'Motion-controlled' e-mail and other April Fools' Web pranks

[Evil Eye]

CNN) -- Search giant Google on Friday debuted a motion-controlled e-mail system that lets users write digital messages by moving their bodies instead of typing on keyboards, which Google says are outdated and inefficient.



To open a message make a movement as if you were opening an envelope. To reply, simply point backward with your thumb, the company says in a video demonstration of the product, which seems to be a riff on Microsoft's Kinect gaming system. To reply all, use both hands. To send a message, lick a stamp and place it down.



In case you haven't noticed, it's April 1, the day many corners of the internet start to look a lot like TheOnion.com.



Google, always the king of digital April Fools' jokes, played several pranks on the hopefully knowing public on Friday morning. Among them: motion-controlled e-mail, a YouTube roundup of viral videos from 1911 and a statement that says Google soon will change all of its fonts to the much-reviled Comic Sans.



Following some rigorous user testing of 41 different fonts, investigating how each affected user experience, Google writes, we discovered one font consistently outperformed all others when it comes to user satisfaction, level of engagement, understanding Web content, productivity, click-through rates and conversion rates: Comic Sans.



People who search for Comic Sans on Google from certain browsers (Safari doesn't work, as far as we can tell) will see all their fonts changed to this bubbly typeface, which makes everything look like a ransom note written in crayon.



Google, of course, wasn't the only company to play some online tricks Friday. Here are a few of our other favorites:



HuffPo paywall: Mocking The New York Times' decision to start charging its frequent readers for access to its online articles, The Huffington Post on Friday announced a paywall of its own -- one that affects only employees of the Times.



It's an important step that we hope you will see as an investment in The Huffington Post, one that will strengthen our ability to provide high-quality journalism to readers around the world -- and especially to our readers inside The New York Times, the company writes in a joke statement.

Read/try (it's got links) http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/04/01/april.fools.online/index.html?hpt=C2