How to Overcome the Skepticism of Announcing Products on April Fools Day

Every year on this day, organizations announce new products, developments, events, etc. But by and large the announcements tend to be ignored because they coincide with April Fools Day. So I wanted to take this opportunity to offer some tips & tricks for letting your audience know that you're serious. It may be too late to utilize the techniques this year, but as you know there's always next year.

Don't announce anything on April Fools Day :-)

Here are few of my favorite April Fools jokes for 2011.

Diablo III – Horadric Cube

Blizzard Entertainment announced that they are releasing an app that allows you to combine your "existing apps into a new, potentially more powerful app." More information about the app can be found on Blizzard's website (http://us.blizzard.com/diablo3/media/horadrapp/). They even provided a quick sample showing the Transmute functionality. I love that they referenced the Secret Cow Level; check out the screenshot below.

Horadric Cube app

Google – Gmail Motion

Google introduced the future of Gmail. Why use the outdated mouse and keyboard when a few simple gestures will do the trick. I can't wait to send messages in Gmail Motion; "lick a stamp and place it down." More information, including a handy motion guide can be found online (http://mail.google.com/mail/help/motion.html).

Tricky Website Prank

Earlier in the day, I was looking for some JavaScript information and came across a website playing a cruel prank. It took a little while to figure out that http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/ modified how the mouse works with their website. If you moved the mouse to the right, it would go left. And moving the mouse up would cause the cursor to move down. They even changed the mouse pointer so that it was upside down as shown in the screenshot below. At least they let you in on the prank after a few seconds by telling you to click the Esc key.

How to Create Website Screenshot

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