From Wollongong's leaning lighthouse to a football with in-built GPS and artificial intelligence.These were just some of the April Fools' pranks played on Australians this morning with a number of tricks played out in newspapers, on radio and on the internet.The Mercury reported tongue-in-cheek today that a new study had revealed that Wollongong's iconic lighthouse on Flagstaff Hill was leaning to the east by almost 9cm.Those wishing to see the angle clearly had to hold up a plumbob or a heavy sinker on a piece of red or blue cotton next to the lighthouse.
Wollongong lighthouse is leaning: studyGoogle Australia was also an early joker, reports the Sydney Morning Herald, with a 6am press release announcing its latest innovation: the gBall, an Australian Rules football with inbuilt GPS, motion sensors and artificial intelligence technology."With inbuilt GPS, motion sensor and artificial intelligence capabilities, the gBall has a number of amazing features, including the ability to measure kicks, get kicking tips, notify talent scouts and locate your lost ball on Google Maps," said Alan Noble, Google Australia's head of engineering."Quite simply, we think it's the killer footy app."Diagrams on the Google website showed the gBall could be plugged into a PC, and Google said the ball would vibrate when a talent scout wanted to speak with the ball's owner.The technology inside the ball used a "new curvilenear parabolic approximation algorithm developed in Google's Sydney office, known as DENNIS (Dimensional, Elastic, Non-Linear, Network-Neutral, Inertial Sequencing)," Google said.Pen maker Artline ran a large advertisement on page nine of today's Sydney Morning Herald promoting a new line of pens with "microchip tracking"."If you're sick of your favourite pens being borrowed forever, Artline has pinpointed the solution," the ad said."If one goes missing, you can go online and track it to within a metre, anywhere on earth."The company's website admitted the ad was a prank.Even national broadcaster ABC joined the mischief-making as it announced plans for three new monorails for Sydney on radio this morning.Host Adam Spencer, drawing on his comedy background, announced that ABC had seen documents with "preliminary plans to revive the monorail as the silver bullet for Sydney's transport trouble-spots.""[There will be] three separate monorail tracks, or a triple-M plan, as its been labelled," he said.
