This weekend saw the return of April Fool’s Day, bringing with it a flood of bad jokes and misguided pranks, but also some really cool concept products. Many major tech companies, including google, got involved with teasing new products, services and concepts that you could quite easily believe. Whilst traditional April Fool’s Day jokes can be somewhat terrible, we’ve compiled a list of our favourite and best tech company pranks of 2018.
Lexus and 23andMe
Knowing which car is right for you can be tricky business, but no more! Lexus have teamed up with 23andMe, using your DNA to accurately find out which Lexus is the best for you. Their “Genetic Select” chooses you a vehicle based on your specific chromosomes, matching you with the ‘car of your genes!’.
Google
Google are crowd favourites for tech innovation, which is why people blindly fell for some of its pranks over the weekend. Our favourite prank was Google Cloud Hummus API, their answer to the problematic decision that is picking the best hummus. Google is here to fix this major issue by rolling out a new API that’s based on a ‘quick lick test’.
Nintendo
Pokemon returned to mainstream media last year when Niantic released the hugely successful Pokemon Go app. There were so many downloads of this game that it became outstanding in the mobile gaming world. Nintendo has now said that it will be releasing new cutting-edge 8-bit graphics for it’s augmented reality game. Unfortunately for some users, Nintendo has said that not everyone will be able to play this game due to the really powerful and efficient hardware required.
LEGO
LEGO’s fake concept product this year is something that we think should really be more than a concept: a vacuum cleaner that not only picks up your bricks, but also stores them by size and colour. We’re sure anyone who’s ever stepped on a piece of LEGO will attest to this fantastic idea!
Snapchat
Snapchat threw major shade at Facebook, this April Fools’, by creating a filter that makes it look like Russian bots are liking your posts. First reported by The Verge, the new Snapchat filter places a Facebook UI on top of your picture with Cryllic script-looking text, which is an apparent dig towards Facebook, and the news that tens of thousands of bots, with links to the Russian government, were used on Facebook to influence the 2016 US presidential election.
Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge
Honda
If cars have sensors for avoiding collisions, why don’t pedestrians who are distracted by their mobile phones? Cue the Sixth Sense app from Honda. It has “sidewalk departure warning” that will alert you when you’re close to veering off the pavement, pretty smart. The ultimate feature has to be the “personal avoidance system” though, which lets you know of people you don’t want to bump into and reroutes you. An ideal app for recluses!
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