Techies Celebrate April 1st with Dog Laptop and $99 Trip to Mars

Well, you made it through another April Fool's without being convinced your mother-in-law was moving in, your wife left with the mailman, or the Pittsburgh Pirates were Vegas' pick for the 2009 World Series. However, there were some pretty nifty jokes played this year, and we'll go over a few of them here.

Some are simply ridiculous. For instance, it's unlikely Toshiba will fool anyone with its Petbook K9, which it calls the world's very first notebook for canines (and I don't doubt it). The tech giant's tag line for its goofy new device? "Playing fetch is so last year." It sure sounds like a ludicrous idea and it is... but then again, what if someone had told you five years ago that the most popular laptops in 2009 would feature sub-9" screens? (Source: msn.com)

Equally unbelievable is Amazon Web Services' new server option -- cloud computing in, with you guessed it, the clouds. Apparently the company plans to install servers on floating blimps, calling the scheme the "Floating Amazon Cloud Environment."

Kodak has that beat with its April Fool's eyeCamera 4.1, a device that attaches directly to your eyeglasses. Sure, it sounds like it might actually be a good idea, but it makes users look like mad scientists on holiday -- not exactly the look I'm going for when on vacation.

Apparently there's even the option to use a "Facial Recall Assistant" while wearing the device; it refreshes one's memory with names and faces when meeting old acquaintances at parties. A nice thought, but I'd rather just prattle on until I remember their name or they go away. (Source: kineda.com)

Just in case you're tired of April jokesters or the mopey gray weather, Expedia is now offering an amazing deal: tour packages to Mars for just $99, and you can stay at the Colbert Hotel and Casino while you're there. Did a Fox News fan design this trip?

Taking the cake, as always, is Google's prank. This year it's a computer named CADIE (Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity; likened to HAL), having its own homepage and even YouTube channel. In essence, CADIE is a living computer -- a living panda computer -- that is about to take over the world. (Source: tgdaily.com)

Of course, the most ridiculous prank of all may have been 'ol Conficker.