Top 5 April Fool's Day Pranks for the Digital Age

Here are a few easy computer pranks to pull on your "friends" this April Fool's day. For most of them, all you need is momentary access to their computer and the cold, black heart of a truly evil individual. Remember though, always prank responsibly, only to those who wish to be pranked and will take it in stride. Otherwise phrases like "great prank" and "how fun" tend to get replaced with phrases like "uncool" and "restraining order."

5 - Desktop Screenshot
Here's a nice and easy prank that's good for all seasons and all operating systems. When the moment strikes, simply take a screenshot of your victim's desktop and set it as their wallpaper. Now stash all the real icons from their desktop away in some clandestine folder and find yourself a good hiding place to observe as they click endlessly, only to find their computer crushingly unresponsive.

4 - Blue Screen of Death Screensaver
Sadly this one won't work for your Mac user friends (chalk another point up for Justin Long) but the sheer panic it induces more than makes up for it's lopsided demographic. Displaying an uncharacteristic sense of humor, Microsoft actually released a screensaver that will intermittently fill your monitor with the infamous Blue Screen of Death that has marked the passing of so many brave little hard-disks.

Get it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897558.aspx

3 - Microsoft Word Filters
Under the pretense of being "helpful" Microsoft Word has a very handy autocorrect feature, which allows you to set Word up to automatically adjust for frequently made errors. It also allows you to make your friends go completely insane. Go to Tools > Autocorrect Options and check "Replace Text as you Type," then get creative with the "replace" boxes. Now I'm not going to tell you to replace all the prepositions you can think of with various four-letter words, but it certainly wouldn't be my place to tell you not to.

2 - Pull the plug
This one is so nefarious, it's almost cruel. The simplicity reaches an absolute crescendo here as the prank is accomplished by merely going round the back of your friend's (currently off) Desktop Computer and pulling the monitor plug. If you don't have access to the back of their computer, unplugging the keyboard should produce similarly mystifying effects. In a world with hundreds of possible computer errors and even more potential fixes "Maybe it's not plugged in" tends to end up pretty far down the list of things to check out.

1 - Rickroll
With more than 17 million people Rickroll'd, I'm sure your friends are absolutely sick of being linked to Rick Astley in jest. So, what better reason could you possibly have for linking them to him again? Feel free to get creative with your Rickrolling. If you've got an iPhone, think about using it as a YouTube Boom Box and bring the Rickroll to reality.

Here's a great video of one of the all-time best Rickrolls:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0