like it's a controversy engineered by Sega itself for publicity. Here's another website that explores the entire controversy and the various theories people have about it.

Free Electricity — Power from the Phone Company: Plug your electrical appliances into the phonejack

Holotouch.com — A visitor sent me a question about holotouch.com:// "Dont think this is for real. Check it out. Seems too simple a site to claim what they have achieved."
Actually, although the technology sounds like something out of Star Trek: the Next Generation, it is real. The links they have to articles about themselves written by the New York Times and others all check out. Plus, I've read about similar technologies before. As for the simplicity of the site, I assume that the company just doesn't have a lot of cash to spend on a flashy website. That's often the case with startup companies.

The Phantom Game Console — Recently a company called Infinium Labs announced that it would soon be coming out with a high-powered game console called 'Phantom' that it promises will revolutionize the gaming industry. You can check out their very slick website to find out more about the console. But rumors have began to spread suggesting that there is no Phantom Game Console, that the whole thing is a hoax. The rumors started when someone paid a visit to the company's headquarters and discovered that the headquarters consisted of nothing more than a "100ft x 100ft room with a desk and two phones." Why would anyone perpetrate a hoax like this? One theory is that it's all a publicity stunt put together by Advanced Studios, LLC, the graphic design company that put together Infinium's really slick website. Of course, Infinium is loudly insisting that the Phantom Game Console is real, and a few journalists claim to have seen working prototypes of the console. So we'll have to stay tuned to see how this plays out.

Fake Friendsters — There's been not one, but two articles in the past few days about the phenomenon of Fake Friendsters. Apparently many people using the new online service Friendster — a service that allows you to meet new people by making connections with the friends of your friends — have been creating fake identities, identities such as God, Giant Squid, or Jackalope. Friendster is fighting back by trying to delete all the fakes. Of course, this is like fighting the tide. Just ask any postmodernist and they'll tell you that the concept of identity is itself inherently illusory. So to insist that only 'real' identities are allowed on the service is absurd. Personally, if I were to create an account on Friendster, I'd want all of my friends to be fake.

Defacers Challenge — I haven't yet heard of any websites being defaced as part of today's Defacers' Challenge. Perhaps it was a hoax after all.

The Hacker Challenge — A hacker website (defacers-challenge.com... it no longer appeares to be active) announces a contest to see who can deface the most websites this Sunday, July 6. Authorities suspect the whole thing may be a hoax.

Powergen Italia — Over the past two weeks a lot of attention has been paid to a website whose name could be read in two ways: http://www.powergenitalia.com. Think about it. Powergen Italia, or... Anyway, I didn't link to it here at first, believing it was a legitimate company that didn't realize how its name could be misread. Turns out I was wrong. According to an article in The Register, the site is a spoof. The real company named Powergen denies having an Italian division named Powergen Italia. Someone must have created the site for a laugh. Perhaps a disgruntled Powergen employee. Some other website names that can be read in two ways are WhoRepresents.com (Whore Presents) and IPanywhere.com. (via Vowe.net)