It’s that day of the year again when tech and internet firms prank their customers with April Fools’ Day stories. But this year the issue is confused by a couple of far-fetched stories that happen to be true.
Amazon has already had to issue a denial that its new product Dash is a gag. It certainly sounds a hard-to-believe proposition: a series of 18 physical buttons that can be placed around the house, each of which reorders a specific product when pressed.
Each button bears the branding of a particular manufacturer and will order a particular replacement product by sending a signal over Wi-Fi. Examples include Huggies diapers, Tide detergent and Gillette razors. Users select their chosen pack size in advance and the system works in a similar way to ‘Buy It Now’, so there’s no need to enter any passwords or card details. To avoid mistaken orders, once the button is pressed, it won’t work again until the product has been delivered.
While it certainly feels like a gimmick right now (it’s only available by invitation to Prime members), Amazon appears to be playing the long game. It’s reportedly working on getting manufacturers to build a re-order button directly into new appliances and is even looking at whether devices could track the use of consumables such as coffee pods or detergent tablets and automatically re-order when stocks are running low.
Another joke that turned out to be true is the idea of turning Google Maps into a Pac-Man game. If you’ve dismissed reports to that effect on your social media timeline, you were too hasty. Yesterday and today at least, whenever you have the aerial map (rather than the photographic view) enabled, you can click on a Pacman image at the bottom of the screen and play a game, with the maze made up of the local streets — so beware of no-through roads. It’s surely a step closer to my dream of a Grand Theft Auto/Google Street View mash-up.
As for the actual pranks, Dominos jumped on the driverless car craze to announce the Domi-no-driver, an unmanned delivery bike that it refers to as the world’s first auto-nom-nom-nom-ous bike.
Google came up with Smartbox by Inbox, a physical inbox that sends you text alerts when the mailman has been, and includes heating and air conditioning so that touching the metal exterior is never uncomfortable.
Another Google feature is a one-day only addition to the contextual menu in Chrome for Android: you can now ‘Share a reaction’ to any page by taking a self-portrait that’s supposedly then shared with your friends.
Finally from Google, there’s a video of a new product for kids: a talking panda toy that can process search queries. Cute as it is, it’s a little confusing for some web users as ‘Google Panda’ already refers to a 2011 change to Google’s algorithm that dramatically changed the rankings of many websites.
Think Geek has stepped up with a whole range of prank products, with the gag revealed when you try to buy them. My favourites include Groot Beer, a steam-powered console for playing Steam games, and a Game of Thrones-themed edition of Clue with a four foot by two foot board — which is needed to handle the 48 characters and 48 weapons!
Microsoft has supposedly come up with a new mobile phone system, MS-DOS mobile, though you do have to wonder if it would actually get a bigger market share than Windows Phone.
Sony’s offering is PlayStation Flow, a take on motion sensor gaming that allows you to simulate underwater activity in games by actually going for a swim. It supposedly takes advantage of Bluetooth-enabled goggles with motion sensors, headphones and small LCD screens inside the lenses.
HTC is promoting RE Sok, the world’s first smart socks. As well as showing messages on an LCD screen, they contain GPS trackers with a pairing feature to avoid getting odd socks after laundry, and a hole detection feature.
Groupon has supposedly entered the growing taxi app market with Grouber, the first app that lets you order a cab driven by a cat. The service is said to use GPS-based lasers to make sure your feline driver takes the best route.
Meanwhile Tinder and Uber have joined together to share April Fool’s with a couple of joint apps. The story goes that if you make a Tinder match with an Uber driver, you can split the fare, while if you make a match on Tinder you can automatically order an Uber car to take you to a meet-up, something that it wouldn’t be shocking to see become reality.
Speaking of which, Roku’s gag really does sound like a real service waiting to happen. It’s come up with Roku Rendezvous, a service that will bring together single customers who watch the same mix of programming.
This is just a selection as this feels like the busiest April Fool’s Day online so far, so if you’ve spotted any other highlights, post a comment reply and let us know.