MetaFilter posts tagged with aprilfools

Congrats, you're a millionaire! April Fools! That'll be $819.99

waraw — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 09:56:37 -0800

Who are the Fools here? "Many customers of Zecco Trading logged into their brokerage account yesterday to be greeted with a slightly higher buying power than before… on the order of 6 to 13 million dollars!" So what'd these customers do? They bought stocks. Oops. SEC may be getting involved. The Consumerist: "When Zecco realized what was happening, they responded by panic-selling the purchased stocks at a loss and charging the balance to customers, along with a $19.99 broker-assisted trading fee. One poor schmo bought $1 million worth of shares that were later sold for less than the purchase price."

Random Word Stimulation

twoleftfeet — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:48:20 -0800

Random word stimulation is a technique for generating ideas by associations with random words. You'll find more about it at this site and the relevant Wikipedia article. (Previously)

Surprise!

jbickers — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:15:11 -0800

April 1 is the 91st day of the year (92nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 274 days remaining until the end of the year. April 1 is most notable in the Western world for being A p r i l F o o l s' D a y. Oh yeah, I almost forgot ... Skynet becomes aware on April 1.

April Fools 2008

Effigy2000 — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:05:40 -0800

AprilFoolsDayOnTheWeb brings you the most complete listing of April Fools' Day Jokes that Web Sites have run each year from 2004 all the way up to today. Also, the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time. Meanwhile, Google seems to be up to its old tricks...

A Moveable Feast

timsteil — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:05:25 -0800

A glass bong filled with a corked '82 Petrus. Most exclusive restaurant in Chicago, or best April Fool's prank ever? I have reservations!

Google TiSP (BETA)

Memo — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 23:33:11 -0800

"Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines." The free version offers 10x the speed of a normal DSL. Press release and FAQ (with features and prices).

APRIL FOOLS!

Eideteker — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 21:11:58 -0800

In the study of mythology, folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, human hero o r anthropomorphic animal who plays pranks or otherwise disobeys normal r u l e s and norms of behaviour.

Tricksters come in all forms, from all cultures. Notable examples include Br'er Rabbit, Odysseus, Eshu, Raven, and Loki; most or all of whom you are likely familiar with.

Flickr April Fools

eperker — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 11:55:51 -0800

Flickr Interestingness has gone to the cats. It's sort of a joke how many cat photos are "Interesting" on Flickr. It seems for April Fools Day, Flickr has gone to the cats.

True Love is only a search away

nearo — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 02:30:31 -0800

Dating is a search problem. Solve it with Google Romance. When you think about it, love is just another search problem. And we’ve thought about it. A lot. Google Romance™ is our solution. You might want to start by browsing a few popular profiles, here, here, or here. Enjoy.

PSAs from NBC

ColdChef — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 15:05:39 -0800

Public Service Announcements from the staff of NBC's "The Office."

Chinese Democracy to be released April 1

pardonyou? — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:19:12 -0800

The Endless Wait Is Over! After 15 years, Guns N’ Roses will finally release its nearly mythical album, Chinese Democracy. Chuck Klosterman has the exclusive first review of the new record, which features a 14 minute "rap-rock anthem" called "Pound You (Good)," several songs that "make thinly veiled references to the architect who designed Rose's backyard topiary garden," and attacks on the media, including "the editors of Vanity Fair, MTV personality Sway, numerous teenage bloggers, and the city hall reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer (who, curiously, has never written about pop music)." Rock on, Axl Rose. Rock on.

Black day as EU fools with place names

jenleigh — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 09:52:35 -0800

The Scotsman's contribution to April Fool's yesterday was a satirical bit on Political Correctness: "European bureaucrats will push forward legislation today to force the Scottish Executive to change place-names that offend or discriminate on the grounds of race and gender. The commissioners in Brussels have demanded 'race and gender-sensitive' names found for towns such as Motherwell, Blackburn, Helensburgh, Fort William, Campbeltown, Peterhead, Lewis and Fraserburgh be changed."

A Swift Bickerstaff, sir!

OmieWise — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 08:37:02 -0800

Jonathan Swift and April Fool's. In March of 1708 Swift published a pamphlet (under the name Isaac Bickerstaff) predicting the death of a popular astrological charlatan (John Partridge) who had predicted the demise of the COE. On March 29th, Swift published an account of the fulfillment of the prophecy and of the man's death, convincing people, despite Partridge's protestations, that the man claiming to be Partridge was an imposter. The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers.
Ben Franklin used a similar prank when he started Poor Richard's.
HP Lovecraft used the name Isaac Bikerstaff Jr., in 1914, when attacking "a quack named Hartmann, a devotee of the pseudo-science of Astrology."

Best Holiday

Urgo — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 22:24:23 -0800

Today by far is my favorite holiday. It's the one day that webmasters get to be creative and do things that normally wouldn't fit with their sites general themes. For example, Google attempts a high tech way of quenching peoples thirsts, Wikipedia sells out to Britannica, a RFC is written on Morality, and much much more!

I often try and explain it by quoting Barbarella

kirkaracha — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 16:23:02 -0800

I mean, who wants to transform themselves into an alien, you know? Joshua does. With disturbing results.

Q: And his ears?
A: I cut them off. It was not hard.

What fools these mortals be.

Fourmyle — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 12:48:33 -0800

Regularly-updated listing of today's April Fools jokes on the web. Add 'em if you've got 'em.

April Fools

badstone — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 11:00:01 -0800

Top 100 April Fools Hoaxes of all time. Also, April Fools on the Net - a history of newsgroup April Fools posts.

Heavy Metal

skechada — Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:59:21 -0800

Pictures of the tin-foil apartment - a New Year's Eve prank taken to the nth degree...

April's Fools day, and the origins thereof.

taumeson — Tue, 01 Apr 2003 11:15:58 -0800

Anybody know the origin of April Fool's day? We already have a post about the greatest hoaxes of all time, but doesn't anybody know WHY we hoax and trick? I won't tell you why here....but I find it funny, what with the current jingoism and all, that it comes from France...after you digest that first link, read more at urbanlegends.com.

Unintended comedy?

mathowie — Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:58:46 -0800

The End of Free has an ad on it now. [actual april fools sightings inside]

Pay no attention to the shooting.

jonz — Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:25:42 -0800

As a brief distraction from all the death and destruction, let's head over to the museum of hoaxes, where we'll find the top 100 April Fool's day pranks of all time. Good luck with your own respective hoaxing.

if you can find time to pull the metafilter stick out of your collective behinds ...

alan — Mon, 31 Mar 2003 20:15:45 -0800

Remember everyone tomorrow, April 1st, is Make Fun of Dick and Lynne Cheney day, (because Neal Pollack said so). If you run any kind of website or publication and have the power to mock, belittle or poke fun at the second family, it's your patriotic duty to do so.

Lady Liberty no longer wanted?

girlhacker — Wed, 19 Mar 2003 17:18:16 -0800

Lady Liberty no longer wanted? Thanks to a backlash against the French for their refusal to back the US, one group wants to return the Statue of Liberty to France. Is it real or is it a joke?

ncurley — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 19:48:51 -0800

Bill Gates fooled by Quebec radio station. He may be the world's richest man, but that didn't prevent Bill Gates from falling for an April Fool's Day joke by two Quebec radio comics pretending to be Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

jokeefe — Mon, 01 Apr 2002 12:44:24 -0800

MIT webpage modified for April Fool's Day. We've seen the Google Pigeon page, and EBay, and even our beloved Mefi (can I say that I actually like this look better?). Have we got a thread which is collecting web page AFD jokes? I didn't see one. If not, perhaps this could serve as a start?