It’s a tradition as old as the hills, from the BBC’s scoop on spaghetti trees in 1957 to Google’s Pokemon Maps earlier today. Not surprisingly the hype around cloud has prompted a few firms to try their own spoof stories on April Fool’s Day. Here are three of CloudTech’s favourites.
Digital Science, a technology division of Macmillan Science and Education, posted worrying findings this morning that “the computing cloud is drifting towards the North Pole.”
In a blog post entitled ‘Cloud computing suffers a major blow’, the company has evidence to suggest that “global warming and the changes thus caused in the Jet Stream pose a danger to ‘the cloud’.”
“Further disturbing reports are emerging about problems being created by unidentified data objects (UDOs) saturating ‘the cloud’,” the post reads. “This saturation could possibly result in difficulties with data storage.”
If this hasn’t tipped you off already, the report is corroborated by evidence from Professor Alto Wolke – ‘alto’ being a middle altitude cloud and ‘wolke’ deriving from the German for cloud. Happily, Digital Science reports that despite these grave fears, their own cloud facility products remain unaffected.
For anyone who is concerned about this scientific research, however, a new “out of this world” product from storage firm Lovespace might just be the answer.
The company claims to be offering a service for users to transport their belongings into outer space, citing Richard Branson’s latest company, Virgin Galactic, as an inspiration.
The press release features choice quotes from Lovespace head of ideation ‘Pria Ofoll’ – yes, an anagram of ‘April Fool’ – who claims that the company “literally looked to the stars for this solution.”
Customers were encouraged to tweet the company using the hashtag #outerspacestorage before noon today for a chance to win one free space box – although alas, there was minimal uptake.
Elsewhere, a new cloud-based service has been launched today which claims to “end the modern-day scourge of smartphone snooping, phishing and identity theft forever.”
The product, named FaceWiped, promises to be ‘the only way to completely erase your entire online presence’ by urging users to simply send the company their name, social media details and bank account passwords.
With all this information to hand – 13,000 users were ‘decompromised’, according to the report – it’s not much of a surprise to find the company’s CEO – erm, ‘Avril Le Fou’ – is a billionaire at the age of 19.5. FaceWiped also promises added health benefits from use of the app, including ‘weight loss, follicle re-growth and a visible reduction in wrinkles.’
Of course, not everything you read today is designed to trick you. Check out this analysis of why organisations should consider cloud-based backup and recovery here. What’s your favourite April Fools story been today?
