April Fools 2013: The Round-up

April 1st is upon us, and that can only mean one thing: pranks, gags, and joke products of dubious comedic value, as the tech world tries to make you crack a smile. Whether you love it or loath it, April Fools is inescapable, so join us as we run through 2013′s cons and let us know which – if any – convinced you, and which you thought were actually funny.

Nokia has cooked up a range of Lumia-colored touchscreen microwaves, the Nokia 5AM-TH1N6 Constellation, promising a mythical 5,000W to cook food in seconds and an integrated camera to share snapshots on Facebook. “More models, including a mini variant targeted towards people with small appetites, and a 10-inch variant aimed at no one in particular, are also planned” the company teases, a coy splash of April snark for those demanding a Nokia tablet.

Samsung has gone green for April 1st, with its new SMART Eco Trees idea: scented “S Buds” with over-the-air fragrance; the promise of CO2 to O2 conversion; and S-eeds for SMART Sharing. The Korean company says you can also climb them, and they’ll come in a range of colors.

Google is always good for an April prank or three, and the company has a few different fakes this year. Google Nose aims to bring scent to search, whereby a range of “expertly curated Knowledge Panels pair images, descriptions, and aromas” as well as links to what people also sniffed.

Gmail Blue, meanwhile, has apparently been six years in the making, as Google’s email team faces the challenge of “how do we completely redesign and recreate something, while keeping it exactly the same?” The result is a whole lot of blue, quite literally:

The Gmail team isn’t the only one to get in on the prank action. Google Maps unveiled Treasure Maps, a pirate-themed redesign with hidden treasure and hand-drawn landmarks, while YouTube revealed it had in fact all been an eight year experiment to find the best-ever video, and would be shutting down to allow judges time to sift through the millions of uploads. You’ll have to wait until 2023 to find out which it is, though, with YouTube promising to delete every other clip.

Twitter, meanwhile, finally came up with a way to monetize its users’ tweets: charge them for vowels. Twttr, so the company claimed, would demand $5 a month if you wanted to include A, E, I, O, or U in any of your messages; however, Y would remain free.