What's The Buzz

What's the Buzz: April Fool's Day tips & tricks

Posted: Apr 1, 2011 7:02 AM by Kelly Werthmann - KTVQ News
Updated: Apr 4, 2011 4:39 AM

April Fool's Day is here and the Internet happens to be a great place for pranks.

Tips for celebrating the day and clever tricks to pull on friends and colleagues are flooding the World Wide Web. From changing language settings to having fun with mice, the first day of April could be an amusing day at the office -- if you have a good sense of humor, of course.

Columnist Mark W. Smith at the Detroit Free Press has a list of April Fool's Day tricks for tech lovers. When someone walks away from their desk, hop on their computer and try some of these sneaky pranks.

- On the Google homepage, click on "Language Tools" next to the search engine box and change the Interface Language to "Elmer Fudd." Now the user will be asked if he or she would like to perform a "Google seawch" or can tell the search engine that they're "feewing wucky."

- Facebook also includes a host of languages, including pirate dialect. To change the language setting, click on "English" located at the bottom of any Facebook page. A settings window will pop up and under the English language options, choose "English (Pirate)" and the entire Facebook experience reboots under the new language. Now Facebook friends are called "hearties" and are listed as "cap'n" or "matey." Among the many other changes, the Facebook user's inbox is now their "Bottle o' messages." You can also keep your friends lost in translation by changing the language so it turns all the text upside down.

Smith also suggests tricks that change your colleagues' smartphone wallpaper and fake phone calls from the White House. To see his full list of tips and tricks, click here.

Mashable offers a list of "10 Office Pranks Perfect For Aprils Fool's Day," ranging from vintage classics to more up-to-date tricks like pretend speech recognition technology.

An updated classic Mashable's Amy-Mae Elliot suggests is having a bit of fun with a computer mouse. She writes, "Anyone leaving their mouse unattended around April 1 deserves punishment. While the classic trick was to remove the mouse's tracker ball, nowadays you can achieve the same effect by putting some tape over the mouse's laser tracker."

Another simple, yet effective prank Elliot recommends is crossing a few of your colleagues' telephone wires. Leaving the phones where they are, just switch the telephone plugs and "enjoy the confusion as they repeatedly receive calls for each other."

For the full list of harmless office pranks, click here.

What are some of the fun April Fool's Day pranks you've pulled on your friends or have had done to you? Let us know by commenting below or visiting our Facebook page.

Do you know of an online story or video that's buzzworthy? Send me the link! E-mail me at kwerthmann@ktvq.com so I can share it both on-air and online! You can also follow me on Twitter @kelly_werthmann for more buzz!

Topics: April Fool's Day, pranks, jokes, Facebook, Google, language settings, technology, Internet buzz