Spanish-speaking readers are well aware that any news item dated on December 28 should be read with lots of skepticism. Those from the rest of the world will probably appreciate some explanation about our yesterday's scoop.

On December 28, most Spanish-speaking countries celebrate the Innocent Saints Day. Besides hanging little paper dolls from the back of victims' overcoats in the street, it is customary that newspapers and other media publish a fake and usually weird news item, as a joke to share with their audience.

Yesterday, CanalPDA.com joined this time-honoured journalistic tradition, posting a story about a supposed project by Apple Computer to become a mobile phone carrier. Of course, such information was completely false, to the point of including statements by an Albert Slope, Apple's VP of Mobile Platforms and Services, whose name was just the Spanish translation of CanalPDA.com's publisher, Albert Cuesta. Both Apple's project and the technical details in the story were completely faked by our editors.

In order to avoid confusion by readers unaware of this Spanish tradition, the English version of our story (still available here) included two links near the top, leading to external pages describing the tradition of inocentadas in the press.

However, the presumed story began to surface in several places, starting by the Japanese maku.or.tv. As the day went on, readers of some Spanish sites quoted the item in the forums of iPunkRock, Macuarium and TodoPocketPC.

By noon, and over the afternoon (our local time), Apple's presumed plans made headlines in publications like MacMerc, MacDaily News, MacSurfer and several editions of Google News, as well as in the forums of AppleInsider, ArsTechnica, ehMac.ca and xlr8yourmac, while some journalists vented their perplexity at reading such an item in an obscure and unknown (to them) Spanish site.

Most surprising was that many readers, who believed our fake story, declared to be genuinely interested in contracting cellphone service from Apple. Maybe somebody at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino should think about it...

By the evening (Spanish time), SpyMac posted a note making clear that CanalPDA.com's story followed a Spanish custom to publish false news on Dec. 28, and emphasizing the links to postings about inocentadas included in our story. However, the ball kept rolling for a while, in other sites such as MacRumors.

We hope that all of the above, their readers (and Apple Computer) enjoyed our prank and thank them for their attention. Now we start looking forward to the April's Fools Day, the English (and French!) counterpart to our Innocent Saints, and the day when the net will overflow again with fake news. Meanwhile, we wish you a Happy New Year !!

While you are here, you may want to read other stories in English