There are 12 steps in checking the cervical mucus of a woman to determine her fertility, according to an article in pregnancy Web site Babymed.com. But to a busy woman, the 12 steps may seem cumbersome.

A Techcrunch report on Tuesday, however, seemed to offer an easier way of checking the cervical mucus via a device called Pokr, a finger-shaped dongle made of silicone to facilitate ease of insertion into the cervix.

The dongle is then plugged into a smartphone's headphone jack for the Fertility app to read the data. Other fertility apps use the data collected, together with the basal body temperature of a woman to help determine her algorithm and the best time to have sexual intercourse to get pregnant.

Pokr is supposed to make it easier for a woman to check her cervical mucus compared to what another app, Glow, prescribes which involves inserting a clean finger into her vagina, reaching toward the cervix and checking if it is more slippery, clear and bountiful like egg whites to indicate fertility.

However, it is recommended that she check it regularly and preferably at the same time of the day which could be inconvenient to many women who could be busy at work or taking care of the kids or performing other household duties,

The companion app of Pokr, available only on iOS-powered phones, was reportedly developed by data scientists at San Francisco, Shanghai and Ho Chi Minh City R&D centres.

However, the article turns out to be just teasing the imagination of its readers toward the end with the image of a medical instrument and a dialogue balloon saying, "Happy April Fools!"