Apr 1, 2007 12:09 pm US/Eastern
Google Goes Postal For April Fools
Web Sites Offer Joke Products Available Once A Year
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Gmail Paper and the Wiihelm are two gag products "available" online.
CBS
Google has announced Gmail Paper, a new service tied to its Gmail e-mail service to allow free printouts of users' e-mail messages sent to them by postal shipments. A telling twist: The service is available April 1, April Fools' Day.
"The cost of postage is offset with the help of relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements, which will appear on the back of your Gmail Paper prints in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica," read
Google's Web site on Sunday. "No pop-ups, no flashy animations—these are physically impossible in the paper medium."
The joke is part of an annual tradition across the Web in which some sites swap their home page for a gallery of fictional offerings and savvy jokes.
On the gadget store site
ThinkGeek.com, items included the
WiiHelm, a helmet in which lazy gamers can strap in the motion-controlled gaming controller used with the Nintendo Wii gaming system.
"Frees your hands for other important tasks like eating, scratching, beer drinking, petting your dog or cat, nose picking and unwrapping birthday gifts," boasts the item's product features.
Also on ThinkGeek.com: SnuzNLuz Wifi Donation Alarm Clock, a product which claims to automatically make a financial donation from your online bank account to the Republican Party each time you hit the "snooze" button.
The site also featured online advertisements for Apple's much-anticipated iPhone, "Now Shipping." The actual phone is not expected to be available until mid-summer 2007.
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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