People used to getting their daily news from internet news sources and blogs have finally given up reading the news online as the yearly trend to post fake news on April 1st continues. The online statistics service AdNumbers stated today that ad revenue from online marketing and banner ads, as of 5:00 PM EST, was down nearly 80%. ADNumbers representative Nick O’Parkman stated, “Everyone is just fed up. They go to the internet to read news on April 1st and they don’t know what to believe anymore, so now they don’t bother!”

Medical health journalist, Dr. Eugene Simmons suggests that in the past this trend has been dangerous to unsuspecting news readers, in particular investors and individuals with large stock portfolios who might read that Apple Inc. is producing a line of computers with no keyboard, or that Steve Ballmer is going to be CEO of Microsoft. “Such outrageous stories have been know to cause heart-attacks, nervous break-downs, and unwarranted stock sellouts, which could hurt our already fragile economy”, says Simmons.
In a related story, the Onion News Network posted a TRUE news story today….and nobody noticed.

Apple_Mac Pro 8-Core (2 Quad-Core 3GHz Intel Xeon Processors) 4GB RAM, 250GB HD with Parallels Desktop and Microsoft Vista Ultimate preinstalled Apple Mac Pro 8-Core (2 Quad-Core 3GHz Intel Xeon Processors) 4GB RAM, 250GB HD with Parallels Desktop and Microsoft Vista Ultimate preinstalled.
Two 3GHz Quad-Core 3.0GHz Intel Xeon processors, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics with 256MB memory, 250GB hard drive, 16x double-layer SuperDrive

Tags: $500k, Mac

There is a Mac for sale at OnSale.com for over a half million dollars… It’s got to be a mistake. Do they want the Windows people to think Macs are that overpriced or something? (Thanks Andrew).

Apple_Mac Pro 8-Core (2 Quad-Core 3GHz Intel Xeon Processors) 4GB RAM, 250GB HD with Parallels Desktop and Microsoft Vista Ultimate preinstalled Apple Mac Pro 8-Core (2 Quad-Core 3GHz Intel Xeon Processors) 4GB RAM, 250GB HD with Parallels Desktop and Microsoft Vista Ultimate preinstalled.
Two 3GHz Quad-Core 3.0GHz Intel Xeon processors, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics with 256MB memory, 250GB hard drive, 16x double-layer SuperDrive

Tags: $500k, Mac

“Steve Jobs” (a.k.a. Fred Armisen) announces the iPhone on SNL:

According to a story on Engadget, Microsoft has posted a parody Apple’s famous “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” ad series, comparing a Zune user to an iPod user. The ad was apparently screened at a recent company meeting and emphasized the difficulties in sharing music between iPods as opposed to the push-button ease of a Zune as well as other purported shortcomings of the iPod (such as an ability to collect scratches easily, the steps needed to sync music to the device, etc.)
The video is completely safe for work:

It may be something that’s either extremely clever or a complete waste of time, but Wired News has reported that several Photoshop jockeys have delivered a concept model of a fake Apple iPhone.
The mock-up, which hints at a rotary dial button system rather than digital push buttons, mounts the phone on a fourth generation iPod body, complete with clickwheel.
Cool stuff and amazing work. Despite the fervor surrounding the potential release of an iPhone device at the upcoming Macworld Expo, it’s nice to remember that there are those who would notice how worked up we’re getting – and still tease us about it.

Consumer advocacy site The Consumerist has reported that a customer was shocked to find that a MacBook he had purchased from the London Apple Store for his 11-year old daughter contained a desktop full of adult material.
The following instant message conversation covers the reaction between the buyer’s friend and The Consumerist’s Ben Popken:
RKH: me mate just bought a “refreshed” Macbook from the Apple Store here in London, turned it on once he got home and found porn on the desktop
fakeout: how refreshing!
RKH: apple sells “refreshed” machines at a 15% discount
fakeout: It’s supposed to be clean of everything I assume, including porn
fakeout: What kind of porn was it?
RKH: didn’t say
fakeout: how much porn?
RKH: just said there was a “desktop full of JPGs”
fakeout: How does he feel about it?
RKH: he’s pretty shocked, he bought it for his 11-year old daughtre
RKH: daughter
fakeout: Is he going to complain?
RKH: he filed a complaint with the OfCom ombudsman
RKH: and he’s going to call his MP tomorrow
fakeout: MP?
RKH: member of Parliament
fakeout: Not going to talk to Apple?
RKH: OFCOM will handle that part
RKH: a government agency tends to have more power than individual consumers
fakeout: That’s cool they will go to bat for him
RKH: they go to bat for anyone who complains about a company
fakeout: We should get one of those over here
RKH: Carphone Warehouse got a L5mil fine for overcharging VAT on purchases a few years ago.
fakeout: it would be great to get a photo of the desktop with the jpgs on it
RKH: he reformatted the drive and reinstalled OS X from his Tiger CD
Parenthood may not be simple, but systems CDs might make it a bit easier. It might just be worth the time to things check over before you hand a new system over to your children this holiday season…
Let us know if you’ve heard anything else.

In all, we ended up protecting 20 elephant related pages (I’m not listing them all here, I only have so much disk space , my stats for the the anti vandalism bots show 250 or so elephant related pages reverts. Most were, you guessed it, the fact that the population tripled – way too many times (repetition my friend).

Gold, I tell you. That Wikipedia is Gold!

Disclaimer: this post has nothing to do with the Mac or Apple, I just found it hilarious.
Stephen Colbert did a segment on his show about how easy it is to edit Wikipedia.
Watch:

In all, we ended up protecting 20 elephant related pages (I’m not listing them all here, I only have so much disk space , my stats for the the anti vandalism bots show 250 or so elephant related pages reverts. Most were, you guessed it, the fact that the population tripled – way too many times (repetition my friend).

Gold, I tell you. That Wikipedia is Gold!

Sometimes there’s a huge benefit to having a DVR, like last night when my TiVo recorded Saturday Night Live. Imagine my surprise when Steve Jobs shows up during the usually funny Weekend Update fake news segment. Naturally it wasn’t SJ himself, but SNL funnyman Fred Armisen.
Fred, er, Steve, used the SNL segment to launch three exciting new iPods:
- iPod Micro (50,000 songs, iPhoto, watch movies on it in high definition)
- iPod Pequeno (one million songs, iCal that goes “seven thousand years into the future,” iPhoto, movies), and the
- iPod Invisa (eight million songs, “every photograph ever taken,” pong, completely invisible)