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No Foolin! April Fools' Web Jokes Have Become Tradition

With the dawn of the Internet, April Fools' Day has taken on a whole new level. Today's BBC news report about a recently discovered breed of flying penguin reaches far many more viewers (via YouTube) than its 1957 television piece about the Swiss harvesting spaghetti off of trees.

The hoaxes aren't just limited to fake news reports, either. Since 1989, the Internet Engineering Task Force has published one or more humorous RFC documents on April Fools' Day. Meanwhile, the folks at Google have had a long-standing tradition of April Fools' day shenanigans, which usually center around some change to their existing technology or a new feature (Gmail Paper, anyone?).

Other sites and companies have jumped onto the bandwagon as well, prompting the creation of the site April Fools' Day On The Web. Here, surfers worried that the buzz of the day could be fake can view an ever-growing list of ousted Net hoaxes from as far back as 2004.

Here's a few of the more popular ones (Spoiler Alert -- don't read if you'd rather stumble on them yourself):

• YouDigg: The new collaborative project between video megasite YouTube and Digg.com, the social news site that is revolutionizing the industry.

• New Google search tool 'can see into future'

• eHarmony Founder Finds Love on Match.com

• The earlier mentioned flying penguins

Have you spotted some really good April Fools' Day hoaxes today -- or even been duped by one? Tell us about them below.

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