This article was published on April 1, 2010

The Chrome April Fools Joke Makes My Ears Hurt


The Chrome April Fools Joke Makes My Ears Hurt

With everyone and their dog now taking part in the shenanigans today, some people have been ratcheting up their joke power to stand out.

Chrome has just released a Chrome Extension that “provides audio feedback as you browse to web pages and interact with the browser.” Translation? It makes very annoying sound effects as you use Chrome. Why mention it? It’s quite well done in its annoyance. Download it here.

With the plugin installed, clicking on tabs inside of Chrome plays piano notes, a different one for each tab. You could, theoretically, play a song. New tabs makes a drum sound, and Google.com will play you a song. Inside of WordPress, typing in the title box, or in HTML mode yields typewriter sound effects. Typing in the normal post area does not. Well played, Google.

When you close a tab, glass shatters. The real question is, what sound does it make when Flash crashes?

Anyway, if you want to prank your office mate with what Google calls psychoacoustic models, the Whittaker-Nyquist-Kotelnikov-Shannon sampling theorem, Franssen effects, Shepard-Risset Tones, and 11.1 surround sound research to build a cutting-edge audio-driven user interface,” it’s a fun time.

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Best sound effect of all? The one that I am about to make uninstalling the dang plugin. Happy April Fool’s everyone.

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