It appears as if today is not going to be a slow news day. Already it’s been reported that The Guardian has taken its newspaper out of print and onto Twitter, dangerous hummingbirds have been spotted in rural Gloucestershire (by Dr Julius Doctor) and Warner Bros have acquired the Pirate Bay. It’s April 1st and in keeping with tradition, the Internets are awash with April Fools’ day jokes.

Not only are spoof news stories spreading virally today, websites are messing with us too. YouTube have turned their videos upside down, Reddit have redesigned their homepage to resemble Digg and Google have introduced a new Gmail feature which allows you to auto respond to those attractive and strangely frequent business propositions from Nigerian princes, princesses and kings.

Google have always been keen April Fools tricksters. Last year they launched a search feature called gDay that allowed users to search into the future. They also announced a partnership with Virign called Virgle, a joint venture to go to Mars.

Big April Fools pranks have been going on for many years. The BBC pulled a spectacular April Fools stunt in 1957 when they managed to fool a large amount of the British public with a 3 minute Panorama documentary about Swiss farmers harvesting spaghetti from spaghetti trees. The documentary was followed by numerous phonecalls from the gullible public enquiring where they could get their own spaghetti bush.

To keep up to date with the 2009 april fools jokes, you can see a comprehensive list at April Fools’ Day on the Web.

At 839 minutes per week, the UK is second only to the US when it comes to time spent online. This figure is double what it was three years ago, an enormous jump in British online usage.

The report also suggests that we Britons are also fans of a dirty habit knows as ‘media stacking’; a habit whereby we combine two forms of media together such as watching TV and surfing the net.

So what are we spending 839 minutes online doing? With nearly half of us owning a Facebook or other social media account, it seems we’re probably spending our time chatting to friends and poking each other. In fact, 800,000 of us are doing this while we’re out and about, thanks to mobile technology.

Not only is the UK leading the way in internet usage, but we’re also leaders when it comes to ad spend online. The Ofcom report shows that online advertising now makes up 19% of UK advertising spend a larger share than anywhere else in the world.

One of the main contributors to the growth in popularity of the internet within the UK is the adoption of broadband technology. Nearly 60% of households now have a broadband connection and when compared to the rest of the world, this is certainly above average.

Where does it end? Well it looks like we’re only second to the US on the vast majority of tech statistics and always willing to embrace new technology, so as long as companies continue to roll out new innovations we’ll lap it up.

It’s a biological fact that when a person comes in contact with their mouse, it’s only a matter of time before the palm of the hand begins to warm up and perspire. This is hardly rocket science; PC mice are just solid plastic shells, and plastic as we know isn’t really all that porous. Coupled with the fact that when we handle a PC mouse, contact between skin and shell leaves no opportunity for air to circulate and so causes the perspiration and sticky feeling that most, if not all, mouse users experience.

However, sweaty-palms may now be a thing of the past with the introduction of a USB powered palm-cooling mouse. Japanese maker Thanko has developed a mouse which draws air from the base of the mouse and blows it into the users’ palm by virtue of a built-in fan on the top of the mouse, helping to keep the palm of the hand cool. 

The optical, 5-button mouse is available for $19 but currently only in the Japanese maket, although Thanko has plans to release the mouse globally in August through their revamped online shop. Shoppers will also be able to buy other quirky Thanko products via the new online shop, such as the USB ‘ass warmer’ and USB heated slippers.

The impetus for starting his own social networking site was to bring the internet together according to a BBC Radio 1 interview. He felt that his stints on a variety of popular television shows such as Knight Rider and Baywatch were bisecting his fans rather than bringing them together. The only solution was to set up Hoff Space.

In the interview he also expressed his frustration with the current social networking sites not devoted to the Hoff like My Space and Facebook. Naughtyteddy points out that the Hoff was “getting a lot of phoneys” on the sites and that “a lot of people were coming in and posing as me…”

Howell811 is admitting to have joined, it takes all types.

Other features of the site include the Hoff Blog complete with up to date videos of the Hoffer, the Hoff Shop, Hoff Life, Hoff Chat, and the list goes on. Hoff Heads will no doubt find themselves on this site and feel like they have died and gone to Hoff Heaven (not currently on site).

This certainly means there will be a place for Hoff Lovers from all around the world can go and find their own special place on the web as well as finding other Hoff Heads. But what does this mean for other superfans of the thousands of other superstars? Will they join the social networking bandwagon or will they be content with their current presence on the existing social networking sites?

For now, there is at least a place for those seeking out “all things Hoff”.

The project has been met with much amusement, with many people heading to the official website to sign up and attempt to send a message. Brain Green posted on his blog that it’s a “nerdorific idea”, a notion probably shared by quite a few people!

The tiny radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on the shells of the snails enable the snails to receive messages when they slide past an electronic reader. The snails then physically carry the message around on their backs until they pass a second reader. When the reader and RFID pick each other up, the messages is forwarded from the snail to the reader and is sent back over the web to its destination.

This is all part of a “slow art” project which will be showcased in August at the computer graphics conference, Siggraph, in Los Angeles. The idea behind it is to encourage email users to consider the technology behind services they take for granted. Since the snails move at a rate of about 0.03mph in pretty much any direction they want to, whether there’s a sensor there or not, there’ll certainly be time in between messages to do so!

So far, only 14 messages have been successfully transmitted by the snails, with 10 being by the hard-working Austin, or Agent 002 as is painted on its shell.

The three snails have their work profiles posted on the site, which shows their status (available or carrying message), number of deliveries made and average delivery time. So far, one snail is lagging far being – Agent 003, or Muriel, hasn’t made one delivery yet.

If there isn’t already a dole system for snails, someone better get on it because Muriel will probably be signing on pretty soon.

What do you make of it? Refreshingly new, not for you or perhaps even a little off? Quite a few people we’ve showed the picture too thought the design was pretty funky.

The commends at CraftZine less welcoming though and commentator Ellen even asked, “Could someone screen these ideas? Tasteless …”

However, there has been much debate online as to whether this is genuinely possible, or whether it’s simply a hoax. Several of the Digg community claim the video is a fake, however some of the commenters on tuaw.com – The Unofficial Apple Weblog believe that the iPod is genuinely being charged, but at the expense of the metals in the contacts of the USB plug. Commenter “scb” says:

“The onion is probably acidic enough to overcome the corrosion barrier on the stainless steel, and the iron just corrodes, generating electrons that are consumed by oxygen reduction on the gold. But first those electrons go through the iPod.”

However “Dean Baird” believes the video to be a spoof:

“These guys are preying on your recollections of potato batteries. [There are] no dissimilar metals in the USB terminals. A simple battery requires two metals with different electro-negativities to work.”

Suspicions have also been raised regarding the fact that the charging cord is curled and slightly out of shot in the video, suggesting that the iPod is actually being charged from a completely different source.

So, if it is possible at all, it might well come at the expense of your USB cable, and according to TreeHugger this type of circuit is called a “corrosion cell”, and the worst case scenario would be that your USB cord would no longer function after its onion experience.

So how many onions does it take to charge an iPod? Well, if genuinely possible at all, each onion provides about 20 minutes of charge, and the average iPod takes about an hour to reach full charge, so that’s four onions. But until someone else has the balls to risk their iPod’s precious metals and try it themselves, the debate over this vegetable source of power will continue.

The Register thought the story had some weight – but how did the blogosphere react? It wasn’t such a big story for the internet community. The original Digg picked up only 5 votes and the “fight back” posted on the MoneySavingExpert blog barely made 4 diggs.

Moneyballs2 was responsible for bringing both stories to digg. It seems, at least, that the Register and us weren’t the only people to think this was big news! Moneyballs2 agreed with us as well.