Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Google Fools!

I admit to being a big fan of April Fool's Day jokes. I remember one very cool one years ago when co-workers where I was temping set the computer system to count down from 10 to 0 and when it hit zero, every screen went blank! After about three minutes of people freaking out, the system went back up again and had a cup of coffee as its cursor. That sounds kind of silly but it was funny because it happened first thing in the morning before people realized it was April 1st.

One of the best hoaxes ever was the Sports Illustrated article about Sidd Finch, the baseball phenom who grew up with monks and could pitch over 150 miles an hour. It was written by George Plimpton and got EVERY baseball fan excited. People were hugely disappointed to learn there was no such person.

And now today, we find this on Google, those wild and crazy guys. Virgle is a joint venture between Virgin and Google to colonize Mars. The beauty of the hoax is the great lengths they went to make it look real. Very clever.

Here is a great list of the Top 10 April Fools Day jokes according to the San Diego Museum of Hoaxes. Enjoy! And keep your eyes open!