April Fools' Day 2014 Videos: Google Chrome Introduces Emoji Translation, Virgin America Partners With Nest And None Of It Is Real
Tuesday marks the first day of April, popularly known as April Fools’ Day, a day where pranks and hoaxes are played on people and Internet video need to be looked at closely to distinguish a prank from a real video.
While classmates, coworkers, friends and family are playing pranks on each other during the day of harmless tricks, companies and websites all over the web have been showing off their take on April Fools’ Day. From fictional beers to fake viral trends, take a closer look at some of the prank videos making their way around the web today.
Google Pranks
Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG) is no stranger to annual April Fools’ Day pranks. While most Internet users got an early preview of Google's April Fools’ Day prank on Google Maps, which turned its mapping software into a worldwide Pokémon hunt, the rest of Google’s properties began rolling out their own takes on April Fools’ Day soon after.
YouTube introduced its spotlight series, which announced several upcoming viral video trends, including “Clocking,” “Kissing Dad” and the “Glub Glub” dance. Many of the fake viral trends can be found by searching for the hashtag “#newtrends” on YouTube.
Elsewhere, Google also introduced new products, including Gmail “shelfies,” or shareable selfies and Chrome support for translating words to emojis.
Westjet converts to Metric Time
Canadian airline, Westjet, released a video of its vice president of communications, Richard Bartrem, announcing that Westjet would convert all departure and arrival times to “metric time.”
Bartrem continues on describing the change along with the conversion calculations needed to go from a 24-hour time to metric time, a fun jab at the conversions between metric and imperial units.
Virgin America: Total Temperature Control
Virgin America’s take on April Fools’ Day involves a fictional partnership with Nest to bring its passengers a more refined temperature control on Virgin America Flights. Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, along with founder and CEO of Nest, Tony Fadell, are seen in the fake promo video praising their new “Total Temperature Control” feature. Virgin America director of engineering, Ken Bieler, described the temperature options, which range from “Cancun Afternoon” to “Chicago Polar Vortex,” with Branson sitting in a passenger seat to demonstrate the new “feature” for Virgin America flights.
ThinkGeek - Spellcasting Staff
ThinkGeek is known for its annual participation in April Fools’ Day, where it introduces several outlandish products. While most April Fools’ Day products introduced by ThinkGeek have only existed during the prank holiday, demand for some of the fake products in the past have been so high, that the nerd and geek oriented site eventually made some of the fake products available, including the 8-bit tie and the “Star Wars” Tauntaun sleeping bag.
This year ThinkGeek introduced an April Fools’ Day Darkmage LED Spellcasting Staff, which it created for those looking to add more flare to their wizard costumes. While the product itself is currently fake, it’s possible that ThinkGeek may eventually make the LED Spellcasting Staff a real product.
Samuel Adams - HeliYUM Beer
Samuel Adams’ take on April Fools’ Day involved the creation of a new beer which uses the noble gas, Helium. Samuel Adams Brewer and founder, Jim Cook, is seen in the video, pitching the Sam Adams brew, which he calls “HeliYUM.”
After taking a sip of “HeliYUM” ale, Cook along with several taste testers are then heard with higher pitched voices as a result of consuming the fictional Samuel Adams brew.
What other fun April Fools' Day videos have you seen around the web? Let us know in the comments.
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