April Fools Videos hit the Interweb

It's not just about fake news stories, now we get fake videos

By Keith Shaw on Fri, 04/01/11 - 9:57am.

Overheard in the newsroom earlier today: "The Web has ruined another holiday." So it goes with April Fool's Day, in which everyone on the planet thinks they work for The Onion, sprinkling my inbox with fake press releases, product announcements and other such nonsense. Over in Twitter, the "news feed" is also littered with fake fake and more fake, with everyone trying to pull a fast one on everyone else.

(Check out the Alpha Doggs roundup of April Fools Day 2011 pranks that we're finding)

The real effort, of course, is going on with video - because it takes longer to produce and create videos, the fake videos we're seeing at least show some modest amounts of effort.

YouTube is leading the charge, of course, with its "YouTube 1911" series of videos, including the "Top 5 Viral Pictures of 1911"

YouTube has also added a "1911 Button" on some videos (oddly, not all of them, I would have liked to seen some of our videos with the button), which adds the sepia tone and olde-tyme style to the videos.

Another video I've seen is from the folks at Livedrive, which sent a fake press release announcing its "revolutionary new way to store digital data, using barcodes printed on paper." The video (see below0 talks about Livedrive's new facility in London in which they are storing 8 petabytes of data on 4 billion sheets of paper.

From ThinkGeek, as part of their April Fools' product pranks, they've put together a video about their PLAYMOBIL Apple Store set.

Also from ThinkGeek, a fake ad for "Angry Birds Pork Rinds". The product is funnier than the ad, unfortunately.

One more from ThinkGeek (sheesh, they have a lot of time on their hands over there), this one is pretty funny - the Star Wars Light Saber Popsicles (complete with a Darth Vader ice cream truck).

The folks at Google always put together several pranks, but on the video side, they've done this one explaining its Gmail Motion feature, which lets people use their bodies to control their email.