The world has gone mad! I never before really enjoyed April Fool's Day but watching last night's massive email chain unfold might have gotten me in the mood. Several places on the web have joined in the festivities, including Google (excuse me, I meant Topeka) YouTube, and xkcd.

xkcd remains a source of witty comics, but the interface has been converted to command line. Much like the ARG games we explored a little over a week ago, I began typing in all sorts of commands in an attempt to navigate the system. Most of my guesses failed initially, but then I found a few that returned some witty responses. For example, I first tried some of the Linux commands I know to see if I could navigate any to any of the directories returned by "ls." I tried "man cat" and got the response: "You are now riding a half-man half-cat." Also, trying "pwd" to see my current directory returned: "You are in a maze of twisty passages all alike." I did finally hit a winner with "cd forums" which successfully opened the forums index page. Once there I was able to search out some other fun command prompts on recent threads [see here]. Apparently, the changes are all for amusement (in honor of the holiday).

Google has also joined in the fun. Apparently, in a turn reminiscent of House of Leaves, a server malfunction has led to the disappearance of vowels on Google related pages.

You Tube also has offered some new changes, with the "TEXTp" option for viewing resolution of some videos.

Intellectually, these pranks (of sorts) do spark some interesting questions- especially the threads on the xkcd forums. Many users are quite upset with the change, and admit that they cannot navigate the new interface. Much like a modern novel might include obscure references or foreign language passages sans-translation, altering the UI of xkcd has highlighted a gap between those who are "in" on the joke, and those who need it translated.

Contrary to what some might initially think, exposing some of the inner workings of the website has made it more difficult for the masses rather than simpler. Like looking under the hood of a car, many users seem frustrated when confronted with the internal network that they have, in the past, been able to rely on without needing a knowledge of mechanics. In classes gone by we have discussed open source code and published ciphers as a way of making a code stronger and The User happier overall with the option for greater control. Here, however, it would appear that the opposite has occurred: exposing source code has rendered most of the users more restricted in their access to the information contained on the site.