As a peruser of technical information, I hope that you survived April Fools day. I had a tough time of it. That’s for two reasons: I enjoy reading honest and good information about technology, and I absolutely abhor April Fools pranks.

I fell for a few pranks. There was on about getting a free update to Windows Vista. I won’t provide a link or mention it further, other than I was expecting something interesting and got “fooled.” It’s not the fooling that bothers me, it’s that I provide honest, factual information and I expect others to do the same.

If you went to the FARK website on April 1, you might have seen what looked like their main page hacked:

Such defacement is typical of hackers. But this one is an April Fool because those are the real FARK servers and, doubtless, the type of person who enjoys such hacks wouldn’t have that kind of access, let along the ability to place a guinea pig into the rack.

No, you want to see a real hacked web page, consider what happens often to Wikipedia. The image linked to below is the hacked page describing Islam. Warning: It’s offensive, so I won’t show the image any larger, but it’s an example of a legitimate hack. It’s something that the Wikipedia people have to face all he time, not just on April 1st.

The worst example of a high-tech April Fools prank was one related to me years ago. The editor of a magazine was quite proud of a phony advertisement he’d done. I forget the ad’s topic, but he boasted about the thousands who phoned the number, seeking legitimate help or advice and who instead got a “nya-nya-nya” message. Not funny.

Oh, well. It’s probably just me. But you can rest assured that I don’t do April Fools jokes and do not smile upon those who pull them.

Interesting Link Dept. Visuwords is a web site dictionary that displays words in a visual manner. It’s something to behold. And it reminds me of the kind of word connections we made back when I was studying cognitive psychology at university.