{"id":4904,"date":"2008-04-02T16:39:01","date_gmt":"2008-04-02T15:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/april-fools-2008-roundup\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T02:32:44","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T09:32:44","slug":"april-fools-2008-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/april-fools-2008-roundup\/","title":{"rendered":"April Fools&#8217; 2008 roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2008\/04\/gday.jpg\" alt=\"April Fools\u2019 2008 roundup\" align=\"left\" \/>So April Fools&#8217; is finally over and we&#8217;ve been left here with a bunch of pranks,  fake news and weird software apps to be added to our personal collection. It seems that April Fools&#8217; jokes are becoming more and more sophisticated each year: now it&#8217;s not a question of coming up with the most absurd idea to make people laugh; it&#8217;s trying to make those people actually believe that what you&#8217;re talking about is true.<\/p>\n<p>During the past few years, Google has made it clear that they&#8217;re the absolute April Fools&#8217; kings. Since they also used this date (April 1st) to launch Gmail <em>for real<\/em>, sometimes it&#8217;s hard to know whether they&#8217;re launching another new service or simply trying to fool us.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2008\/04\/youtube-rickastley.jpg\" alt=\"April Fools\u2019 2008 roundup\" align=\"right\" \/>Yesterday we could see several examples of their creativity and sense of humor: the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com.au\/intl\/en\/gday\/index.html\">gDay<\/a> (a new feature enabling you to search Internet content before it&#8217;s created), the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/googlecalendar\/new_wakeup.html\">Wakeup Kit<\/a> (a new service in Google Calendar to make sure you get out of bed) and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/virgle\/index.html\">Virgle<\/a> (a Virgin &amp; Google project to set the first permanent human colony on Mars) were some of the Google pranks, together with some smaller details like the possibility to create a paper airplane in Google Docs or set an appointment with famous people in Google Calendar.<\/p>\n<p>But Google is not the only one that tried to get us to smile yesterday. Youtube, for example, linked every single featured video on its homepage to Rick Astley&#8217;s hit <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.youtube.com\/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI\"><em>Never Gonna Give You Up<\/em><\/a>. Meanwhile, <a href=\"http:\/\/a.viary.com\">Aviary <\/a>surprised us with a revolutionary <a href=\"http:\/\/a.viary.com\/blog\/posts\/dodo-web-based-time-machine\">web-based time machine<\/a> that could take any photo and create its future &#8211; or past &#8211; version. The accompanying screenshots were just hilarious.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2008\/04\/wow-consoles.jpg\" alt=\"April Fools\u2019 2008 roundup\" align=\"left\" \/>Pranks were not limited to software: videogames also contributed to the fun by providing us with great headlines like this: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wowinsider.com\/2008\/04\/01\/wow-insider-is-now-hko-insider\/\">WoWinsider<\/a> decides to give up on Blizzard&#8217;s MMORPG and focus on the much more exciting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hellokittyonline.com\/us\/\">Hello Kitty Online<\/a>. Talking about WoW, we also learned that this popular game was finally <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldofwarcraft.com\/moltencore\/\">coming to consoles<\/a>&#8230; but starting with the Atari 2600 platform at a &#8220;glorious 192i resolution&#8221;. Thinkgeek, the popular geek online shop, also contributed to the gaming April Fools&#8217; with the awesome <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thinkgeek.com\/stuff\/41\/superpiipii.html\">Super Pii Pii Brothers<\/a> game for the Wii, as well as other remarkable objects such as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thinkgeek.com\/stuff\/41\/personalsoundtrack.html\">Personal Soundtrack T-Shirt<\/a> or the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thinkgeek.com\/stuff\/41\/pteq.html\">USB Pregnancy Test<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we hope you liked <a href=\"http:\/\/satellite-live.en.softonic.com\/\">our contribution<\/a> to this year&#8217;s April Fools&#8217;. We had loads of fun while creating Satellite Live and hope you didn&#8217;t take the joke too badly!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So April Fools&#8217; is finally over and we&#8217;ve been left here with a bunch of pranks, fake news and weird software apps to be added to our personal collection. It seems that April Fools&#8217; jokes are becoming more and more sophisticated each year: now it&#8217;s not a question of coming up with the most absurd &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/april-fools-2008-roundup\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;April Fools&#8217; 2008 roundup&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-4904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336233,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904\/revisions\/336233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4904"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=4904"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=4904"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=4904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}