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New Online Political Poll finds 97% of the country hasn’t been polled

November 03, 2008 By: cboyer Category: Political, Uncategorized 2 Comments →

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.

Political polls - are they real?

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…”

Meanwhile, the US Voters are nonplussed.

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The Palin Patch takes the “shrill” out

October 06, 2008 By: zenboy Category: Political 1 Comment →

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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Friday Fishwrap (10-3-08): The Periodic Table of Videos…and Jonathan Coulton’s “Code Monkey” - animated

October 03, 2008 By: cboyer Category: Friday Fishwrap No Comments →

yooRyoo\'s Friday Fishwrap!

Happy Friday everyone! Welcome to our weekly “Friday Fishwrap” where yooRyoo combs the web for fun, interesting videos that are designed to help you take a break from your work-week and give you a bit of lift!

In today’s Friday feature we first want to direct you to a really cool site online, designed to appeal to all you science geeks out there - the Periodic Table of Videos. Created by the science department at the University of Nottingham, they feature a video illustating every element on the Periodic Table. Enjoy!

For our very own imbeded video, as a break from the political ads and the grim news on the economy, today we feature a light film about a Code Monkey - animation set to the great song by Jonathan Coulton.

Have fun, and see you on Sunday, for our next installment of “Is It Real?”…

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Ct’Hulu, H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional gods, now available for download in digital!

September 30, 2008 By: zenboy Category: Television 3 Comments →

Ct\'Hulu

A new internet site originally created to serve television shows over the internet has been taken over by the Cthuhlu old gods as a gateway to enter the earth plane and destroy the universe. Similar to the current economic downturns, this sudden change in streaming online TV content has been been predicted before…but received no media attention.

Nearly a century ago, one of the original cultists (Old Castro) of the Ct’Hulu intoned:

They were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape…but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die

In retrospect, it is now known that he was talking about the advent of streaming online television content and the much balley-hooed conversion to digital TV programming.

The “much-discussed couplet” from Abdul Alhazred’s Necronomicon confirms it:

That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange æons even death may die.[15]

This not only refers to shows that are in endless syndication on nearly half of online HD cable networks (such as The Seinfeld Channel, Sci-Fi Channel’s Star Trek-a-paloosa and TV Land’s I Love Lucy - Eight Days a Week) but also direly prophecizes on-demand downloads of obscure TV programs from sites such as www.Hulu.com. These programs include Adam-12, Firefly and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Effectively, this is signaling the creation of the technology that would lead to the end of the world as we know it.

Astrologers and Ct’Hulu experts agree that the end of the world will start on 12:00:01 AM, February 17th, 2009 - which, coincidentally is the date that analog television will cease to be transmitted, and digital television programming exclusively broadcast.

The cultists of the Ct’Hulu gods state that a suitable transferrence medium will finally be available to herald the start of a new era:

The secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth….Then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.

Or, as Congresswoman Marsha Black states on her website, “The technology allows broadcasters to transmit programming with higher resolution and dramatically improved picture/sound quality.”

Cultists remain skeptical.

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Sickr - Flickr for senior citizens and dead people

September 23, 2008 By: cboyer Category: Social Media 1 Comment →

sickr - where you go when you die onlineLet’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. I can\'t see dead people

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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Friday Fishwrap (8-19-08): McCain invents the Blackberry

September 19, 2008 By: cboyer Category: Friday Fishwrap, Political 1 Comment →

yooRyoo\'s Friday Fishwrap!

Happy Friday, everyone! Every Friday, yooRyoo posts a few fun, online videos that will help you make it through the day and safely into the weekend. This week has been a rocky one with the financial news, but luckily one exciting technical bit of news was reveal - we finally found out who invented the Blackberry!!

No, it’s not the Canadian firm Research in Motion - it’s republican presidential nominate, John McCain (presumably when he was still alive)!!

Needless to say, Al Gore was nonplussed with the news. And Sarah Palin, when asked for comment, remarked “He invented Blackberries? Wow - and I just baked a pie full of them! He’s a genius!”

To celebrate this great advancement, yooRyoo presents a series of videos on this significant accomplishment - enjoy and have a great weekend!

John McCain Blackberry Ad

John McCain Genius Ad

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Friday Fishwrap (8-12-08): The Wonderful New World of the Internet

September 12, 2008 By: cboyer Category: Friday Fishwrap No Comments →

yooRyoo\'s Friday Fishwrap!

Happy Friday, yooRyoo denizens! It’s been a crazy Web 2.0 week (particularly if you own a Sarah Palin website or blog). Judging by the web activity this last week, I expect this to be an interesting election cycle online.

Every Friday, on our Friday Fishwrap, yooRyoo presents the results of our “Is It Real?” poll from the previous Sunday, and then shares with you a fun, interesting video about Web 2.0. So, let’s get started:

Last Sunday, we featured a company called MyGlu - a web 2.0 open-source API that allows users the ability to thread together status updates and the like from a variety of social network sites. It’s all presented in a single, dashboard-like intereface. Then, we asked you to vote if the company is indeed real. Here are the survey results:

  • 50% of you thought that MyGlu was real
  • 50% thought that MyGlu might be real
  • No one thought that MyGlu was fake.

Well, in all actuality, MyGlu is indeed a fake, made-up company - everyone was wrong! I guess it is believable that a service like MyGlu can exist (particularly since there are too many social networking sites in this day and age - I belong to seven myself - SEVEN!!!). Well, who knows what the future of the web will hold…

Which is a nice transition to today’s video. It’s entitled “Internet 1994” and features the cool, “new” possibilities of what the web could be. Sometimes it’s interesting to reflect that a mere 14 years ago, the web was filled with static webpages, indexed in categories by Yahoo! and Alta Vista. This video is a quaint, retro reminder of this new technology - enjoy!

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Introducing the first ever political holodeck: the Palindome!

September 10, 2008 By: zenboy Category: Political 1 Comment →

Palindome

Fans of Gene Rodenberry are delighted to hear that the 2008 presidential campaign has finally see the release of a previously top-secret “Palindome.” With the release of this incredible device, once marginalized members of society finally have a chance to win the candidacy of the President or Vice President of the United States.

Each marginalized demographic (women, black men, Irish-Americans, semi-senile senior citizens and even white trailer-trash from Alaska) has its pundits and believers.

It is common knowledge that candidates can’t be all things to all people. John Edwards (formerly running for the Democratic nomination) had the frustration of not being able to convincingly stand for the black or women’s vote. Mrs. Edwards explained that they “…can’t make John black, or a woman” (it is noted that he was able to be an adulterer, but we digress).

Now, with Palindome, they can.

Much like Star Trek’s Holodeck, the Palindome was created by government scientists that labored on the device for well over two decades. With the release of Windows Vista, they finally found a stable OS to run the sophisticated software, and released the device in time for the 2008 Presidential race, Now candidates have the ability to to simulate life-like experiences of what it is like to be an elderly white man, a black man, or even a female governor of a low population state.

Sarah Palin experiencing thru the Palindome what it's like to be horse-toothed, slightly cross-eyed  looking model

This simulation allows candidates to validate their deeply held convictions, without the by-products of what it is actually like to be a disgruntled POW or a white woman with an underage teen daughter pregnant out of wedlock. And amazingly, just like in the Star Trek episode “The Inner Light” the candidates can live a lifetime’s worth of experiences in about 15 minutes (not counting the Windows Vista reboots).

Barack Obama, after exiting the Palindome, stated: “Now I understand the experiences that my opponent has gone through. I have been tortured. My arms broken. I cheated on my first wife after she was maimed in a traffic accident with rich debutantes. I flew into unexpected rages and have made rash, unreasoned decisions - like selecting a running-mate with absolutely no credentials.”

McCain had a similar revelation: “I feel great sympathy with black women everywhere, since, through the technology of the Palindome, I am able to understand, through a lifetimes experience of being a black woman, your particular issues.” Aides whispered in his ears for an awkward moment, and he then added, “What I meant was experiencing what it was like to live the life of a black MAN.” Then he was gingerly led off-stage.

McCain is an old fuck

Not surprisingly, Sarah Palin was actually the first to enter the Palindome (hence it was named after her) and went into an alternate reality where she experienced what it was like to be a politically savvy, smart, well-connected and knowledgeable Senator of the state of New York. Still, the experience apparently had no effect on her.

Scientist have resolved that while the Palindome can have you experience the simulated life of another person, it can’t make up for your own stupidity.

 

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Evil robotic firm unleashes “Palin-drones” on the world

September 08, 2008 By: cboyer Category: Political 3 Comments →

Palindrones - they\'re coming!

“Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?”

Deep in a bunker somewhere up in the Great White North, an evil firm specializing in robotic technology has secretly created life-like robotic drones, and have unleashed them quietly into the world.

Nick-named “Palin-drones” these robotic menaces have been created with one objective in mind: to act as mirror-opposites of themselves. That is, they begin by assuming a normal political position, and establish firm firm convictions and opinions. Then, within the course of a small period of time (say, a presidential political election cycle), the Palin-drones quickly change their opinions and come out sharply against themselves.

Palin-drones have been known to even vote against bills they co-authored. Equipped with dual-core processors (with each processor maintaining a separate identity and political position), these drones have already fooled nearly half of the US population.

Luckily, skeptics and anyone with half a brain are able to pick out a Palin-drone from a real person. Still, to date, two top-of-the line models still exist with an objective of undermining US society.

The Maverick08

This is a drone with a curmudgeonly attitude. He often is angry and spiteful, and only smirks - not smiles. Some of his recorded reversals:

  1. The Maverick08 insisted that everyone, even “terrible killers,” “the worst kind of scum of humanity,” and detainees at Guantanamo Bay, “deserve to have some adjudication of their cases,” even if that means “releasing some of them.” He even indicated that Gitmo should be closed. He now believes the opposite.
  2. He was against waterboarding and torture until February of this year - now he’s for it.
  3. When his political opponent indicated that he wanted to go to Pakistan to fight terrorist, the Maverick08 criticized him for it - now he’s for it (wanting to follow them to the “gates of hell”)
  4. He wanted to kick Russia out of the G8, and then he didn’t, and then he did again.
  5. The Maverick08 is both for and against a “rogue state rollback”
  6. This drone once said about the war in Iraq: “We will win this conflict. We will win it easily.”Four years later he said that he knew all along that it was “probably going to be long and hard and tough.”
  7. The Maverick08 flip-flopped on a number of positions related to Social Security
  8. He was against making Martin Luther King a national holiday, now he’s for it.
  9. He was for equal rights for gays (including gay marriage) and women, but now he’s come out against it.
  10. He was for a woman’s right to choose before he was against it.

A full list of all 76 policy reversals can be found at The Carpetbagger Report.

Do geese see God?”

The HockeyMILF-o-tron

The second model, called the HockeyMILF-o-tron, was just recently unleashed on the public, and already has recorded a stunning set of reversals in position, including:

  1. She was for the “Bridge to Nowhere” before she was against it (and she still kept the money for it!)
  2. She is for women voters, but against giving them a right to choose.
  3. She was against wind-power and clean coal projects, before she was for it.
  4. She thought that Hilary Clinton was whining during the campaign, and then she praised her for her successes in the campaign.

More have been pointed out by Keith Oberman on a recent TV program:

“No, it never propagates if I set a gap or prevention”

Other Palin-drones are being discovered on a daily basis, since the Republican National Convention. They include

The KarlRove-o-matic (aka Pasty-head):

And the Papa-BearX8000:

Some men interpret nine memos”

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Friday Fishwrap (8-5-08): The Evolution of Cellphones

September 05, 2008 By: cboyer Category: Friday Fishwrap No Comments →

yooRyoo\'s Friday Fishwrap!

Happy Friday, everyone. You made it through a shortened work-week. Typically, on Friday Fishwrap we not only feature a cool, web 2.0 video, we also share with you the results of our “Is It Real?” survey. Since last Sunday, we had a very special OMG - it IS real!! edition, there are no poll results to share. So, straight to the video…

Today’s video is called “Evolution of the Cell Phone” which I found on the great site 5min. Enjoy and have a safe weekend. And don’t forget to tune in this Sunday for a new “Is It Real?“…

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