Well my friends we live in a post-aprilfoolyptic (wow, that was forced) world. Once again, April Fools Day has come and gone and all the biggest names in web-media (and me) took time out from doing anything vaguely productive to cook up some half-arsed attempt at comedy. Here’s a quick roundup of the best:

There was of course my april fool’s joke, I have not been bought by CNET and nor do they wish to chokehold technology news. As many know, I think CNET UK is a very well written website, I use their stories as sources, listen to their podcasts and generally love the lot of ‘em! None of this is hastily added in the face of a recent article I submitted to them (with the url of this website on it) to which an e-mail reply from Nick Hide, CNET’s chief sub-editor, made reference to the joke in the blog (screenshot below). Luckily, they realised it was an april fools joke otherwise that could’ve gone extremely badly. I’m hoping to apply for a job at CNET UK in the future – hopefully that hasn’t screwed up my chances :S.

Anyway, Google’s tradition of an April Fools Joke was once again honoured as they linked everyone who visited their homepage (which, thanks to Firefox’s search bar is about nobody) to their new Animal Translation service, this was mainly an Android joke because the page offered a barcode that, using Google Goggles (I guess) let the user download an app that, supposedly, would record noises made by an animal and translate it into English with perfect diction. Last year, they posted on their blog about a new technology they’d invented that could work out what an image was of and make comments on it – only to have it look up billions of porn images per second (some of that may be made up). Google has a tendency to get in on April Fools Day by cooking up some ridiculous and wholeheartedly unbelievable story – perhaps so that when they bring out something equally as ridiculous and remarkable that’s genuine (and let’s face it, Google has them in spades), we know it’s not an elaborate prank because they only pull out the big guns on April 1st.

YouTube, albeit another Google facet, got in on the act too by introducing their Text-Based videos, claiming that the processing that takes a screenshot of a video and translates it into ASCII, doing this with every frame on the fly, to create a text-video saves them $1 per second. Of course, the videos they demonstrated were created that way and it couldn’t be applied to every video, this was quite poorly done so as a prank it fell flat on it’s arse. In a stunning display of bad timing, YouTube also introduced a brand spanking new layout on April 1st, which many took to be the joke – I’ll have a review of this soon.

Going back to CNET, their usual joke-stories were abundant as ever – one report claiming that, perhaps influenced by speculation that the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is sabotaging itself from the future, a young man, Eloi Cole (Wells reference anyone?), sporting a tweed jacket and bow-tie, was arrested sabotaging the LHC, claiming to be from the future. The obvious Doctor Who references there supported by the image of a glowing man emerging from a bubble which looks a lot like a set photo of Matt Smith. Keeping topical, another report by the Crave team exclusively revealed that last April Fool’s Day, the Apple design team mocked up a giant iPhone for comedic purposes, only to have Steve Jobs see it and take it to be a serious undertaking – outcome: the iPad. The report was also backed by an interview with Jony Ive, saying that this is a common occurence around Apple HQ, such as the MacBook Air coming after a frustrated designer suggest they remove all the USB ports and carry a macbook around in an envelope, not noticing Jobs standing behind him.

XKCD turned their website into a command line inspired navigational nightmare, and the AA came out with a joke report that they were now, given the recent announcement of a sub-100 grand jetpack, deploying their fleet of repairmen out on jetpack to attend roadside rescues without the need for all that fussy…….vehicle. In keeping with my current Doctor Who motivation, I’ll probably have a pre-episode post up shortly and then a review after that of tonight’s episode, I was delighted to find that one website had reported that 80’s villain, and Bertie Bassett impersonator, The Kandy Man was to return during the fifth series of Doctor Who premiering tonight. Of course, even back then the character was too ridiculous to take seriously so nobody actually bought this, but I imagine there’d be some way Steven Moffatt could turn that into a scary episode so I would like to see it.

Even funnier, however, is when something remarkable happens on April Fools Day that’s actually true. When I was filming a new episode of Tech-Squared yesterday Paul, one of the people on the show, referred to it as “Doubt Everything Day” and mentioned a sinking ship who sent out an SOS message but got ignored because it was AF Day and their ship was called “The Titanic”.

Right then, things to do. Like I said, I’ll likely write a quick post later on today about what I think’s going to happen in Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour before the episode itself, so until we meet again.

Hey all, this will be my last post as I have some awesome, and also some sad, news to share with you.

As regular readers will know, I am an aspiring journalist and run this blog mostly as a way to practise my styles of informative writing, whilst I complete a Computer Science degree and then try to make it as a writer and/or work in the technology industry. I haven’t even been running this blog for a year yet but already I’ve been approached by CNET UK, with whom I have already signed, and can now announce, a deal whereby they take control of this blog and, along with a tidy sum of dosh, employ me as a writer for their news page, Crave.

This means that, because I will be too busy and won’t have the right to post to this blog anymore, this will be the last time you hear from me on this website. I had to wrangle with CNET to let me post one last message to explain what’s happening to you dear, dear readers (all three of you) so that you know it isn’t me. As I understand it, they plan to turn this into an “Agony Aunt” style website for geeks, where somebody under the pseudonym ‘Mat Greenfield’ will give advice to lonely, desperate geeks in both social, romantic and technical problems. They refused to let me be the writer for this as they need to put a picture in lieu of the green sunglasses in the top banner and I’m, apparentely, not “photogenic” enough, nor does my technical/social knowledge extend enough for me to give sound advice. I’ve heard rumours that the new ‘Mat Greenfield’ will be a woman, apparentely a geek girl who will be good looking enough to attract millions of sexually frustrated nerds looking for advice and/or a mastabatory aid.

Frankly, I’m suprised they want this miniscule and wholly uninfluential blog, but for that money I’d write for Hitler. Besides, in the words of Lord Tennyson – “Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die”, so who am I to argue the wisdom of my now employer CNET UK. I’ve wanted to work on a tech news website for years, CNET being one of the biggest around so how could I turn this down for the sake of some little blog?

Perhaps a slightly disappointing part of the deal is that CNET now owns copyright of the name “Mat Greenfield” so I can no longer refer to myself by my birth name and I don’t yet know what my new name – if, indeed, I am to have one – will be. CNET wrote into the contract that they now own me as well, including all my possessions and my soul (luckily, I don’t believe in souls so suckers!) so they get to decide my name.

I have a statement from CNET UK’s Head of Acquisitions, Lirpa Loof, that I’ve been asked to post: “We here at CNET are very excited to announce our acqusition of the little known blog ‘Mat Greenfield’s Geekery’. This is a tremendous step in our bid to own every web-based outlet of free-speech and regain the chokehold on tech news we once had before every pissy little geek with a keyboard and delusions of grandeur started trying his hand at it, and all it took was a fake contract promising money and a job.”

….wait…..WHAT?