London (Reuters)-the April Fool's is dead.
Or at least the sweet ordinary fool has metastised in a giant company controlled by global marketing executives, bypassing the Internet necessarily familiar brands deeper into the collective consciousness.
So while Google has extended a tradition dating from, well, a decade or so, poking fun at his own Ubiquity-introduction of a database of odors and stop the service YouTube-agreed that old-fashioned paper poked fun Monday at the power of machines on our minds.
In Britain, where newspapers have tasted along the ancient art of self-defence the gullible on 1 April, the guardian offered its leftist, liberal readers shows "augmented reality" to let them "see the world through the eyes of the guardian at all times".
To be fastened in a restaurant, movie theater or retail product and critical reviews of the paper would come in a vision without all the hassle of reach by phone, wrote the Guardian's correspondent anagrammatic Lois p.. And "technology anti-bigotry" would screen out op-ed columns offend if happen any player to pick up a copy of the right Daily Mail.
Fantasy meets reality, however, with a payoff line noting the imminent appearance in Google Glass, which lets people View information before their eyes and take videos.
Google itself, which has championed the art of April Fools Day marketing, offers visitors a its google.com search engine a beta version of a new technology, Google-"the new scent-sation in research", a sort of smell the world wide web.
In a corporation-wide push for global funny bone, the company has also offered gag on its e-mail service Gmail-poking fun at the break with a video explaining new, Gmail blue ... Blue; Google Maps has offered a treasure hunt mode and the old parchment style navigation; and Google's YouTube unit «revealed» that the video-sharing site all together was a huge race and now closed to judge the winner.
New products and services have been fair game for other brands eager to showcase their lighter side: Japanese telecommunications company KDDI offered a phone that was actually a bed to save ever having to get up; a blog to Twitter, or rather "twttr," those users who wanted the vowels in their Microblogs would have to pay.
Procter and Gamble brand Scope mouthwash offered a new flavor "Bacon"-"for the breath that sizzles".
German automaker BMW has offered British readers excited at the imminent arrival of a real baby P.R.A.M. (postnatal Royal Auto Mobile) complete with picture of a buggy style and sportily corgis at Windsor Castle-requests to Joe.King@bmw.co.uk.
SATIRE
In the more traditional Realm of entertainment based on news, French site by Yahoo front page led with the announcement that, to save money, President Francois Hollande would move its offices from the Elysée Palace one of the grittier suburbs of Paris.
"Nesta Vowles" had a story in the UK Daily Mail about owls in the Hogwarts-style training, to deliver internal mail in an Office. It carried photos of what it called the "Roy-mail OWL". The rival Daily Express said Queen Elizabeth was renting rooms at Buckingham Palace--but, perhaps fearing for his switchboard, hastened to tell readers that this was a joke.
The Sun derided by Mick Jagger in a tent and the millionaire that Rolling Stones were having in practice to play at the Glastonbury rock festival of Easter spending out doors-at Rolf Apilo camp, of course, he said.
In a vein more sharply satiric, the Independent has taken aim at plans for controlling the British press reporting that a group of pro-lobbying regulation, backed by celebrity victims of media intrusion, was consulted by foreign Governments, including Burma and Sudan on how to deal with pesky journalists.
Time to reflect back to a gentler age with a history of recently discovered diaries from an army officer of the 19th century that cited "experts" comparing them to two famous historical hoaxes-bones "pre-human" Piltdown Man hoax and the Hitler diaries.
Such claims seemed like an admission of defeat for a genre in which the apex in the most innocent moments saw the BBC bombarded with calls for seed catalogs after an article about "spaghetti trees" aired in 1957; 20 years later, would-be tourists demanded the guardian for information on getting to the idyllic-but unfortunately all typeface-island of San Seriffe.
It took French post office, La Poste, to highlight the struggle for survival in the face of traditional media to a new technological era; issued a press release announcing that airborne drones were delivering newspapers to the homes of the people.
Blurring the lines between happiness and marketing, Britain's daily mirror carried a story about the launch of glass-bottomed aircraft – offering special trips on Loch Ness. It would, he said, to be operated by Virgin Airlines Richard Branson – who bore their online advertisement properly for the new planes, along with advertising for your real new home service.
With ever more April Fools Day ad man dream rather than a time for jokes in the playground, Coca-Cola put a touch ironic, post-modern atmosphere all bluff-o-double-bluff by a relaunch of vanilla version carbonated drink in Britain: advertising slogan? "Is back! -(no really, it is) ".
If the stress of sifting fact from fiction seemed too, especially to fellow journalists write reports from the frontline of tomfoolery, once might have left the newspaper Metro in Britain to do the legwork and make things easier.
The 2013 "round-up of the best jokes" by other media including a BBC story on NASA Mars rover tweeting that bullying by trolls the Internet was forcing it via Twitter, the Telegraph on rabbits bred with human ears and a press release supermarket offering to provide food using a 3D printer.
The problem is that those were all formed from Metro. April Fools!
(Edited by Giles Elgood)
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