April Fool’s Day 2018 – the best (and worst) trolling on display

April Fool’s Day is a time-honoured tradition, a chance for us to show our lighter sides with some good old-fashioned trolling. Yet where once the occasion was marked with a few fake stories in the media (underfloor heating at the beach being a personal favourite), now organisations of all shapes and sizes use April 1st to announce their latest ‘innovations’. Now that the bank holiday weekend is a distant memory, here’s a look at some of the very best – not to mention the very worst – that the internet had to offer this April Fool’s Day.

Amazon’s cosmic ambitions Amazon-watchers were treated to a real doozy over the weekend. After expanding into healthcare, cloud services and drone technology, the company returned to its bookstore roots on April 1st. Yet instead of delivering the musings of the world’s best-loved authors to your front door, customers were thrilled to find that Amazon now delivers the authors themselves! Might be time to renew that Prime subscription…

Best of all, the company announced the location of the tightly-contested race to provide a home for its second HQ. Yet while most expected frontrunners Atlanta and Washington DC to emerge victorious, the company blindsided industry watchers everywhere – by announcing its plans to build a vast second HQ complex on Mars. According to reports, ‘Alexalopolis’, founded in 2019, will someday become the capital city of Mars itself. Indeed.

Hungry? There’s an API for that Not to be outdone, Amazon’s great rival and long-time April Fool’s enthusiast Google announced the launch of a new API. In a bizarre twist, the company announced the launch of an API aimed at helping you identify the best hummus option for your lunch. Moreover, this ground-breaking new concept is only the first in an entire subset of ‘taste APIs’. Bon Appetit!

Chocolate burgers Despite Google’s gastronomic plans, the tastiest culinary pranks didn’t come from the tech industry on April Fool’s Day. Fast food giant Burger King disappointed customers around the world with the fake launch of a genuinely innovative new product – the Chocolate Whopper.

According to its promotional video, the burger includes a flame-grilled chocolate patty, white chocolate ‘onion’ rings, raspberry syrup, and candied blood oranges (in place of tomatoes, in case you were wondering). While Burger King has undoubtedly trolled the lot of us here, fear not. There’s already a change.org petition to make this one a reality.

A new frontier in biometrics We keep a close eye on the latest and greatest security innovations here at Spark Towers, and biometric technology is no exception. As such, we were thrilled to discover that one pioneering fraud protection business has taken fingerprint biometrics one step further – with the launch of ‘tongueprinting’ technology for smartphones. As its helpful promotional video demonstrates, users simply need to lick their screens to “leverage the authentication power of your taste buds.” We’ve all become accustomed to fingerprint authentication on our smartphones – it remains to be seen whether screen licking is going to catch on.

Ultimately, April Fool’s Day is a welcome chance for organisations across the board to show their lighter side, even if they can’t please everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you think these ‘innovations’ are for better or worse – all that matters is that you sign the petition to make the Chocolate Whopper a reality!