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Welcome, yooRyoo readers, to our Sunday feature - “Is It Real?” where we present a new Web 2.0 tool or technology, give you a brief overview of the product, and then ask you to vote on if it is real or not. There is a catch, though - you cannot use the internet in any way to help you guess your answer. That’s right - this is a gut-check guess!

We reveal the answer in the following Friday Fishwrap posting. That means you have all week to vote on whether you think this is real or not. Understood? Then let’s get started:

As you know, the Obama campaign is always on the forefront with new technologies to help promote their candidate…and the McCain campaign is desperately following on their heels. When Obama launched a Twitter feed, suddenly 30 McCain twitter feeds were created (29 of which are decidedly fake, but much more entertaining). Incidentally, Barack Obama has more than 80,000 people following his Twitter feeds.

You may have heard, the Obama campaign recently released their very own iPhone application - a way for Barack supporters to stay in touch with the candidate. Not to be outdone, the McCain campaign is now introducing their very own iPhone application. Similar to the Obama application, the McCain iPhone app allows users to get instant messages and campaign updates from their campaign.

But, as an added touch, McCain’s iPhone application contains a fun, imbeded game where you can control an animated version of McCain and Palin, and have them shoot at Iranian invaders, wolves (from a helicopter) and Russians from across the sea. This game is called “Grumpier Old Men” (since it’s loosely based on the movie).

So, yooRyoo friends, we ask - do you think that the McCain iPhone application is indeed real? Vote below…the answer will be revealed on Friday!

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Happy Friday, yooRyoo denizens! In today’s Friday Fishwrap we’ll share with you the latest “virile marketing” video that’s sweeping the YouTube internet…but before we do, let’s share with you the results of the polling from last Sunday’s “Is It Real” - McDnlds…

For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, every week yooRyoo presents a web 2.0 company or idea, and asks our readers to decide whether the company is real or not, without the help of the web in anyway. Last Sunday, we presented McDnld’s - a social network launched by our favorite fast-food company - defining an online community where adults and kids alike can blog and post videos and share their favorite experience with french fries. Then we asked you to vote, and here are the results:

• 60% of you answered that you thought it was real
• 40% of you thought it was fake

In reality, McDnld’s is fake. The fast-food company doesn’t need to launch an online community, because they already have a  “Havin’ Fun with McDonald’s” website. While their site is definitely not web 2.0, I don’t think they care  (since they have tremendous presence all over the web, already).

Incidentally, I got the idea for McDnld’s from this great Flickr posting by shopping2null:

Ok, now on to our Friday Fishwrap video - this week we are featuring a new video that take a “literal” approach to defining 1980’s music videos. Enjoy Take On Me: Literal Video Version:

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Note to yooRyoo readers, the following item is entirely true…sometimes we can’t make these things up:

A Google engineer released a new extension to Gmail that is designed to prevent “drunk emailing.” Entitled “Mail Goggles,” the engineer posted the following description on his blog:

Sometimes I send messages I shouldn’t send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?

If you add Mail Goggles to your existing Gmail account, it will automatically turn on late on Friday and Saturday nights. Everytime you try to send an email, it will ask you a series of math questions to prove your sobriety. Here is a screenshot of some of those questions:

Again, we have to stress that although it sounds like one of our fake postings, this is entirely real.

Here is a screenshot of the settings panel:

Still don’t believe us? Feel free to download and install this at the Offical Gmail Blog.
 

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Confronted with the possibility that Sarah Palin may possibly become the Vice President of the United States, a Silicon Valley technological manufacturing firm has developed a state-of-the art patch to cut out the shrill notes when Governor Palin is speaking.

This will become available in February, to coincide with the February 17, 2009 date when all television signals change from analog to digital (as well as the same date that the Cthuhlu old gods using the digital signal as a gateway to enter the earth plane and destroy the universe).

What the technology does is similar to what happens with MP3s” says the Palin Patch creator, Kip Fraunhofer. “It cuts out the irritating shrill notes that are audible to the human ear. What we’ve found with Palin, though, is that once you remove the shrill notes all you are left with is folksy sayings, parroted memorized phrases, winks and the occasional head cock. Hardly worth listening to at that point.”

A similar development effort is underway to replace all utterances of the word “Maverick” with white noise. The McCain campaign responded with: “White Noise? Are you attempting to pull the race card?”

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yooRyoo fans: we apologize for our unexpected haitus since last week. Because we were unable to provide you with an update last Friday, we bring to you today our ever-popular “Friday Fishwrap” feature…but on a Monday! “Friday Fishwrap” is where we reveal to you the results of our “Is It Real?” feature from the previous Sunday, and then share a fun video from the World Wide Web for you to enjoy!

Our last “Is It Real?” posting featured a new iPhone application created a 3D, holographic animation on the iPhone that moved when you moved the phone. It was aptly named “iHologram” and was available through the iTunes app store. It’s hard to describe in words, but it really is cool to see it in action - watch the video in our last post, to get a sense of what it is!

We then asked you to vote on the authenticity of the application. Here are the poll results:

• 50% of you thought that while it looked cool, it wasn’t real
• 40% of you thought it was real, and want to download it to your iPhones
• 10% of you were undecided

The actual truth: while it is a great concept, the iHologram is not yet real! To quote a story from Gizmodo about the iHologram:

The amazingly convincing 3D anamorphosis app iHologram turns out to be just a technology demonstrator rendering rather than a real app. Its developer, David O’Reilly, apparently wasn’t trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes with the cool clip of the strolling cat, but just demonstrate how the 3D effect could be made to work. He’s up for collaboration “with a developer or studio who wants to make it happen,” for real, though.

I can’t wait to get it when it is real! So, for now we are just with a cool video to demonstrate the concept.

Speaking of cool videos: today, in a crazy celebration to Web 2.0, we proudly present an over five minute video called: “5000 Web Apps in 333 Seconds”…check to see if you can find your favorite in this crazy kaliedoscope of all things good about the web!

Rest assured, yooRyoo is back on track and tune in tomorrow for a very new satirical Web 2.0 posting. Until then, have a great Monday everyone!

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In partnership with the new T-Mobile G1 Phone is one of the first open source applications built exclusively for the so-called “gPhone” - and just in time for the presidential election. While this new cell phone from Google (aka “the Android”)has  dubbed the “iPhone killer” and alternately the “Blackberry killer,” (in some circles, called the “McCain killer” in reference to the Republican Presidential nominations’ PR gaffe stating that the Senator invented the ubiquitous Blackberry).

“Grok the vote” (GTV) is the new G1 Phone application that monitors social networking sites such as MySpace and FaceBook in an attempt to determine your voting preferences automatically.

Every time a G1 phone user enters or updates their social networking profile through the phones interface, “Grok the Vote” gathers a listing of your preferences, including your music tastes (or lack thereof), books you’ve read (or censor), groups you belong to (or hate) and even the types of friends your connect to - all in attempt to “grok” your vote.

Do you have a video post of “I got a crush…on Obama” by the Obama Girl? Well, that’s an easy algorythm - one vote for Obama!

How about if you are part of the Facebook group for John McCain? One vote for McCain!

If you want to censor books in public and school libraries, support a plan for oil drilling in Alaska without considering the economic trama and the environmental destruction that it would cause, support abstinence only sex education, believe that Creationism should be taught in public schools, regardless of religion, support the National Rifle Association- but not the restriction of guns from known criminals, oppose same sex marriage or any sort of health benefits for same sex couples, oppose the listing of Polar Bears on the Endangered Species Act, do not believe that Global Warming is caused by human activity, and are against all forms of abortion, even in the case of rape or incest victims, then McCain it is!

GTV was introduced to combat the vast morass of voter apathy. In the last November election, voter turnout was estimated at 39%. What about the 61% of the rest? I mean, is that really a Democracy? Does that qualify for a mandate of the American people? 39%? I mean, c’mon!

Yet, popularity of social networking sites are at an all time high! Hence - “Grok the vote” to the rescue!!!

Once a person downloads and runs the GTV open source application on their new G1 phone, Google subtly adds a User Licencing Agreement which indicates that users agree that their vote will be cast, depending on the conclusion GTV draws from the “grokking” their Social Networking sites.

Definition from Wikipedia:
Grok is a word invented by science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein, first used in the 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land.

To grok is to share the same reality or line of thinking with another physical or conceptual entity.

When asked about those that do not display any online preferences, the makers of GTV replied: “Well, those votes would automatically go to the Democratic candidate. We do this in an effort to combat the known Diebold voting machine bias towards conservative presidential candidates. This is also to combat the seemingly inbred tendency for liberal infighting, such as Ralph Nader pulling votes from John Kerry in 2004, and the conspicuous silence from Hillary Clinton post-Obama nomination.”

But, recently Bush was heard saying (while he thought he was off-mike):

Well, those f–kers can do any dang thang they want y’all, the die bold guy sez they’ll still deliver that geezer, and the second run beauty queen.”

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Let’s face it - death is inevitable. According to the latest study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 99.97% of all people will experience death in some form or another. And with morbidity as such a chronic condition facing most people, online web 2.0 denizens have left behind messy trails of online postings, Twitter updates and photos.

Traditionally, these “expired” posts would remain online, stagnant and unchanging, until some tenacious reporter would highlight them in the press (usually in a morbid or tragic way), or some webmaster would delete the account for inactivity. Until now - introducing Sickr, and automated service that archives online personas after real-life people pass to the other side.

“It’s amazing how seamless this is,” describes the founder Kirk D’Bucket, “once a person in RL dies, it initiates an automated process which rolls through most major government agencies - the Motor Vehicle Department, Social Security Administration and the IRS. Sickr taps into that process feed, and  aggregates this notification out to all major social networks - FriendFeed, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google FriendConnect, Twitter, etc.” 

These online records are then passed, through OpenID, open-source platforms, to a designated “final resting place” on Sickr. All status are changed automatically to “expired” or “cease to exist” and little black x’s are Photoshopped over the individual’s eyes.

In a surprising mash-up, online “makeup artist” MyFacelift has been contracted to give these cold, lifeless online profiles one last makeover.

“Sickr is great,” commented Charleze Beezle, a 26 year old member of MySpace, “I kept IM’ing my ex and he never responded. I was beginning to think that he wasn’t interested in me anymore…and then I received a notification from Sickr, that indicated he died more than two weeks ago. Needless to say, I was relieved…I was beginning to think that it was me!”

While transferring “dead” online accounts to Sickr is provided free of charge, they have already introduced a premium service in an effort to monetize their business model.

“For people experiencing a fatal disease or simply for family members of elderly online denezins, they can sponsor a “Final Resting Place” on Sickr,” explains Kirk D’Bucket, “the final destinations would be ad-free locations, with customized wallpapers, streaming music and videos. We even provide customized URL’s for that special touch!”

There are currently three levels of premium service:

1. Bronze-level (aka “I Told Your I Was Sickr“)
2. Silver-level (aka “I Was Sickr Than You“)
3. Gold-level (aka “I Was Sickr and Now I Am Kickr“)

Celebrities have already jumped on the Sickr band-wagon, including Sarah Palin reserving the Gold-level location for an unnamed online celebrity. Her spokesperson stated, “We can’t tell you who it’s for - but let’s just say this guy has a lot of Facebook activity…even though he can’t use a computer!”

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