This year's best April Fool's Day stories

None of the publications I work on ran an April Fool's Day story today, but here are some others I enjoyed:


Your Local Guardian: 'Croydon to be renamed in £50m scheme'

Guardian.co.uk: 'Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink'

Diss Express: 'Obama to visit Diss'

Buyitdirect.co.uk: 'Free funerals from Laptops Direct'


If you have any other favourites from this year, let me know and I'll happily add them to the list. Your contributions so far (thank you!):

EcoAsia: 'Interstellar spacecraft to be TV powered'

Writer's Digest: 'Announcing a Brand-New Market Book!'

The topic of the Writer's Digest story is a (fictitious) book called Plagiarist's Market, and the ISBN given for that book actually belongs to a rhyming picture book called April Foolishness. A nice touch there.


Update 8.40pm: I've spotted another hoax, this time on YouTube. The site has a "new layout" which displays video clips upside down, as per this screengrab:



And rather amusingly, all of today's 'Spotlight Videos' on YouTube show things that in some way relate to the theme of upside-downness, from bats to handstands.

I do, however, note that the site isn't displaying its adverts upside down. April Fool's is all very well, unless it upsets the advertisers...

YouTube: 'Your New Viewing Experience'

Monday roundup: inline comments, chicken foetus

Too many bits and bobs to wait for a Friday roundup, so here's a Monday roundup instead.

• I've just enabled inline comments on this blog, so you'll no longer be taken to a non-blog page when you comment on one of the posts. Please let me know if it causes you any problems. I found it a bit fiddly to implement, so if you want the same functionality on your Blogger blog, I strongly recommend the Blogger Buster guide to inline comments.

• A good British spoof news website I've only just come across is The Daily Mash. Current lead story: 'Hamilton wins world car pointing championship'.

• One recent story that isn't a Daily Mash spoof but sounds like it should be concerns a chicken foetus found in a Liverpool alleyway. "Stop grieving, it's only a chicken," the Metropolitan Police tells the people of Liverpool in what could be the quote of the year. Thanks for this one, Harry.

• Another great story, this time from the Valleys (sorry! Just teasing!), concerns mistranslated bilingual road signs. Again: thanks, Harry.