Geeks Do April Fool's Day

You always have to be on guard come April Fools' Day, especially if you're into technology, technology news, and blogging.

So what's up recently that may or may not be a joke on us geeks?

1. 
   Windows Vista for your Pets (OK, that's a dead give-a-way)
   


2. "xxxx is a fellow IT Pro Technology Advisor from xxxx, he is very well connected to some influential people at Corp. in Redmond..."
   Nathan Mercer
   Michael J. Murphy
   Damien Caro
   Daniel van Soest
   Rodney Buike
   and so on in a ring around the blogosphere
   


3. TechCrunch Has Acquired FuckedCompany.com
   Mathew Ingram's spotting the prank

The first two may be exactly the same joke. In fact, it was the Vista for your pets that kind of gave it away, especially since the format of the IT Pro Advisor blogs was almost word for word.
The problem is that, because geeks love April Fools' Day and because geeks generally don't do the joke very well, you're never quite sure. One example is Robert Scoble's joke for 2006 in which he announced he was leaving Microsoft for Google. It was kind of lame, but typical of the geek approach to April Fools'. The title was credible, given his praise of Google over the years. And in retrospect, it wasn't many months later when Scoble did leave Microsoft, not for Google but for Podtech. Hence the uncertainty.

Anil Dash did a little bashing of geek April Fools' Day jokes last year. One example was

• 
  "We have a big announcement today!" No you don't. It's Saturday.

Which got to to thinking about why a guest blog submission of mine wasn't being published until early next week on the IT Managers Connection Community Blog when it could easily have been published this weekend. Could it be that the entire Microsoft IT Pro Advisor network is complicit in an April Fools' Day hoax and want to keep the community blogs clear until the hoax is fully perpetrated? I don't know. Maybe I'm just way too suspicious.

But if the theme interests you, Gizmo has a list of the top ten geek pranks of all time, some of which I may consider using on my colleagues at work. Wikipedia has an even better list of jokes by media type as well as a list of genuine events mistaken as April Fools' Day hoaxes (that might be one for me if I'm wrong about the IT Pro Advisors announcement rumor).

So, whether you're a perpetrator or a jokee, have a fine April Fools' Day 2007!