In honor of the holiday gift-buying season, yooRyoo presents our version of the 12 Days of Christmas - featuring our most popular products and stories of 2008.
If you want to buy any of the below special offers, please email your credit card information to an undisclosed Nigerian bank where we hold our accounts.
Happy Holidays!
On the 12th day of Christmas, yooRyoo gave to me….
yooRyoo has discovered some startling news: future President Obama is partial to neither the Microsoft or Apple MP3 players, and instead prefers to use a Rio PMP300 as his personal electronic music device.
“Look, my Rio is a special heirloom that was given to me by my ex-rival McCain,” Obama stated during an impromptu press conference in an Akron, OH “Curves for Men” on Monday, “It’s reminiscent of the epic battle the Arizona senator staged…and lost…on a national front. It’s a reminder a time forgotten when there was only a 32MB capacity - which means one could play almost five whole songs at a time for nearly 30 minutes at a stretch.”
When asked which songs he has loaded on his Rio Player, the President-elect’s spokesperson distributed a sheet containing the following tracks:
“Circus” by Brittney Spears
“If I Were a Boy” by Beyonce
“Heartless” by Kayne West
“Rehab” - by Amy Winehouse
and 1/2 of “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey
As a follow up, Barack Obama added, “In this tough economy, I ask all Americans to sacrifice in a small way to help better the country. By the way, does anyone have any AA batteries I could borrow?”
President-elect Obama has already taken an aggressive approach to bringing the government online. With his new website www.change.gov and promising to promote his progress through various social media outlets, American web denizens have been waiting with interest and baited breath. Barack’s plan began with his first weekly address on YouTube this past weekend (aka his weekly “fireside chat”):
In response, millions of people rushed to watch the video, causing YouTube servers to be overloaded and close to overheating. The result: delayed download speeds, which quickly caused many Americans to lose interest after a few seconds. There were also numerous platform complaints.
“Why just YouTube?” questioned one loyal Obama supporter, “why not also on Hulu? I get most of my internet TV from Hulu…I had to watch Family Guy instead!”
“Who uses YouTube anymore? I thought that platform lost relevancy years ago, with the Lonelygirl15 debacle,” commented anonymous viewer. “Can’t he put it on Seesmic or even MySpace? Sheesh…”
The video itself features president-elect Barack Obama in a normal set, delivering a quite lengthy speech (at just over 4 minutes). This came as a surprise, as many speculated that “Obama 2.0″ would actually begin transmitting his fireside speeches via hologram, into every household in America.
“Frankly, I am disappointed,” commented 25 year-old Shane Hausser from Davenport, Iowa, “I wanted his message delivered to me through my Xbox 360 game so I could learn about the state of the nation while fragging n00bs in Call of Duty 8.”
Due to the response, the president-elect announced today that all future updates will be presented in a format that most people will respond favorably to - presumably at 140 characters at a time.
Reality based video games are nothing new. Some examples are the Sims, as well as such titles as Guitar Hero and even the games such as Grand Theft Auto.
There’s now a new video game called “Miracle at St. Obama” – a reality based game where the “Mission Impossible” is to get us out of a war, prevent a recession/depression, prevent Russian encroachment on the eastern front, gain support for universal healthcare, and start the long road to an economic recovery.
Instead of the typical male teen mindset of “let’s blow sh– up!’ this is a new concept in reality based gaming modelled on the toughest job in the world in one of the toughest of times - right here, right now. In this game you play America’s first black president. Hopes are high that you are able to accomplish such miracles as prevent the fall of our nation’s auto industry, fight two wars, gain the respect and cooperation of the opposing political party, unite your own liberal base, among all the other myriad problems or, as Obama would say “Opportunities for Change” with a capital “C.”
The game has options for other “Fantasy presidents” such as a McCain or Hilary Clinton presidency, and even a Sarah Palin Presidency based on the untimely death of a fantasy McCain President, and how she deals with incursions into the Georgian territory, “Well, we’ll just send our troops to the south, you betcha!” is one canned response.
Real time updates add realism to the game as the game is updated on a nightly schedule to make the game coincide with actual events in the world happening today.
There are even “hidden levels” that reveal an Arnold Schwartzenegger presidency (just need to remove the requirement of a candidate being from this country!), and “what if” scenarios such as “What if aliens landed!”
The game is guaranteed to provide hours of fun, otherwise there is a full 4 years no questions asked return policy to a period of worldwide disapprobation, war and economic turmoil.
The White House announced over the weekend that President-elect Barack Obama will have to remove all traces of himself from the internet, due to the Presidential Records Act. This includes not only giving up his Blackberry, but also removing all social networking profiles, public campaign websites, and any mention of him in blog postings and/or news reports.
“Due to the private nature and high security level associated with the Presidency, Obama will have to stop using email, updating his Facebook status and sending our ‘tweets’ to his more than 102,000 followers on Twitter,” a top aide stated over the weekend, “In fact, he’s going to have to go off-line completely - limiting his access to printed information only…and even that material would be more than a week old, to ensure it’s properly ‘vetted’.”
This news apparently caused much concern with the president-elect (in some circles dubbed “Obama 2.0“), who is apparently addicted to posting links, funny videos from the campaign trail and MP3s of his favorite bands on his MySpace account.
Major social media outlets have been asked to comply, including popular sites such as YouTube, Hulu.com and Friendfeed being asked to “purge” any video, audio or text stories that make any reference to the president-elect.
Obama’s latest YouTube “fireside chat” has already been blocked, and replaced with a Rick Astley video (however, yooRyoo has obtained a secret link to the video here):
A much bigger impact will be felt within the blogosphere itself - where already right-wing “anti-Obama” blog writers are complaining that they will have no more material to rant about.
“They can’t do this - it’s un-American,” said Matt Drudge late Sunday night, “I am just finishing up a piece about how Barack claims to wear boxer-briefs but really ‘goes commando‘…they can’t take away my livelihood!”
Even websites friendly to the new president are concerned: Slate.com and Politico.com have filed for “special exemption” status, promising to become exclusive online propaganda outlets for the new administration.
When asked for an official response from the president-elect, all emails bounced back with an “Undeliverable” error.
Happy Friday! On today’s Friday Fishwrap we reveal to you the results of last Sunday’s “Is It Real?” and then share with you a fun, geeky video we found on the www…ready to get started?
Last Sunday, we presented Hamsterster - a social networking site, along the lines of Dogster and Catster, where Hamster owner could create profiles for their furry rodents and share them with fellow Hamster-owners (”Have you seen Mr. Cuddlewinks profile - I just uploaded new pics of him in his plastic ball!”). Then we asked you to vote, if it’s indeed real. Here are the results:
29% thought it was real
29% thought it wasn’t
43% weren’t sure (and voted “maybe”)
The real answer - Hamsterster is INDEED REAL!!! And check out these fun pictures pulled from the site (of Patchy, Twinkle Toes and Mr. Bothari, respectively):
I am not sure I should be disturbed by Hamsterster, or just accept it. Anyway, now on to our video:
This Friday Fishwrap clip was forwarded to me by Jerimiah Owyang, and I thought would make a perfect - albeit geeky - video inclusion in today’s posting. Please enjoy, “How to Behave on a Forum”
A sincere plea from yooRyoo today: it’s an important election day. Please - whatever you do - get out there and vote. Even if you have to wait in line a few hours…please vote!!! It’s worth it!
The “ghost is in the machine”…so if you are voting on a machine, make sure that ghost is representing you. Make your vote count!!!
Make sure to carefully watch your ballot for accuracy. Here is an actual flimed testimony of how the machines can easily be “non-calibrated” and cast the wrong vote:
In this particular heated election year, a rise of online political polling has spread like a virus on the internet. At any given count, there are hundreds…yea, thousands…of online political polls dedicated to parsing numbers and voters, left and right, depending on how the wind blows.
Along with the rise of these polls, came the rise of political polling techniques - opinion polling, early voting polling, phone call polling, online popularity polls. Every major news organization - and even Fox News - has created their own polling techniques, not to mention fancy electronic boards to display their information in their news casts.
To that end, ostensibly, Picken & McCracken, leading researchers and statisticians (famous for their recent study that 67% of all web statistics are made up on the spot) have applied a Noble-prize winning technique and weighed in on the latest political polls.
Using state-of-the-art techniques, Picken & McCracken have employed, phones, cell-phones, email, Facebook, Twitter, IM and a host of other online techniques, and reached out to virtually every American in a short period of time. They compiled their results and just published their latest election poll numbers:
97% of all Americans have never participated in any election poll
Of those 97% of people, 73.4% of them responded to Picken and McCracken’s poll and their first statement was “Oh crap… now I participated in a poll. Can I switch sides?”
13% of all American can’t make simple decisions like: skim milk or cream in my coffee, Subway or Quiznos for lunch, should I take Sally to dance class or Billy to practice? Inevitably, these same 13% are found right in front of you in the checkout lane at the supermarket
States like Ohio are virtually split 50/50 with every decision they have to make (Picken brought up the 2005 Ohio Baskin Robbins “Chocolate or Vanilla” vote, in which “Chocolate” won by 3 votes)
While Politicians focus on certain states to statistically win Electoral Votes like Ohio, Florida, and this year, Pennsylvania and Colorado, voters in those non “swing states” have a more enjoyable TV viewing experience, not having to ignore campaign commercials
Upon its release today, this study is expected to change the political polling landscape today. When asked for it’s impact, most major news outlets dismissed the study by stating: “You can’t believe those polls, anyway…now, back to our latest poll results…”
By now, you may have already heard the news that the Obama campaign has started inserting campaign ads into console video games (if you haven’t read the scoop at GigaOm here).
Actual Obama ad in Xbox 360 racing game “Burnout Paradise”
As always, the McCain campaign responded quickly yesterday by releasing news that their campaign will also begin in-game advertising as part of his desperate attempt to appeal to young people - sometimes by even buying the same advertising space!! Here are a list of proposed placements for McCain ads:
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!
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.”
In honor of the holiday gift-buying season, yooRyoo presents our version of the 12 Days of Christmas - featuring our most popular products and stories of 2008.
