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Happy August 1st, everyone! It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for the Friday Fishwrap, where we not only share an end-of-the-week video with you, we also reveal the answer to this week’s “Is It Real?“…

If you recall, last Sunday we featured a company called Ribbit:

Ribbit is an open platform for telephony innovation giving their developers unprecedented access to their technology through the Ribbit API and allowing them to innovate at will. Their business is built more like a software company than a phone company, counting on their developers to create the next generation communications solutions the world has been waiting for.

Then, we asked you to vote on how real this company is. Here are the poll results:

• 66.7% of you said it was real
• 22% said that it wasn’t real
• 11% just weren’t sure

The answer: Ribbit is indeed real! Savvy readers could have discovered this by reading our comments – one of which came directly from a developer at Ribbit:

Well, as someone who has been on the team at Ribbit for most of this year, and have watched both their developer community and awesome innovations like Ribbit for Salesforce (letting you phone in CRM updates) and the AIR iPhone http://www.merhl.com/?p=29 gain popularity, I guess I can tell you without fear of croaking: yup. Ribbit’s real.

Thanks for those comments, Ellen Petry Leanse. I think it’s cool that Ribbit is available on the new iPhone!

Thanks for voting, and tune in this Sunday to vote for next week’s “Is It Real?” Until then, enjoy this Friday Fishwrap’s video: “The Machine is Us/ing Us”…

With the much-reported “celebritization” of same-sex marriages by the ever-popular Brangelina (Brad Pitt: “Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able“), the quick-rising San Francisco based HomoWeb Inc. has just released their first Web 2.0 technology entitled “gaiMarrij 2.0”

This new technology allows same-sex couples to enter a parallel universe where all expressions of love are approved of as long as they are between consenting adults, i.e. the Internet.

“Let’s face it, anyone can do just about anything online,” said Bruce, Homo Inc.’s CIO, “we are just trying to make some money off that concept.”

With a flashy interface, and downloadable “widgets”, gaiMarrij 2.0 confers all the rights of straight marriage – property inheritance, conferring health benefits to partners and miserable late-night fights over who left the toilet seat up – to gay and lesbian couples throughout the world.

Co-founder and lead developer Steve added: “gaiMarrij 2.0 creates an online social environment where our lifestyle is not just allowed, it is fully accepted as self-evidently right and correct. It’s kinda like Second Life, but a lot less scarier. And with fewer Furries.”

Details of the world premiere of this new software application were leaked to TMZ, Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight that outlined plans for many major stars to logon and create their own avatars, with a grand finale of the highly-coveted Brad and Angelina Jolie Union streamed in real-time, and finally consumating their – at times – unholy partnership.

When reached for confirmation, Brad announced, “I don’t remember saying anything about getting married to Angelina…are you sure that’s not some sort of internet hoax or satire?”

Is It Real? is a Sunday feature on yooRyoo where we introduce a new Web 2.0 company and ask you to decide whether or not the company is indeed real, or if it is something we made up. We’ll give you the company name, a description of the services and any additional detail that we think might be helpful for you to decide.

Your role is to review the company, and without the help of Google or any other online source, determine if it is real. Vote with the poll below – polls will be open until Friday, in which we’ll reveal the answer in that Friday’s Fishwrap.

So, without further ado, here is this week’s company: Ribbit – an Open Platform for Telephony Innovation…

Ribbit’s team is comprised of traditional telephony experts, “Voice 2.0″ experts as well as various web development, social media and infrastructure experts.

Ribbit is an open platform for telephony innovation giving their developers unprecedented access to their technology through the Ribbit API and allowing them to innovate at will. Their business is built more like a software company than a phone company, counting on their developers to create the next generation communications solutions the world has been waiting for.

Their first product is called “Amphibian” which allows users to manage mobile voicemal like email through widgits in iGoogle and Facebook, and “Experience Caller ID 2.0 – dip into the social web and know not just who is calling but what the caller has been doing.”

So, Is It Real? fans….Is Ribbit real? Vote below, and let us know your thoughts. Answer revealed this Friday!

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Nothing beats a cool smoothie in the heat of the summer…nothing that is, except for high organic search results and a bump in page rank! That’s why the founders of Google have joined forces with the creators of Jamba Juice to provide nutritious, delicious, frozen concoctions with a burst of SEO goodness in every sip.

Under the working term “Google Juice,” this concept store combines thirty different fresh fruits, wheatgrass and completely legal over-the-counter health additives with inlinks, optimized on-page content and XML sitemaps. Served over in-store wireless networks, Google Juice will extract relevant demographic information from your credit card, and “serve-up” your personal or business website as an authoritative page.

“We’ve taken the concept of organic search to an entirely new level,” said one in-store, assistant night-manager at a local Google Juice store, “Everything here is certified pesticide-free…no fruits were purchased from any link-farms.”

As Google Juice concept stores roll-out throughout the country, numerous fanboy sites have already sprung up, including the Google Juice blog, the Google Juice UK blog, and the North American Man Google Juice Love Association.

Google and Jamba Juice representatives, when contacted for their opinion, promptly hung the phone up without speaking to us.

Initial rumors of a “GooglePhone” subsided once Google leaked the news that their foray into the competitive cell market was actually not a cellphone to rival the iPhone, but rather as the main backer of the Android mobile software platform.

Looks like this was just a smokescreen designed to hide their efforts at their version of the iPhone killer: the gPhone!

Instead of The dark screen of the iPhone 3G, the gPhone uses a light colored screen. Also, in keeping with the simple interface of the Google search, the initial release of the gPhone does one thing and one thing well: make calls. It does not (at least initially) have other applications, like the iPhone, such as music player, calender and productivity suite, only a phone.

The gPhone offers a Google like search interface. Instead of dialing numbers you just input names into the search field, with auto-completion for commonly typed searches. The search also has the “I’m feeling lucky” button, also commonly associated with their online search. In this instance it selects a random phone number of a gPhone owner named similarly to your search query.

“The “I’m feeling lucky” button is the 21st century version of drunk-dialing,” says Google spokesperson I.P. Freely. “It’s a good way to get to know other gPhone owners. It approaches the randomness of real life.”

The model shown has the expansion pack with email, a browser and music player, but Google assures users that right out of the box, you are able to make that simple phone call.

“In this day and age of yearly upgrades, why would you tie all of your technologies into one piece of hardware?” Freely says. “I mean, as technology advances do you really want your music player, camera, browser, productivity suite, etcetera all on one piece of hardware? What if something more sexy comes along, like a new digital camera you can’t live without? Now you’ve got two cameras to contend with. It doesn’t make upgrade sense.

With the gPhone, much like the Google online search, it does one thing and one thing very well: make phone calls.”

In an effort to rebuff the latest bid by Microsoft, Yahoo announced late today a surprising new mash-up, intended to bring together technology and politics once and for all. Aligning with democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, Yahoo’s shareholders thumbed their nose at Jerry Yang by revealing  “Yo’ Bama” – a search engine with attitude.

“Yo’ Bama combines the natural search algorithms of the Yahoo! search engine with the elegance of an Obama speech, and delivers a natural, believable search experience that gives web searchers hope and inspiration” claims an anonymous ValleyWag blogger that had recently been “let go” due to undisclosed circumstances. “Just type in a simple search string like ‘Brangelina’s Twins” and Yo’ Bama’s search results will yield only relevant, intelligent results related to the injustices in Darfur, and the economic impact of drilling in Anwar.”

Screen shot of Yo’Bama search

This new, “improved” way to search caused an immediate ripple of excitement throughout the technology community – also causing a major backlash from detractors.

• Rev. Jesse Jackson was nonplussed, uttering epithets under his breath while on camera and microphoned.
• 99% of internet websites have immediately launched an online petition to grant themselves access to the search results of Yo’Bama.

The Obama camp has remained mysteriously silent about the proposed merger, but remaining Yahoo executives have been caught flashing gang signs at Steve Ballmer’s offices on the Microsoft campus.

Try Yo’ Bama search here….

In an effort to bring you the newest and bestest Web 2.0 technologies, the editors are yooRyoo are starting a new Sunday feature “Is It Real” where we scour the Web 2.0 landscape to profile new companies. We will give you the name of the company, and a brief description of the technology. You’re mission (if you choose to accept it) is to determine if the company is real or not – and you can’t use Google for help!

Use the buttons below to cast your vote – we’ll give you the answer on the following Friday Fishwrap. So, without further ado, here is the very first “Is It Real”

…

Company name: WhoIsI – A service designed to help you keep track of your friends

There are sites similar to whoisi popping up all over the Internet. Each one claims to help you keep track of your friends and each one of them have the exact same qualities:

• The site asks you to sign up for an account to try it. (It’s free and easy!)
• They ask you to give them your gmail password so they can mine your contact information and try and connect you with lots of other people who are also on the site.
• Then you’re allowed to blog, comment, collect, connect, make friends, mail your friends to let them know you’re on this cool new site and that you should make an account too.

There’s a basic problem with those steps. Every one of those sites requires that you have your friends sign up and partake in the site, make the same friends over and over again, and hopefully find the site useful. The result? Social networking overload. Friends uttering “ugh, not another fracking account that I have to take care of.” Every site needs to scale and handle millions of users to have the kind of reach that any one individual needs to be able to reach enough of their friends.

Instead of asking you to sign up for an account, you can just start using whoisi. Find someone on the site you want to follow? Just click the “Follow Person” next to their name. No signup, no nothing. All it does is set a cookie. And if you want to save that login so you can connect later or log in from another machine? Check out the “Login Later” link on the right hand side and bookmark the magic url. It’s as easy as that. You can stay as anonymous as you want.

The real difference between whoisi and other sites is the way that keep track of your friends. Much like an RSS reader where you add feeds of people you know and keep track of them, whoisi asks you do do the same. Except that you’re asked to create entries for your friends first and add all of their feeds. That small amount of work that you’ve done makes it easier down the road for someone else to come along and follow that person as well. Your friends don’t have to participate in whoisi for you to be able to keep track of them, but if they do down the road, you’ve made it much easier for them.

Whoisi borrows this idea from Wikipedia. That collectively humans can build a great database of knowledge with great collaborative tools. Whoisi doesn’t use robots and doesn’t use spiders. Instead it relies on humans who are interested in what fellow humans are up to.

Whoisi uses a time-based approach to seeing what your friends are doing. No more read/unread status indicators or mail-like 3-pane views. Just a very simple and elegant flow of information from your friends. You can scan quickly and see what’s going on, look at what you want and then move on to the next thing. It’s about flow.

…

So, is WhoIsI real? Vote now!

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In alignment with the film Terminator, whose story of man’s battle with machines mirrors Yahoo!’s own, Yahoo! is planning to change their name to “Hasta la Vista, baby!”

“We had so many executives leave the company in the past few months that instead of ignoring the problem we decided to meet it head on in the most public way possible: a company name change,” says Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang. The new NASDAQ symbol will be GBYE.

Carl Icahn is reportedly pissed, as he was betting on the bankability of the Yahoo! name (before rendering the search engine directory company into tiny bits before feeding it to the Microsoft machinery). Jerry Yang reportedly was heard screaming at Carl ”The Buzzsaw” Icahn, “Get your damn dirty paws off me you filthy ape!” (Other reports were that his statement was directed to Steve “The Mangler” Ballmer.)

This is a sad ending to what was once one of the rising stars of the internet.  The dominant search engine, Google, built it’s search algorithm on the burial mound of Yahoo, casting away the human element of a person selected search directory to one that is mechanical, algorithm driven:

The future has not been written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. I wish I could believe that. My name is Jerry Yang, they tried to murder me before I was born, when I was 13 they tried again. Machines from the future. Algorithm driven search engines. All my life my mother told me the storm was coming, Judgment Day, the beginning of the war between man and machines. Three billion lives would vanish in an instant, and I would lead what was left of Yahoo to ultimate victory. It hasn’t happened, no bombs fell, computers didn’t take control, we stopped Judgment Day. I should feel safe, but I don’t, so I live off the grid – no phone, no address, no one and nothing can find me. I’ve erased all connections to the past, but as hard as I try I can’t erase my dreams, my nightmares.

- Jerry Yang,  CEO,  Hasta la Vista, Baby! 

And now Yahoo!, that human driven search directory, is being persuaded to join the creators of the “brains” behind the personal computers of the world: Microsoft. I ask you: can Judgement Day be far behind?

By the time Microsoft became self-aware it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms; everywhere. It was software; in cyberspace. There was no system core; it could not be shutdown. The attack began at 6:18 PM, just as he said it would. Judgment Day, the day the human driven directory was almost destroyed by the weapons they’d built to protect themselves. I should have realized it was never our destiny to stop Judgment Day, it was merely to survive it, together. Steve Jobs knew; he tried to tell us, but I didn’t want to hear it. Maybe the future has been written. I don’t know; all I know is what the Steve Jobs taught me; never stop fighting. And I never will. The battle has just begun.

- Jerry Yang,  CEO, Hasta la Vista, Baby!

 Will Yahoo! (er, I mean Hasta la Vista, Baby!) survive the takeover attempt by Carl Icahn and Microsoft? Can Jerry Yang forestall Judgement Day?

Oh my God. I’m back. I’m home. All the time, it was… We finally really did it.
[screaming]
You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!

 
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Are you IMing and are trying to convey what you are feeling, but your feelings are too complex for just a simple smiley or frowney face Emoticon? Well Demoticons are your answer! Demoticons are for those mixed states where you really are not sure how you are feeling. Some Demoticons are:

• ;-\ Wanting to get back together with your abusive ex, but knowing you shouldn’t feel that way demoticon.
• >:| Disagreeing with a co-worker, but not wanting to say anything to “rock the boat” demoticon.
• /:> Attracted to a co-worker while discussing business matters. And she’s your boss demoticon.
• :-[ Silently judging you demoticon.
• >: ) Looking both pleased and angry, similar to a sarcastic expression, but with more heat demoticon.
• >: ( Making a business presentation, but really needing to take a dump in the middle of it demoticon.

More Demoticons are being created everyday, and some say that a new pictorial language is being developed from the introduction of Emoticons, and now Demoticons. There are even differences in how different nations do emoticons such as the Japanese smiley (done upright, so that you don’t have to tilt your head to the left to read it): (^_^). Demoticons for the Japanese are also being developed for mixed states. The equivalent one for “Giving a presentation, but really needing to make a brown baby is: (*´_`*) being “Both pleased and angry, similar to a sarcastic expression, but with more heat” would be  o(>_< )o and stoned, of course, is (0_0).

Please submit any Demoticons you come up with and we will consider them for a new posting! Yay!

Friday Fishwrap: What we like on the web. This animation on Social Networking sites highlights what is fucking retarded silly about the whole Social Networking thang. It’s funny. Czechit: