In case you haven’t already realised, it is the 1st of April again - and of course, that means it’s time for some silly news stories to appear in my RSS reader. I’ve selected three of my favourites that I’ve seen around the web.

Surfin’ Safari

First of all, I have to admit, this one kind of shocked me for a moment. It was one of the first things I saw in Google Reader as I checked this morning. I was almost screaming at the machine until I glanced up and saw the date and realised.

It’s from the Surfin’ Safari blog, the team blog of the guys at Apple who work on WebKit, the open source rendering engine that powers Safari (and also pops up elsewhere too).

Many have suggested over the years that WebKit should be abandoned in favor of Gecko, the browser engine with second-place market share according to studies like the Net Applications Survey. But why go with number two when you can go straight to the top? That’s why I am pleased to announce that WebKit will be discontinued in favor of Trident, the engine inside Windows Internet Explorer. Like OpenDarwin before us, we will be shutting down.

You may wonder how we can use Trident in Mac OS X browsers like Safari. Fortunately, on Intel-based Macs, there is a solution: running IE under Parallels, and using Mozilla’s XPCOM to bridge the gap. This means we will discontinue the WebKit Objective-C API in favor of a COM API.

IE has often been criticized for its lack of standards compliance and long gaps in development. But Microsoft says they will do way better in the future, and we see no reason not to trust them with the future of the web.

A bit of a jab at the IE team for their still lack of standards compliance in IE7, but I thought it was quite funny.

Google TiSP

Google always come up with a good one every year, and 2007 is no exception. This year, Google announced TiSP.

Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines.

It’s really best appreciated by visting the site and having a look around.

We believe that all users deserve free, fast and sanitary online access. To offset the cost of providing the TiSP service, we use information gathered by discreet DNA sequencing of your personal bodily output to display online ads that are contextually relevant to your culinary preferences, current health status and likelihood of developing particular medical conditions going forward. Google also offers premium levels of service for a monthly fee (see below).
Note: We take your privacy very seriously. So we treat all TiSP users’ waste-related personal information with tremendous discretion, in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Mozilla suing Microsoft over tabbed browsing

One of the many stories that made it onto Slashdot, apparently, Mozilla launched a lawsuit against Microsoft over tabbed browsing in Internet Explorer 7.

According to the german tech-site heise.de, the Mozilla Foundation is suing Microsoft over the use of tabbed browsing in Internet Explorer 7. The Mozilla Foundation owns the patent 5,160,296 through one of their developers (Solomon Katz, a former Opera dev) and has begun suing Microsoft in Mountainview, California. The Foundation wants that MS immediately ceases to distribute IE 7 and pays 1.4 Billion dollars in damages. Heise reports that Microsoft has issued no official response, but is contemplating to ship IE 7 NT (no tabs).

Gmail Paper

Finally, another Google one - Gmail Paper. It’s a service that supposedly allows you to archive Gmail messages by clicking a button and having a paper copy delivered to your door.

You click. We stack. You get.

Apparently. The Gmail Paper minisite is here.

Wrapping up

Of course, I probably haven’t seen the best ones, and these are just a pick of some that I have. If you have a better one you’ve seen out somewhere on the web, let me know in the comments.

UPDATE: just missed this one before I hit publish - The Pirate Bay get permanent hosting - of a sort. Enjoy.