April Fool’s Day

kit.jpgWell April Fool’s Day came and went without too much incident. I think this was something to do with it being a Sunday rather than a workday and who want’s to waste a perfectly good weekend setting up elaborate hoaxes? Google.

Google chose yesterday to announce the TiSP. Free broadband via your toilet. The user drops a weighted end of a long, Google-supplied fibre-optic cable in their toilet and flushes it. Around 60 minutes later, the end would be recovered and connected to the Internet by a “Plumbing Hardware Dispatcher (PHD).” The user then connects their end to a Google-supplied wireless router and run the Google-supplied installation media on a Windows XP or Vista computer (”Mac and Linux support coming soon”). Alternatively, a user could request a professional installation, where Google would deploy nanobots through the plumbing to complete the process. The free service would be supported by “discreet DNA sequencing” of “personal bodily output” to display online ads that relate to culinary preferences and personal health.

(I don’t want any funny jokes regarding Telkom, toilets and broadband!)

Google have a long history of April Fool’s hoaxes. Here are the links:

2007: Google TiSP
2007: Gmail Paper
2006: Google Romance
2005: Google Gulp
2004: Google Lunar/Copernicus Center
2002: Pigeon Rank (my favourite)
2000: Google MentalPlex