The Weekly Round-Up: 03.04.09

1 April - that one day of the year that hitherto sensible companies decide to muscle in on the Round-Up's territory and show the world quite how funny technology can be.

Of course it's not just IT companies that enjoy a good April Fool's gag - but this year most of the best jokes had at least a sprinkling of tech fairy dust on top. So the Round-Up thought some kind of…round-up might be in order.

The BBC, keen as ever to show that Auntie has a sense of humour (as long as it isn't too cutting edge, of course) unveiled its iPlayer Toaster Edition.

"Our marketing team identified breakfast television as an emerging market segment for on-demand viewing and asked the iPlayer team to see if we could come up with something new in this space," said the spoof blog which sounded worrying like the sort of thing the BBC would say for real. In fact, it seems a few people actually believed this one, at least according to some of the write ups the Round-Up has seen.

And does the Round-Up also sense a subtle-ish dig at the Windows versus Mac versus Linux debate around iPlayer in this line from the toaster blog?

"Another cool feature is the Digital Retraction Mechanism (DRM) which automatically withdraws and shreds any uneaten toast after seven days. Initially the retraction mechanism was only compatible with some types of bread, but after criticism from organic bread consumers we managed to develop a full cross-comestible DRM."

Strangely toasters also got a mention in another spoof, which suggests an emerging segment of toast-loving techies out there, as the BBC's marketing men might put it, with the Symbian Foundation pretending to unveil the world's first toaster that runs the open source Symbian 2 operating system.

The system featured, among other things, a fingerprint sensor on the side, which identifies the user and automatically displays their personal presets. The toaster also holds out the promise of uploading reminders to your phone encouraging you to buy more bread when you run out - the Round-Up thinks it sounds like a marvellous aid for the peckish techie.

Google, as is now traditional, goes big on April Fools' jokes and this year came up with Cadie: an artificial intelligence research project that is also a big fan of pandas.

Amazon web services also got in on the April-based japery, offering a blimp to deliver cloud computing: "Using the latest in airship technology, we've created a cloud that can come to you".

Another among the most notable was The Guardian, which had a spoof story announcing it would become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter, described it as "radically democratised news publishing, enabling anyone with an internet connection to tell the world when they are feeling sad, or thinking about having a cup of tea."

Toast? Tea? What is it with these people?

But the Round-Up's favourite wind-up came from Opera, with the introduction of its 'Face Gestures' navigation tool.

The tool claimed to allow users to perform frequent browsing operations with natural face gestures, promising to recognise pre-determined facial expressions and match them to commands on the Opera browser. Raise your eyebrows to scroll up, and frown to scroll down, that kind of thing.

"Face Gestures is compatible with most types of facial hair and haircuts. But if your face is covered with more than 25 per cent of facial hair, recognition errors may occur," the spoof pointed out.

It also warned that while handlebars moustaches and goatees were compatible independently "if combined recognition will decrease", and warned that emo haircuts are not supported. Which means, if Face Gestures was real, nobody in London's fashionable new media district of Hoxton would be able to use it.

The Round-Up would just like to say to all the companies who tried to make technology funny for one day– thank you for your efforts. Now get back to work and leave it to the expert...

If you found all the laboured puns and April Fools 'hilarity' a little bit hard going, spare a thought for those on community service.

From this week, the public will be able to go to the government's DirectGov website and vote for which punishments offenders should carry out and where they should be doing them.

The scheme, launched by the Home Secretary, will let Joe Public pick whether they'd like their local criminals to pick up litter, remove graffiti, or "clear dense undergrowth".

Pah. The Round-Up thinks if you'd really like to give offenders some hard work to do, put them on an IT support desk - the constant stream of mind-numbing queries from the techno-illiterate would doubtless transform them into law-abiding citizens quicker than you can say 'have you tried turning it off and on again?'.

Yes, truly, dealing with the tech queries of the great unwashed is a tough task. You would be surprised at the filthy looks and raised eyebrows the Round-Up got when it asked for help dual-booting the toaster the other day.

So how do you make your boss love you? The Round-Up would suggest roses, chocolates and thoughtful little presents, although the HR department might not agree. For tips on how to shine in front of the grand fromage, click here.

Hey at least the recession has an upside – everyone is buying netbooks. So that's alright then

And of course, check out the caption competition and if you still want more, delve into the excellent links below.