April Fools' Day roundup: 'let me Topeka that for you' edition

By Vlad Savov

posted April 1st 2010 6:44AM

Feature

Alright, good netizens of Engadget, it's time for us to bring you the sort of hard-hitting news content you can expect only on the first day of April. First on our slate we have the earthshaking news that Google is to officially rename itself Topeka, with the company's official blog urging all future communications to be addressed to Topeka Inc. This is to honor the Kansas town that renamed itself Google in an effort to curry favor with Goog... excuse us, Topeka's 1Gbit broadband program. We also have exclusive and absolutely official confirmation of the forthcoming Android 2.5 update, an inflatable laptop from Toshiba, YouTube's textual deviance, and the hands-down best iPad dock you will ever see. You'll have to come after the break for all those -- they're too hot to handle out in the open. We'll be updating this post as the day goes along, so keep it locked.

Google is stepping up its world-conquering ways with the announcement of a new animal translation service. Google Translate for Animals (still in Beta, obviously) can turn the mooing and meowing of your furry loved ones into nagging demands for food, grooming and attention that you can actually understand.

While you're checking out that video, flick the quality over to TEXTp -- this is Google's revolutionary new video standard that turns all content into an ASCII-encoded, Matrix-like alphabet soup. We expect this to leave HTML5 in the dust. It's a game changer, pure and simple.

ThinkGeek is living up to its name today with this epic arcade cabinet for the iPad. The iCade connects via a standard 30-pin dock connector and lets you enjoy all those magical iPad games with the help of a truly timeless control scheme. The handcrafted wooden enclosure comes with an integrated 2.1 speaker setup and even has a built-in power adapter, so you can do as Steve commanded and "just plug it in" when needed. Frankly, we consider the $149.99 price tag too low. We think we'll pay double just to reassure ourselves of the device's quality.

Punch in the magical Ctrl, Alt and P-U-M-P code, and Toshiba's TubeTop shows you what it's made of. Yes folks, it's the world's first inflatable laptop, and sadly Toshiba has stolen all the good puns we could make about it. So just enjoy the video and start saving up!

Nokia has today proven the N900's versatility by demonstrating it controlling a full-sized helicopter. You literally will not believe your eyes.

In other breaking news:

iFixit have an exclusive first teardown of the Apple tablet.
The full Android 2.5 (Froyo) feature set has been revealed and an alpha-stage ROM is now ready for download.
An iPhone-to-iPad converter has been unveiled, with a touchscreen magnifying glass allowing you to enjoy a bona fide jumbo iPhone experience without shelling out unnecessary cash.
Canon, Nikon and Olympus have teamed up on a new venture called App-e-ture -- an app store for your digital camera -- which will "force your digital camera into taking pictures like a pro" and is set to completely obliterate the jumped up cameraphone sector. Finally, we'll all be able to take pictures like Ken Rockwell.
A UK startup by the name of Rokton has developed the world's first circular image sensor, and not only that, it also has a prototype with interchangeable lens mounts that will allow you to "use virtually every lens ever made for 35mm or smaller formats." What a revolutionary day this is turning out to be.
A time-traveling mystery man has this morning been arrested by Swiss police. Early reports indicate he had returned from the future in order to sabotage the Large Hadron Collider, prevent the discovery of the Higgs boson particle, and avert a future world he describes as "a communist chocolate hellhole."