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It is time for this week’s “Is It Real?” feature - where we scour the internet to find a web 2.0 company that defies the imagination and challenges the credulity of the “new media.”

Here’s how it works - every week we present an online company, and give a brief description of the services it provides. We give you just enough information to understand the concept and then we challenge you to vote on if the company is real, or not. Trick is: you cannot surf the web to find the answer!

Think you’re up to the challenge? Well, then let’s proceed with this week’s entry:

McDnld’s: a social network based on your fast food experience. Yes, McDonald’s - home of the Golden Arches - are launching into the web 2.0 fray with their very own social networking site. Called “McDnlds,” this platform is designed for kids and adults alike to share in their eating experience.

Children are presented with Flash-animated Ronald McDonald’s and Grimaces, guiding them through fun online-games and challenges. Reward points are earned that eventually can be redeemed for a small-size fries at their local McDonalds.

Adults, on the other hand, are presented with a cool, MySpace-like interface, allowing them to upload pictures of themselves (presumably while eating Big Macs or drinking Shamrock Shakes), list their favorite music, make friends, and even are given a forum to “blog” about their McDonald’s experience. It is rumored that the best blog posting will enter them into a chance to be a star of an upcoming McDonald’s commercial.

With this upcoming launch, other fast-food companies are planning to launch their own online-communities, including: MyWendy’s, BurgerKingBook, and KFCspace.

So, dear readers, without using the web in anyway, vote below on whether you think McDnld’s is actually real. We’ll reveal the true answer - and the results of our poll - on Friday (in our “Friday Fishwrap” post). Until then, happy voting!

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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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Microsoft, in another desperate bid to become a “me-to” player in a technology space where they own 90% of the market, released today their response to the ever-popular Google Chrome browser: Rust. Leaving off where Netscape and Mosaic left off years ago, Microsoft’s Rust browser promises to bring a “nostalgic feel” back to surfing the web - back to the days of dial-up and Usenet groups.

“We’re excited,” says Steve Balmer, “web users are longing for the days when websites would take minutes - even hours to load. And there’s nothing more sublime than 76dpi graphics….aah, so serene.”

Google’s Rust browser strips out all those annoying Flash applications, cascading style sheets and anything Ajax-y, and delivers the web in all it’s simple glory. Forget ASP, JSP, or .NET - Rust delivers HTML simply and quickly.

“We’re excited,” says Balmer, “By delivering the ‘new web’ in such an old-school way, we’re removing all risks of viruses, malware and adware. This is what’s called in the tech-space, the old ‘bait and switch’.”

In a second surprise move, Microsoft announced that both Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates will return to their marketing campaign, to promote the Rust browser. This, after the much disputed firing of Seinfeld and Gates from their previous campaign.

Jerry Seinfeld, when cornered by rabid reporters, commented: “I was using Netscape when surfing the web on my Macintosh, back when I was starring on TV - this will be easy for me to promote.”

Bill Gates, when demo’ing the new Rust browser, remarked - “Wait a sec - didn’t we trounce these guys when we launched IE2 back in 1999? What gives?”

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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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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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