Google annouces "Gmail Autopilot" as a new feature on on April Fools Day
Why
While we still wait to see if the Conficker computer worm will turn out to be the largest hoax in April Fool's Day history, or something more sinister, we're keeping an eye out for intentionally false reports tied to the date as we scour the Web for material. (Which reminds us: this really happened.) In Britain, undaunted by the serious discussions, and impassioned protests, over the global economy, The Guardian struck an early blow for foolery on Wednesday, with a fake report headlined "Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink," laying out with a straight face the newspaper's supposed plans "to be available only on messaging service," since "experts say any story can be told in 140 characters." The American press is generally not as willing as our colleagues in Britain to rise to the occasion on April 1, perhaps because there is now such a huge volume of well-executed news parody produced every day by the people at The Onion, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. But the Web has opened up new possibilities for trickery — like the new Gmail Autopilot service users of that email program were informed of today — it promises to "respond to business proposals" and "manage relationships" by automatically replying to your email for you. Last year on The Lede, Mike Nizza pointed to new contributions to the genre. This year, we're asking you to let us know what you see out there. Use the comments thread below this post to submit either the best newly minted April Fool's Day prank you come across today, or one of your favorites from years past. (Our thanks to a reader named Annabelle, who got us started with a link to the Whole Foods site, which today features news of a sale on "organic air," and a photograph of "Local residents lined up for the grand opening of our new Antarctica store.") Jemima Kiss of The Guardian has a round-up of the day in foolery in the British press — which is appropriate, since her newspaper was responsible for one of print journalism's most famous April Fool's Day pranks: a report on the nation of San Serriffe, published on April 1, 1977. Like all great April Fool's reports, that article in The Guardian contained several clues planted to let alert readers in on the joke. Not least of these was the accompanying map — reproduced on one of The Lede's favorite blogs, Strange Maps — which contained a number of hints that the nation, whose name is very similar to that of a class of type fonts, might not be real. Most notably, the two main islands, Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse, which were reported to drift around the Indian Ocean, seemed to be arranged in the shape of a semicolon.
Search Terms:
gmail autopilot, autopilot google, autopilot, autopilot gmail, gmail april fools, gmail autopilottm by cadie
References:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/perlow/?p=9766,http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/get-fooled-again-april-fools-day-classics/?hp,http://www.slashgear.com/gmail-autopilot-launches-from-google-0139770/,http://weblogs.newsday.com/entertainment/celebrities_blog/2009/04/google_mail_autopilot_unveiled.html
