Happy April First, errybody! Yes, that’s right, we’ve reached that special, inimitable time of year. April Fools Day 2013. At TechCrunch, we have a long history of taking April Fools seriously. Deadly, deadly seriously. So, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to create a master list (which will be updated throughout the day) with the best tomfoolery, pranks, WTFs and LOLs the Internet and the tech industry have to offer.

All night and all day, whatever it takes. If a company close to you happens to break out its clown shoes in what can only be an eye-rolling effort at being funny (really, the one time of year we indulge terrible nerd jokes publicly), please alert us in the comment section. And, again, thank you for your help in advance.

We’ve tried to separate the good from the bad and the ugly — and highlight the stuff that’s actually funny — sometimes with success, sometimes not.

So here they are.

(And, again, for our annual disclaimer: If you’re one of those folks who finds April Fools stressful because you’re constantly subject to punkings courtesy of your co-workers, rest assured that we at TechCrunch would never do that to you. Never. Never ever.)

The Great List Of April Foolings

Google Nose

You have to give Google props. They always take April Fools Day pretty seriously, and cats are usually involved. But this year Google is poking fun of its Glass Project with some olfactory goodness. Google Nose. Smells galore. You’ve probably been wondering what Google does with all that information that it tirelessly indexes for its search engine, combing the Web with Page Rank to serve you moderately usable results. Well, it’s also been collecting scents.

Now, as Greg reports, instead of paying hundreds or thousands for its newest piece of sexy hardware, Google is now letting you type your favorite scent into its search engine, tap the “smell button” and inhale to your hearts content. Just try not to sneeze on your monitor.

YouTube? More like NOTube, amirite?

That’s right. You heard it here first. Jordan brook the news Google has decided to shut down YouTube. After eight years, the company revealed that the whole thing has actually been an American Idol-like competition. Thank god, because for those of us that were taught that life is a competition — no enjoyment necessary — well, we’ve been a little suspicious of YouTube.

But the company has finally revealed that the competition that we know as YouTube is coming to a close, and that an expert panel of judges — YouTube celebrities themselves — will choose the winners. But don’t expect the winners to be announced any time soon. The judges will spend the next decade sifting through YouTube videos to choose said winners. Tomorrow, at midnight, the site will shut down and all content will be deleted. When it reopens in 2023, the only remaining video will be the winner. Frankly, it all makes perfect sense.

Gmail Blue

The hits just keep coming for The Googs. Next stop on the April Fools Google Train? “Gmail Blue.” That should explain itself, but just in case, it took Google “six years to develop the technology” to turn Gmail blue. Google turns nine tomorrow, and it might as well just go for it.

A poke at Facebook? Who’s to say?

You Got Vowels? Give Twitter Money.

Twitter has announced Twttr. Who needs vowels, am I right? Not you. Or Twitter. Twitter’s new “two-tiered” service includes a free portion called “Twttr” where each tweet (or “twt”) shall contain nary-a-vowel. But just in case that has you up in arms, you can have your stinkin’ vowels back, but it will cost you $5/month.

Pretty minimal price to pay for the fundamental building blocks of, you know, the English language and all. But because Twitter is ever-the-beneficent social network, it will offer the “sometimes Y” free of charge. Well, isn’t that precious? Oh, and thankfully URL vowels are free. Twitter’s not into the whole “hidden fees” thing, you understand. It’s almost like that April Fools joke where Facebook tried to make you pay $1 to message strangers. Oh wait, that actually happened.

Try it here. More from Drew here.

The Rest

Virgin’s Glass-Bottomed Plane

Glass-bottomed boats are so last year. That’s why Virgin is stepping it up a notch with the world’s first-ever glass-bottomed plane. Richard Branson proves himself to be a peerless innovator yet again:

We hope to trial the glass bottom technology with other Virgin airlines in time and have asked other Virgin companies to support this innovative trial and launch our new domestic Scottish route. This really is a team effort from all corners of Virgin.

Speechless.

Sony For Pets

Sony is releasing a new “Animalia” line of products for your tech product-starved pets. And they’re really “stoked” about it. As are your pets, no doubt. Because your hamsters need to test out those Beats headphones you bought them for Christmas.

According to Sony:

The introductory line-up includes Sony-branded products targeted at owners with dogs, cats and hamsters, with additional devices and networked services slated for release later this year. Check out this video to learn all about our new K9 4K TV, M3-OW KittyCans, and In-Cage Speakers.

ThinkGeek

ThinkGeek has a whole new line of April Fools products that are fun for the whole family. Like this “Eye Of Sauron Desk Lamp.” My apologies if your order doesn’t go through. I’ve already bought 50 of them.

Google Maps Treasure Mode

Google Maps wants to bring your Goonies dreams to life:

Archeological analysis has confirmed that our Google Maps Street View team has indeed found one of history’s long lost relics: a treasure map belonging to the infamous pirate, William “Captain” Kidd.

The map was found on a recent expedition in the Indian Ocean, as part of a deep-water dive to expand our underwater Street View collection. Captain Kidd was rumored to have buried his treasure around the world, and tales of a long-lost treasure map have lingered for generations.

Google+ Photos And +Emotion

Google+ now lets you add real emotions to your photos. This would be hilarious if 25 startups weren’t currently working on/pitching this idea — outside of Google+. Because the best Google+ April Fools joke is, really, well, Google+.

Google Analytics

Some users of Google Analytics may begin noticing that they have a few new international visitors checking out their sites. I’m just glad Google didn’t say that they were “totally out of this world.” Google is now including active visitors from the International Space Station, Control Room, who clearly have nothing better to do than to check out your WordPress blog. Here’s Carl to explain.

Google SCHMICK

More Google. Now Google wants to help you spruce up the look of your house. They explain:

Is your house looking a bit tired and shabby? Want to make your narky step-aunt jealous? Trying to keep up with the Joneses but don’t have the money to complete an expensive reno?

Now you can give your house a lick of fresh paint for free on Street View with Google SCHMICK (Simple Complete House Makeover Internet Conversion Kit). Forgot to mow the nature strip? Deck it out with some fresh buffalo grass. Front steps falling down? Swap them out for doric columns and a pergola. Graffiti on the front fence? Cover it with so many palm trees people will think they’re on the Vegas strip.

Google’s Levity Algorithm

For your Google Apps pleasures:

Toshiba Gets A Console

That’s right. Today, Toshiba is announcing its first-ever gaming console: The Shibasphere. Look out, every gaming console ever made, past, present or future. The Shibasphere is here.

The Shibasphere features unprecedented computing power, a completely controller-free interface, and Logical Aggression Monitoring that deploys positive therapeutics to prevent emotionally devastating rage-quits. Available accessories include the Shibadome, Shibasuit and Shibatote that enhance the sound, motion detection and portability of the console, and also features:

12 core 3.5 Ghz Processors
8192 MB GDDR5 RAM Graphics Card
809.3b Infrared Motion Detection
1080p Full HD
7.1 Channel Surround Sound
5 Stereo Mini Jacks
8 HDMI Ports
AC Power

SoundCloud’s Dropometer

Sometimes you just don’t know when “the drop” is going to hit in a song. Not sure what I’m talking about? If you’ve ever seen a Harlem Shake video, it’s that very short, euphoric moment where the music drops out for a second and suddenly everyone is dancing/humping something. (See a notable example from my alma mater here.) Well, now, using its patent-pending algorithm, SoundCloud will tell you when that “unpredictable and surprising moment” is going to happen, via The Dropometer:

… The Dropometer is designed to help you prepare yourself for the big moment, whether that means getting in the mental space where you can really break it down, or fixing yourself a fortifying snack.

While we first innovated the Dropometer around dubstep, we’ve identified broad utility for this new functionality across all genres. Look to the Dropometer to find out when to expect a key crescendo in a 17th-century symphony or the emotional climax in an episode of This American Life.

Love with Food Gon’ Get You High

Love With Food is announcing a new product line called Love With WEED — a monthly subscription that delivers a new high every month. For every box sent, we’ll plant a cannabis shrub along CA Route 1. It’s like Tom’s, but greener. Here it is.

Sphero PeaceKeeper

Robotics takes a step forward today with “Sphero — Peacekeeper Edition.” The robotics maker is now offering a super-sized version of Sphero that you can control from your smartphone or tablet. And cats love it. It measures 3-feet in diameter, weighs over 150 pounds but is totally fun and lightweight and agile. The future is now, people. GoSphero.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon has put together a big list of things you can to do prank your colleagues, family members and loved ones. See it here.

RunKeeper

The next revolution in running is here. Now. And it’s really big.

Obama Takes To Crowdtilt To Fund The Debt

President Obama has today taken to Crowdtilt to help raise money for the sky-rocketing national debt. When things get out of control, you can always turn to crowdfunding.

Here’s his note:

A PERSONAL APPEAL FROM PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

My fellow Americans,

Despite the best efforts of my administration, prolonged partisan debates in Congress are preventing us from a solution to our mounting national debt. Instead of bickering over taxes, we’re taking a new approach: asking everyday Americans to chip in so we can pay off our debt once and for all.

With your help, it’s time to act.
HELP PAY OFF our NATIONAL DEBT

Samsung’s Eco Trees

Really hilarious, Samsung: “Samsung Electronics announced Eco Trees, a smart, eco-friendly air purifier that runs on solar energy.” Get it? Chlorophyll? More like Bore-ophyll. Here are all of their fresh new Eco Tree products.

Nokia Gets Into Microwaves

With the success of its smartphones, it was really only a matter of time.

We are delighted to announce a significant new extension to Nokia’s product offering with the Nokia 5AM-TH1N6 Constellation, a touch-screen microwave oven. The Constellation sets itself apart with a superfast, water-cooled 8-core high-voltage transformer, which brings a combined performance of 5,000 watts to end-users, letting them heat up turnkey meal solutions within seconds.
‘Nokia has a proven track record and extensive IPR in working with microwave radios, so for us this was a logical next step. We can attack our competition in their core business,’ says Olavi Huhtikuu, Nokia’s director of household innovation.

‘That’s why we developed the highly innovative 5AM-TH1N6 Constellation, which will revolutionize everything from single households to canteen kitchens.’

The new Nokia 5AM-TH1N6 has even more innovative features. The device comes with the latest eye-tracking technology, which stops the food from rotating when you look at it, and it automatically adjusts the temperature depending on how hungry you look.

BMW Gets Into Strollers

With a royal baby due this summer, we are proud to announce the launch of our limited edition BMW P.R.A.M. (Postnatal Royal Auto Mobile). Available in Princess Pink or Royal Blue, this soft-top convertible has been designed using our EfficientDynamics technology. With two or four-wheel-drive, it rides as smoothly on a polo field as it does down The Mall and comes with air conditioning and built-in extendable flagpoles as standard. For those who are ‘too posh to push’ this masterpiece of motherhood even comes fitted with N.A.P.P.I.E. (Nanny-Assisting Petrol-Powered Injection Engine).

A Walk Down Memory Lane

April Fools Jokes Galore 2012

April Fools 2011: The Big List

April Fools 2010: The Definitive List

Exerpt image from Hark.com

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Contributor Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo, he hosts a show on business and has published books on success.  Follow him @ashkan.

“Where do you get the time to write so much as a company CEO, and more importantly, shouldn’t you be closing deals or doing something more useful?”

Fair enough.

Do What Comes Naturally To You

Some entrepreneurs are technologists, others are salespeople, a few are storytellers.

The best coders don’t stop coding even if they run the company.

The best cooks never stop cooking even when they open their restaurant.

Musicians are always jamming no matter what.

Similarly, a storyteller doesn’t put the pen down because he’s in pursuit of profit, too.  He finds a way to marry the two.  If you enjoy writing and happen to be the CEO, then it’s a marriage made in heaven if you can balance your duties.  Regardless of your craft, once you’re an entrepreneur, you’re the eternal cheerleader, finding yourself shilling one thing or another.  It comes with the territory.

When it comes to writing articles – be it on industry publications or on your company/personal blog – it’s actually ineffective to come across as a booster.  You’re better off developing your voice as a contrarian that highlights the macro opportunity in a more realistic and sober way.

If you can pull that off, writing will pay dividends, but you will have to address the odd doubter who may wonder if you’re wasting your time writing.

The Obvious Reasons for Blogging

#1 – Own Thyself

Anthony Robbins put it best when he said: “We’re defined by the stories we tell ourselves.”  Indeed, in a world where others’ perception of you is a function of a Google query, you need to own your online presence, especially as we move away from the Algorithm to an increasingly social world.

#2 – Influence, Authority, and Brand

Value is driven by goodwill (defined simply as the value of your brand).  Brand building is an exercise done through B2B and B2C initiatives.  B2B tools include trade advertising, press releases, the conference circuit as well as writing about the industry you’re in (and as the CEO of a startup, lessons in entrepreneurship and management, as well).

You are competing with many others, some of whom the press will be more enamored with.  PR is one of the tools in your arsenal to level the playing field.  However, the industry’s three worst-kept secrets are:

-          Press releases are ineffective and generally viewed as noise.

-          Blogs are always looking for more content, so they tend to welcome new guest authors.

-          Traditional industry publications are seeing their resources reduced, so they will rely on social media and writers on blogs more than ever, creating an opportunity for you to land on big name websites.

In any case, once they decide to start writing, initially many executives offer their worldview on their company blogs.  This is a sound strategy early-on as you test the waters and hone your style and skill.  Before long, publishing on your own blog yields diminishing returns as you won’t cut through the clutter.

As you migrate to publishing on third-party sites, you have to invest the time to embrace and learn the sites’ editorial voice.  Then, once you clear that hurdle, you face a cynical audience that assumes you’re merely shilling.  To win them over, you need at least three things: impartiality, authority and repetition, but oftentimes to accomplish any success you need to invest way too much time.  It certainly is worth it though, in ways you may find surprising.

Less Well-Known Benefits of Becoming the Chief Pontificator

#3 – Leave Your Staff Alone

The cardinal sin many CEOs make is micromanaging and suffocating talented employees.  Worst even, many try to manage what they don’t understand.  This isn’t always a result of ego or bad faith.  True, some CEOs have a tendency to think they are the lord’s gift to management and their “hands-on” experience knows no boundaries and as such they over-extend themselves.  But frequently it’s because they’re bored.

#4 – Bide your time

Everything takes longer than anticipated.  You submit a proposal, then wait.  You ask one of your lieutenants to work on something, then wait.

More often than not, CEOs find themselves waiting even though few would be considered patient.  As such, CEOs look for things to focus their attention to.   Effective blogging will keeping a CEO busy and avoid him from micromanaging staff and lieutenants, allowing even the best of teams the time and freedom to do their job.

Externally, conventional wisdom suggests that you spend all of your time closing deals.  But, the fact is: blogging will be the best lead generator you can imagine, and the point isn’t to sign as many deals as possible, it’s to sign the right deals under the right terms.  Developing a reputation as an industry leader will enable that.

#5 – Efficiency

CEOs field the same questions and repeat answers to multiple stakeholders all the time.

Verbal communication is undervalued these days, but people don’t listen, so sending an article that you wrote (and one that was published on a leading and respected publication) is a powerful way to convey the message.

Blogging is also far more efficient and effective than attending conferences.  As one industry acquaintance once told me, conferences are akin to AA meetings where you sit around and realize everyone else has the same problems you do.  Pick an industry, any industry – chances are that if you compare the speaker and panelists you will find the same people across the board.  Writing on a big platform allows you to reach far more people than attending conferences will, and it will save you tens of thousands of dollars.

#6 – Shutting Up

The best part of writing so much is that when you meet people, there’s a good chance they’ve read your work, so you can shut up and listen, letting others do the talking because you don’t need to shill and give them your pitch.

#7 – Learn

To publish, you not only need to research your topic, but you need to distill a lot of information into a coherent and cohesive argument or summary.  But the true learning starts after you press publish and readers chime in via email, in the comments section and on counter-posts.

Yes, Writing is Risky (but so is eating shellfish, get over it)

A word to the wise:

-          You want to avoid giving your team the impression that you’re communicating through [the Word]Press (even when you are).

-          People will misinterpret you.  That’s their problem, not yours.  But be prepared for it.

-          You can divulge too much (perhaps, but no one really cares about you that much anyway).

-          Sure, it’s nice to build your personal brand, but the focus ought to be on the company – 100% of the time.

There are risks, but writing is one way to strike balance against the rigors of entrepreneurship.  After all, if you wake up in the morning and are greeted with bad news, don’t worry too much because you’re bound to get worst news later on in the day.  And if ever you are greeted with some good news, enjoy it cause it won’t last, something is bound to go awry.  That’s the startup life.  It’s the end result that matters most (while the journey is a learning experience to you, too).  Writing gives you the perspective to be able to see through the trees.

To quote Steve Jobs, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward“, but provided writing comes naturally to you, then over time you look back and realize why it always made sense.

When it’s said and done, blogging is a means to an end, so long as it helps you accomplish your objectives, keep writing no matter what some may say.  Eventually you realize you no longer need to blog.  Then, you can put the pen down and step away from the machine, (or not).

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The holidays for most people who read this site involve answering a cornucopia of tech support questions for their relatives. Honestly, I’ve watched friends field the most frustrating 45 minute IT department-level questions during holiday time with the family, which inevitably devolves into more of those types of conversations in between, “Pass the gravy.”

These conversations will only increase in frequency as the average consumer wakes up to smartphones and the app economy. According to Flurry, nearly a quarter of a billion app downloads this year occurred on December 24th and again this Christmas Day, more than 2x any other day thus far, ever.

If you’re building an app or another kind of tech service you better pay attention, as increasingly many of your users will be what investor Chris Dixon and others refer to as “Normals.” Or what I like to call, dumb people. JUST KIDDING.

So who are these “Normals”? Well the Normals are a group of people who don’t check into Foursquare, use Square or upload photos to Instagram, until they do. The Normals are more likely to know what Pinterest is than Quora. The Normals had no idea that ‘Angry Birds’ was a phenomenon when they downloaded it because it was a featured app in the App Store (true story). To Normals the name Michael Arrington rings absolutely no bell.

Sometimes you almost even envy them.

Introducing mom-in-law to Adele. Also trying to explain why Adele album isn't on Spotify. And also, what Spotify is.—
Peter Kafka (@pkafka) December 31, 2011

And sometimes they’re as annoying as all hell. Arguing for the 20th time with your Dad about the superiority of an iPhone versus a Blackberry is not fun — Neither is getting into an email race at the Thanksgiving dinner table, and winning like you knew you would. Okay, maybe that is fun.

So what are you supposed to do if you’re a techie faced with trying understand how a Normal would view a product? Well first of all pay attention: Normals above all care more about problem solving than acquiring the newest fanciest thing. And if you’re designing products for them, you should be painfully aware of that.

As a public service announcement I asked Quora, a product that is still fumbling around in the Normals department, how product designers gather insight into handling a Normal user’s needs versus a techie’s.

Techies are “driven by writing their blog post and voicing their opinions or by staying ahead of the curve,” answered Quora product designer Rebekah Cox, “Normal people don’t have those artificial needs which fuel a drive to discover something new for the purpose of discovering something new. They have actual problems to solve.”

Cox reveals the flaws in the ways that techies adapt their products for Normals with two different examples, one of a sample thought process that leads a techie into thinking they know what a Normal person wants [1] and then, what a Normal actually wants (versus what a techie thinks they want) at [2]:

[1] “There’s so much work involved in managing all my Twitter accounts, there should be a tool to manage that and Facebook and YouTube and my RSS feeds all in one place.”

[2] “My home theater isn’t great, but I’m not sure what I need to make it better. Tom has Blu-ray and is happy with it. Can your site help me with that?”

In the first case [1], the early adopter is extrapolating that a normal person would have the same problem that they do but at a lower frequency, based on the (wrong) assumption that normal people just have less complex versions of the problems held by techies (lots of RSS feeds). In fact normal people just don’t have unmanageable quantities of social accounts and most likely don’t even know what RSS is. All they care about is that their home theatre is up to snuff [2].

“I would advise that you orient your UI around the job to be done — around the problem — and not the person,” says 37Signals product manager Ryan Singer echoing Clayton Christensen. The issue with this argument is that many problems have much narrower use cases than a given product designer could aim  for, for example, Cox’s [1] above.  And hitting the widest use case possible is a sweet spot that is essentially the holy grail of technology — as it basically means traction.

Hoping that my friends returning to Silicon Valley have had a very Merry Annual Normals Market Research With The Family.—
Gabe Rivera (@gaberivera) December 27, 2011

YouTube product manager Hunter Walk holds that the differences between scaling big and scaling small are subtle yet super important especially considering the nuances of user interface design. He uses his experience with Google an example …

“The notion of using certain keywords such as adding ‘weather’  to a location query in order to display a forecast on the results page (eg New York City weather) was something us geeks did early on and many normals learned to do over time.

On the other hand, search operators (such as using an * as a wildcard) are totally geeky and will never cross over to normals who don’t need a command line language for Google. Instead operators are aimed at power users who when they are especially satisfied with a service are more likely to generally recommend it to normals.”

It’s sort of tricky. In order to figure out how to entice Normals to use their products, many technology entrepreneurs have to serve as “aimchair technology anthropologists.”  Normal adoption can mean the difference between success or failure, 10 million downloads versus 100k.

Startups like Wolfram Alpha and Friendfeed have learned hard way that you can’t ignore Normals just because you’re really smart. You can be a tech industry darling like Foursquare, Quora or even Google+ and be completely blindsided by something like Pinterest — which got way more press coverage in mainstream (and female focused) media before it ever really resonated with the tech press. Pinterest has an approachable personality and it’s easy to use. Learn from it guys.

Techies can’t see the forest for the trees, and Normals can only see the forest. The solution may lie in applying that metaphor to a famous Oscar Wilde quote, “We’re all in the forest, but some of us are reaching for the trees.” Or maybe remembering that you once were (and in some ways are still) a Normal, even if you’re now a techie.

Image: Via

Article courtesy of TechCrunch