April 1st, the day when tech companies show their innovative side and the day where everybody claims its their birthday. This year google search does not recognize smells nor is nokia releasing their second generation oven, but instead, google is trying to train you into a pokemon master so you could stand a chance to work with them. Google started off the day by recruiting members of the public to join the quest to search for the ever mysterious pokemon all around the world via google maps on android, iOS and the web. In return you’ll get the title of “pokemon master” as well as the bragging rights because you successfully picked up all of the 150 pokemon scattered throughout the world map. All in all, for me it felt like a new game more than an April fool’s joke. The next major announcement which google made during the day was a new feature coming to gmail imminently and it’s called gmail shelfie (yes with the ‘h’). The word shelfie is actually a short form of the original words which are ‘shareable selfies’. This new theme also marks Gmail’s 10th anniversary and they chose to deal with selfies because the word ‘selfie’ was awarded the word of the year by Oxford Dictionary. I did quite like the themes which rotates every hour or so, whether this feature is here to stay for the long run is yet to be know (the current selfie theme is celebrating Gmail’s 10th anniversary).
Well in other parts of the tech world, Microsoft has revived their Office Assistant or as you might call him Clippy of Mr Clip from the dead. I still remembered during the days where i was using microsoft word and a random paper clip would appear and start saying stuff. Well coincidentally yesterday i was doing some work via office online and out of the blue the clip was next to my document and it kept on asking me to tweet what it’s saying. At first i thought this was a new feature in office online, it was quite believable because there has been a lot of rapid changes in microsoft products lately. After a while, i was scrolling through my twitter feed and i found out that this was one of Microsoft’s April fools prank for the year. Other stunts made by Microsoft on this momentus day was the introduction of Bing Dogglz and Pet Translator which were both made to counter attack Google’s products. 
In the smartphone battle, both HTC and Samsung both unveil their new wearable which coincidentally are both gloves. HTC’s offering looks more awesome because it has a 87.2MP selfie cam and has a virtual assistant on the glove itself. Both of the wearable gloves are based on each respective companies flagship device. Another common thing the two posses is that they both have mouth-watering specs which are inevitably out of this world and truly impossible. Additionally, Toshiba has also preped a glove called DiGiT which provides a rich VR experience built right into the futuristic high tech glove. Yet another highly imaginary product announced yesterday was the successor to Nokia’s ever popular Nokia 3310. The refresh includes windows phone as the device’s main OS, a 3” clear diamond display which has a 495 PPI and the Lumia 1020’s 41MP camera slapped onto the back. The new Nokia 3310 also comes in the 4 signature Lumia colors which are yellow, red, blue and green. The last and probably the biggest tech prank of the year is CrowdTilt’s crowdfunding project to build silicon island. Apparently, they have a bold vision to build a physical island located just outside the coast of California. They are asking for $25 million to make this island real and to top things off well-known people like Sergey Brin contributed some commentary to make things sound and look more believable. The backers of the project will be able to move to the so-called island as soon as its ready so they could make some groundbreaking technology come to life. Additionally the island will provide its residents with soylent which is the official food for silicon island, an island wide sonos playlist which plays dubstep songs throughout the island 24 hours, and bitcoin will be the only currency accepted on the island.
Conclusively, this year’s April fool jokes are full of innovative products which should actually exist like HTC’s gluuv wearable and silicon island. If only these tech companies put in the effort to make these kind of wild ideas come to reality then that’ll just be great. Anyways, stay connected with us via Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram so you don’t miss any new tech content.
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