Opera Mobile

It was the day before April 1. A Friday, with all the pre-weekend buzz that comes with it. And spring was in the air, which only fueled my excitement. I had talked my colleagues and best friend into something very weird, and my office looked like a low-budget adult movie set.

It was time for our April 1 joke.

Last year's joke about Opera Soundwave was a great success. This year we decided to have fun with existing stock photography and online photo catalogues that companies hire photos from when they create online or print material, such as brochures. In the technology sector, most brochures and company presentations show all these pictures of beautiful people holding phones or working on their laptops in a glossy, perfect world where white teeth and good looks are mandatory traits. So we decided to use Opera employees (and my best friend Torstein) to show the world how REAL people ACTUALLY use technology in their everyday lives.

Hence the rather dodgy set-up in my office.

Most people have a well-developed sense of what is acceptable and appropriate in official contexts. I have demonstrated, on numerous occasions, a blatant lack of this trait (I usually get away with it, though, like when publically putting our CEO on the spot, forcing him to try to swim from Norway to the USA). Two of my ads were thus censored by Opera's top management. They thought the ads were very funny, but too risqué to use in an official context - April Fool's joke or not.

But they're too good not to be shared, so through my unofficial Opera Mobile blog, I hereby give you the two ads that were deemed "too much".

Rather than putting them here in your face, here are the links:

- Opera Mini censored ad #1
- Opera Mini censored ad #2

Have a great weekend!