That said, when the iPad was first announced, I thought it was a little silly. I wasn’t quite sure what the point was or how useful it could actually be. I did realize quickly that I’m not the demographic that they were even going for with it. It’s not about people who are looking for a full computer, whether those people are developers or not.

I also realize that it’s not about people who are looking to type up papers and write emails all day. The iPad is really about consuming content and information. Yes, it’s been said before, and people make that out to be a bad thing, like you’re a sheep ready to be controlled.

Sure, you can look at it that way. You’re being force-fed media from major corporations, blah blah blah. However, the strength of the iPad is the choice. This, like any other computer or device connected to the Internet lets people choose what they’re looking for and looking at.

A user can just as easily consume a video posted on Vimeo or any other HTML5 video-enabled site as they can buy a TV show from the iTunes store. The idea that someone is trapped is becoming more and more a scare tactic.

Consumption is not a bad thing when the consumer chooses what to consume, and very few people are actually content creators online. So making a product that caters to those consumers is really not a bad thing. In fact, it’s probably the most obvious thing, and it’s amazing someone hasn’t done it before.

When an April Fool’s joke works online, though, it has to really be one thing. 100% tongue-in-cheek, as if it was an Onion article. Those are the April Fool’s jokes that are the best. Ones that don’t try to be convincing in any way, but instead poke fun at something else.

Like Google Voice’s April Fools joke this year. Sure, it wasn’t ha-ha funny, but it’s a lot better than a lot of the ones that float around because it really just makes fun of traditional voicemail, it doesn’t try to convince you of something outlandish.

So, even though I hate April Fool’s Day on the Internet, Google Voice just got a link from me, so that’s clearly saying something. And so the jokes continue.

There were some interesting presentations, and one that really stuck out to me was done by Hard Candy Shell. I thought that Kevin Kearney, the presenter, had one really great point that stuck out to me.

People often talk about making something innovative, engaging, or a million other possible words, but when it comes down to it, they really just want something cool. I realized how true that was in my own personal preferences. There are plenty of things that may be more useful, interesting, or hard to make, but we always come back to what’s cool.

And cool is different for everyone, but nonetheless, whenever you make something new, what you really want is to make something that is cool for whoever you’re making it for.

This is especially true for the Internet where there are plenty of not-so-useful websites or tools out there. But, they survive (or even thrive) because they are cool.