Some interesting April Fools' Day 2017 Technology Jokes

Here are the interesting April Fools' Day 2017 Technology Jokes. If I have missed one, please add them in comments. For those who don't know what April Fools' Day means, see here.

Google Windmill from Google Nederland: Interesting use of Wind and Cloud to keep Rain away.




Amazon Petlexa (Alexa for Pets): It allows dogs, cats, and other animals to communicate with Alexa just like you do. The Petlexa feature gives pets the freedom to place orders from Amazon, and to activate smart home enabled toys.




Google Play for Pets: A new category of games, apps and training tools to keep your pet stimulated. Honestly, I cant see why this cannot be real.

Honda Horn Emoji's: Horn Emojis offer a range of horn sounds for a variety of scenarios, from seeing your kids off to school to commiserating with other drivers in rush-hour traffic.

See video here. Honda has also launched In-car dating app to help lonely drivers find love at the wheel. More details here.


T-Mobile ONEsie: T-Mobile CEO John Legere has designed this Onesie and CTO Neville Ray has also participated in testing. Its got a lot of Amazing properties, including creating Human SotSpots.

See videos here and here.


Virgin Atlantic Dreambird 1417: World’s first-ever aircraft using new patented technology – flapology – to create the world’s first aircraft with flappable wings.




Virgin Trains (UK) Tickink: Innovative new contactless ticket system, offering customers the opportunity to have their train ticket permanently tattooed on their body, preventing frequent passengers from ever losing their tickets again. Details here.


Virgin Mobile Australia PhoYo:

Say "goodbyeee" to smashed phone screens and "helloooo" to the #PhoYo pic.twitter.com/MCAiwabKGA

— Virgin Mobile Aus (@VirginMobileAus) March 31, 2017

Prysm Avatar: I quite like this concept. A work drone that enables you to reap the benefits of working from home, without sacrificing the interpersonal advantages of being in the office. Each drone is equipped with sophisticated sensors and a holographic projector that displays your likeness as a realistic, life-sized avatar.




Telenor prohibits the word ‘Digital’ in all communication: There is a small chance this may be true ;-). See here.

Telenor bans word 'digital' from all internal communication; hand gesture introduced to ease transition. Read more: https://t.co/HKEEnqTLdH pic.twitter.com/HP4lfnZbQX

— Telenor Group (@TelenorGroup) April 1, 2017

Finally, there was also Google Gnome (like Google home), Google Ms. Pac-Man, Lexus LC: Lane Valet, Shake Me - by Trade Me, Huawei Mate 9.2 with 2 headphone jacks


There is also this picture from 1992 circulating, showing how standards body (ETSI) celebrated April Fools' before twitter/youtube :-)

Related Posts:

• Some interesting April Fools' Day 2016 Technology Jokes
• Some interesting April Fools' Day 2015 Technology Jokes
• Some interesting April Fools' Day 2014 Technology Jokes

LTE Device-to-device (D2D) Use Cases

Device-to-device is a popular topic. I wrote a post, back in March on LTE-Radar (another name) which has already had 10K+ views. Another post in Jan, last year has had over 13K views. In the LTE World Summit, Thomas Henze from Deutsche Telekom AG presented some use cases of 'proximity services via LTE device broadcast'

While there are some interesting use cases in his presentation (embedded below), I am not sure that they will necessarily achieve success overnight. While it would be great to have a standardised solution for applications that rely on proximity services, the apps have already come up with their own solutions in the meantime.



The dating app Tinder, for example, finds a date near where you are. It relies on GPS and I agree that some people would say that GPS consumes more power but its already available today.



Another example is "Nearby Friends" from Facebook that allows to find your friends if they are nearby, perfect for a day when you have nothing better to do.

With an App, I can be sure that my location is being shared only for one App. With a standardised solution, all my Apps have info about location that I may not necessarily want. There are pros and cons, not sure which will win here.

Anyway, the complete presentation is embedded below:

Enabling proximity services via LTE device broadcast from Zahid Ghadialy

For anyone interested in going a bit more in detail about D2D, please check this excellent article by Dr. Alastair Bryon, titled "Opportunities and threats from LTE Device-to-Device (D2D) communication"

Do let me know what you think about the use cases.

Mobile dating to get big by 2013

In Sep 2007, Juniper Research proudly claimed, "Mobile dating revenues to reach $1bn by 2012, according to a new study from Juniper Research ". Most of the predictions are for the next 5 years as its safe to predict that much in future.

Now their latest report claims, "Mobile Dating Revenues to Approach $1.4bn by 2013 as Event-based Charging Models Proliferate, says Juniper Research":

A new Juniper Research report has found that new revenue streams from event-based charging and advertising will help to push the value of the mobile dating and chatroom market to nearly $1.4 billion by 2013, part of a burgeoning user-generated content (UGC) market that will reach $7.3 billion by the same time.

The report says that while subscription revenues will continue to contribute the bulk of service revenues over the next five years, an increasing number of dating companies have now switched to offering event-based charging, through products which offer free registration but levy charges when end-users wish to contact one another, or else offer virtual gifts for subscribers to send to other users.

The Juniper report also observed that while the initial impetus for dating services was provided off-portal, network operators have become increasingly keen to offer services on-portal as part of their entertainment portfolios: Vodafone offers Dating Direct, while 3 UK has partnered with Flirtomatic.

Other findings from the report include:
• Less than 30% of mobile dating customers will be on flat-rate subscriptions by 2011
• The Far East & China region is currently the largest region in terms of subscriber numbers, primarily due to the success of dating services in Japan
• Advertising will provide the majority of mobile social networking revenues but less than one-third of all UGC revenues by 2013

Its just matter of time when Location Based Services (LBS) will combine with these and offer 'instantaneous flirting' and 'speedy dating' ;)