Roundup: good, bad, and ugly April Fools’ Day jokes

The tech world has embraced April Fools’ Day with enthusiasm (and no concern whatsoever for the sanity of the poor bloggers who have to round up all the damn jokes, and make sure that no prank is covered as serious news, and, seriously, I’m rolling my eyes so hard they hurt! But I digress.)

From genuinely funny to cringe-worthy, from totally believable to totally crazy, April Fool’s jokes are coming in thick and fast. Google alone is responsible for about a hundred. Without further ado, here’s a roundup of the tech-related pranks we’ve spotted so far.

Sony Proton Pack

Sony President and CEO Kazuo Hirai commented “The perfection of the Proton Pack™, long a dream of the world’s greatest engineers since first pioneered by Dr. Egon Spengler of Columbia University, is an example of Sony’s relentless pursuit of innovation. It absolutely delivers the wow factor that is so important to our company mission.”

NVIDIA launches GeForce GTX ENERGY

“Power. Speed. Endurance. These are the lifeblood of a gamer. At NVIDIA, we understand the drive to be better. Our research on eSports has led to the discovery of an amazing new weapon for PC gamers. Introducing GeForce GTX ENERGY.” What more can we say?

OnePlus wants everyone to #GetSandstoned

Everybody loves that Sandstone texture on the OnePlus One. So much so that OnePlus made a Sandstone iPhone 6 case. But the company hasn’t stopped there, with a new line of lifestyle products including a new Sandstone cup, Sandstone sneakers and even Sandstone soap, so you never drop it again.

Charge your Tesla from your ZenFone Max

Yeah, yeah, Elon Musk just introduced the Tesla Model 3, a car that will probably revolutionize our world. Forget about that. The real Tesla news is that you can charge it from an ASUS ZenFone Max. Now that’s convenience.

YouTube SnoopaVision

Snoop Dogg makes everything better. And thanks to SnoopaVision, you can now watch any video, in 360 degrees, and hang out with Snoop himself. As the rapper puts it: “Dre has Beats, Jay has TIDAL, Kanye has himself, and now the world has SnoopaVision.”

Check out more videos in glorious SnoopaVision here.

iFixit smother bag

The teardown experts at iFixit are branching out into safety products, with a “smother bag” for owners of notoriously dangerous hoverboards.

Google Express parachutes

Your next delivery of snacks may arrive by way of air, thanks to the new parachutes deployed by Gooogle’s Express shopping service. Because, as they say, “parachutes are a lot like minds, they work best when they’re open.”

r/Android – What doesn’t work? You tell me

The Android subreddit has received an XDA-inspired makeover, complete with touches like “Don’t forget to press thanks” and the classic “What doesn’t work? You tell me.”

Android Developer Story: The Guardian goes galactic with Android and Google Play

The Guardian explains how they’ve optimized their news app for for interplanetary space distribution on Google Play, with the new features in the Google Play Developer Console and updated Material Design guidelines.

Gmail lets you drop the mic on boring email threads

Sometimes email convos can go on and on and on. Suffer no more. Show how you really feel with the new “Send and Drop Mic” button, that automatically inserts an appropriate GIF in your reply and archives the thread, so you don’t ever have to see it again. Handy! Update: The Mic Drop feature got out of hand and actually cost some people their jobs before the Gmail team pulled it and apologized.

Google’s new actual reality headset

Virtual reality is hot. But you know what’s hotter? ACTUAL reality. And Google now lets you try it on the cheap with its new Cardboard Plastic.

Inbox by Gmail can now auto-reply to your boss with “Aw ?!” ?

Smart Reply now supports emoji, and what could possibly go wrong?

Emoji search in Google Photos

This one straddles the line between stupid joke and actual useful feature – you can now search through emoji on Google Photos. Because sometimes typing “cat” is just too hard.

Pegman is getting groovy

Google Maps is getting all groovy. Well Pegman, the iconic stick figure you can drag around to open Street View, is. Just go to Google Maps on the web and you’ll see the option to visit Funky Town. And this is what happens when you do that:

Samsung Internet of Trousers

Quoting from this innovative product’s description: “Keep-Your-Pants-On Mode: Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away with the moment. The Samsung Bio-Processor in your pants checks your bio-data including your heart rate and perspiration level. If these indicators get too high, Samsung’s trousers will send you subtle notifications as a reminder of the importance of keeping your cool.”

Google realBooks

The Google Play Books team couldn’t stay away from the fray. They are launching realBooks, which are phones loaded with exactly one ebook. You know, so you can fill your bookshelf with books again…

T-Mobile Binge Up

Some think that T-Mobile CEO John Legere, with his colorful language and complete lack of self-restraint, is a walking prank that cruel gods are playing on the CEOs of AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Well, he ain’t. T-Mobile’s real prank is Binge On Up, a product that promises to make YouTubular degeneration a thing of the past.

We probably missed a ton of pranks, but we’re working hard to uncover more. If you know of a cool prank we didn’t mention, give us a shout in the comments!