yooRyoo.com

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.

San Francisco – One of the most highly anticipated social media/web 2.0 conferences of the year ended much earlier than expected today due to poor planning on the organizers. What was hailed as the “must attend event of the year,” the Social Web Extravaganza Business Expo (SWEBE) was forced to shut down three days early due to lack of access to a cell phone or wireless signal, and no usable power outlets.

“Look, we warned attendees well in advance,” said event organizer F.T. Bailey, “it’s even part of the byline of the event – ‘Prepared to be charged and connected’…look at the sign!” Mr. Bailey added, pointing to a banner in an empty auditorium.

Almost immediately, problems began to surface when excited seminar attendees were routed to the concrete basement of the hotel. Cell phone signals were immediately lost, causing audible groans to rise from the auditorium.

Then, things took a turn for the worst when it was discovered that absolutely no wireless signal was available throughout the entire building: “Our apologies,” stated a recorded message that repeated over the loudspeakers, “in an effort to curtail costs, internet connectivity is currently not available. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

To add insult to injury, it was soon discovered that only one power outlet was available throughout the entire conference area, and it wasn’t compatible with any known electronic plug. One attendee took this picture on his iPhone, just before the device lost battery power:

When reached for comments, agitated attendees were quick to weigh in on their concerns:

“No wifi, no cell phone coverage, no power…c’mon, it only took two hours before my Android phone shut off – this is unacceptable, and not worth the $250 price admission!”

“I couldn’t get on Twitter for more than 45 minutes…how are my peeps going to know how horrible the event was? I need to find an outlet quick, so I could Tweet this travesty!”

Event organizers, after making a variety of excuses, quickly ducked out a side-door, presumably to recharge, reconnect, and write “plausible deniability” posts on their blogs.

Had a late night argument with your lady friend? Girlfriend driving you nuts with her jealousy and angry texts? Is she ready to “commit” while you are planning your exit strategy? Or just can’t find your “perfect mate” on eHarmony or Match.com? No problem…

Introducing “iGrrlfrend” – a virtual girlfriend simulator that does exactly what you want, when you want it, at an affordable monthly subscription rate.

After subscribing to iGrrlfrend, users are directed to a dashboard, where they can begin crafting their own unique virtual girlfriend. Using the patented Dungeons & Dragons rating model, the iGrrlfrend Setup Wizard launches, allowing you to craft the “perfect” features (n a scale of 1 to 18) for your virtual girlfriend, including:

• Hair color
• Intelligence
• Humor
• Mood Swings
• Measurements
• Dexterity (if you know what I mean)
• Rhythm (if you know what I mean)
• Sex Appeal (if you know…er, never mind)

For those users that would rather bypass the Setup Wizard, they could select from the following templates:

• Angelina Jolie
• Marisa Miller
• Scarlett Johansen
• Jessica Alba
• Roseanne Barr

Then, using the OpenID engine, iGrrlfrend scrolls and scrapes through your existing social networks and online identies, and pulls in relevant information about you – your hobbies, pictures of you and your friends, musical tastes, etc.

Within five business days, your iGrrlfrend‘s identity is created, and she will automatically “friend” you on Facebook, change your relationship status, and upload PhotoShopped pictures of you and her together – at bars and on “romantic getaways” to exotic locales like Milpitas, CA.

If opting in to the “Platinum” level, online avatars will also be created, “marrying” you on SecondLife and fighting beside you as a Mage Level 45 on World of Warcraft.

Other advanced features of iGrrlfrend will allow you to receive text messages, stating “Where the hell R U at – come home now!” or Twitter messages stating: “My friends saw you talking with that girl – who is she? Call me now!”

Plans are in the works to create an alternate iBoifrend – where female users can select from a bevvy of nerdy, overweight men that are actually real and desperate to make human contact in any form. The cost to enroll in iBoifrend are – obviously – much cheaper.

Once again, we here at yooRyoo – who typically enjoy making fun of web 2.0 technologies – have stumbled across a news report that just begs believability:

The US Army Intelligence report has decidedly put Twitter on terror-alert, indicating that terrorist networks could be using this tool for malicious purposes!!! A quote from the report states:

Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences.

Socialists, vegetarians and atheists – oh my! Remembering the 140 character limitation of Twitter posts, these horrible agencies would be forced to not only be succinct, but imagine having to manage all of the “follows” and “removes”…it boggles the imagination. I wonder if Jihadists get annoyed by that horrible “fail whale” image (follow the fail whale at: http://twitter.com/failwhale)…

Again, we can’t make this one up – it’s actually true!

Google new feed on “Twitter for Terrorists”

Happy Sunday – the weekend is almost over. But before you head back to work, make sure to vote on today’s Is It Real? contender.

For those of you new to Is It Real?, it’s a simple concept: we provide a company name and description, and your job – if you choose to accept it – is to vote on if you think it is a real company or not. We tally your votes all week long, and reveal the real answer on Friday.

One caveat – you cannot use the internet in anyway to help guess your answer. Ready? Then let’s get started:

Today’s company is called MyGlu – a web 2.0 open-source API that allows users to begin threading together information from a variety of social network sites, and presents it in a single dashboard-like interface. Taken from the website directly, here is a brief description of their services:

No two social networks are alike. Taking this into account, MyGlu is designed to aggregate key information from all these sites, and give users an easy-interface to share and update data.

With already existing APIs for MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Friend-Feed and Spokeo (to name a few), MyGlu is a much-needed application is the clouded web 2.0 space.

So friends, we must ask – Is MyGlu Real?

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Fans of “Is It Real?” might have noticed a recent trend where most of our “Is It Real?” features are indeed real. That is not only a testament to the wide-breadth of companies on our Web 2.0 world, it also speaks to the strangeness of it all. In fact, a recent set of Google searches has revealed a number of the satirical companies that we created actually do exist!

To that end, today we are featuring a few of those companies. No polls this week – but be sure to tune in next Sunday for a brand new version of “Is It Real?“…

yooRyoo created company #1: Triangle Hero

Introduced on June 12, Triangle Hero was a parody of Guitar Hero, but with a less-sexy instrument. Designed to teach players how to patiently wait through 138 bars of rest in symphonic pieces before playing your triangle controller, we thought it was a smarmy commentary on those crazy instrument games. Well we weren’t the only ones…

The Cartoon Network started featuring this commercial for a suspiciously similar game…

yooRyoo created company #2: Toot and Toot 2.0

Created as a rip on Twitter, Toot (and Toot 2.0 – now available for the iPhone 3G!) is a faux company designed to provide your health updates to subscribed friends through a micro-blogging service. Now you can Toot all day long, and no one will be the wiser!

Did you know there’s a real Toot company? We didn’t either…here’s a description of their services:

Toot! is software for making rich résumés and portfolios.

A rich résumé includes examples of your work. It exchanges the dry chronology of dates, companies, job titles and duties for an enriched résumé with actual pieces of your work that prove you know your stuff. Those pieces can be presentations, reports, plans, lesson plans, budgets, schematics, art, music, dance — anything you can render in digital form.

A portfolio is a trove of your work, collected over time with reflections about each piece. With Toot!, you can keep an on-going record of your life, including artifacts from all its aspects — work, education, hobbies, family, vacations, etc. When it comes time to create a résumé for a specific opening, you can select those pieces from your portfolio that best exemplify your qualifications for the position.

yooRyoo created company #3: iClock

With Web 2.0 parody, Apple’s “i” series (iPod, iTouch, iPhone, etc.) is an easy target. yooRyoo imagined a time (hah!) when Steve jobs would create a clock where he could control – and enhance – the time-tracking experience.

However, there really is an iClock application. Here’s a review:

iClock‘s simple, intuitive interface never lets me down. With a quick glance at the pull-down menu, I can see what time it is where I am….where I’m going…and where I’ve been. With another click, I can check the weather at my next destination. Its so much more than a digital timepiece for the Mac.

yooRyoo created company #4: the gPhone

In a clever twist to combat the popularity of the gPhone, yooRyoo introduced on July 22nd, our “open-source” version of a Google-created phone, called the gPhone. Ultimately, the gPhone is designed to do one thing really well – make phone calls! In addition, we added a feature called “I’m feeling lucky” which randomly calls people – it’s like the Web 2.0 version of drunk-dialing.

Since we debuted this clever satire piece, many people have started calling Google’s upcoming Android phone the “gPhone” (yes, Google is really creating a smart phone). We’ll take credit for where credit is due. Here are a few gPhone links:

• gPhone Finally Coming. About Time (published Aug 14th)
• iPhone and gPhone shakes up wireless world (published Aug 21)
• New g-Phone semi-revealed? (published Aug 26th)

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It’s clear that since we launched yooRyoo in mid-June, we’ve already had an impact on how technology is evolving. Stay tuned for more “OMG – It IS real!!” features in the future. Have a great rest of the weekend.

Happy Friday – it’s time for the Friday Fishwrap. Before our video, here are the results of last Sunday’s “Is It Real?” poll. We asked if the FaceBook group “I Tend to Fart in Public” is real…I mean, I know there are crazy FaceBook groups, but can this one actually exist?

• 67% of you thought it was indeed real (I worry about you people)
• 33% thought it was fake (like none of you have ever farted in public…)

The answer? “I Tend to Fart in Public” is indeed real! For those of you with FaceBook profiles, here’s the link (yes, it’s a private group – I wonder why). Tune in this Sunday for our next installment of “Is It Real?”

Until then, we leave you this Friday with a great, viral clip that features a well-known WWII figure struggling with his Twitter posts – enjoy!

Idea submitted by Dave Moore

Do you have too many Facebook buddies and MySpace friends? Still clinging to the hope that people will sign up for Bebo? Don’t have time to keep up with the comments, wall posts and messages? Now you can spend time in SecondLife and not worry about keeping up with all your online friends.

From the makers of Furbies comes MyBot - a cute and cuddly stuffed toy with a USB2 connection that can easily integrate into all major social networking sites.

By using patented chat-room-webcam-girl technology (all rights reserved) that can be specially tuned to your needs via semantic search algorithms, MyBot will quickly compile an internal database of all your online personal preferences. Then, turn MyBot on, and it will automatically start accepting and/or rejecting friend requests, Twitter followers, respond to wall posts and comment in a tone determined by your current online mood or status (yes, it uses Toot!).

Plus, your My Bot device will occasionally make cute noises and purrs, just to remind you it’s still working!

For only $19.99 per month, a subscription to MyBot Pro extends to IM and email applications, with a simple API for gmail, MS Outlook, MSN, Jabber and others. Get your MyBot to answer all your emails for you. This service uses an intelligent search capability which learns from any previous email exchanges (similar to Xobni) to automatically generate responses in your personal conversational style to anyone on your MyBot list. Add your casual acquaintances, irritating work colleagues, your boss or even your mom – they’ll never suspect a thing!!!

It’s time for the weekly installment of Is It Real? - where a Web 2.0 company or technology is presented, along with a brief description of what the product actually does and then we ask the yooRyoo readers: is it a real company or not? Here’s the catch – you can’t use the web in anyway to help you with your guess!

We’ll run the poll all week, and provide the answer next Friday. Think you’re up to the challenge? Let’s go:

Imagine this scenario: you got your Twitter account and found two dozen people to follow (and maybe half of those follow you), but you really don’t feel popular enough. But, some of the people you are following have hundreds – thousands – of people they follow. Surely there’s a reason for their popularity. So, how do you get as popular on Twitter?

No problem – Twannabe is here! Twannabe allows you to enter in the name of one of your “Twitter Heroes” and it automatically determines which of those thousands of contacts you should be following!!! Simply add those contacts to your “follow” list, and voila – Twitter popularity automated for all of us Twitter poseurs!

Note: this is limited to only 2000 contacts…sorry!

So, Is It Real? fans, it’s time to ask: Is Twannabe Real? Vote below!

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In a rush to release a new iPhone application through Apple’s iTunes store, Toot 2.0 has just been released for the new 3G platform.

Toot is a microblogging technology that allows connectivity to your online friends similar to Twitter. Using bio-tech implants, Toot allows you to automatically update your health status on the fly! Through wireless connectivity, Toot implants convey your biometric information status to a website console that integrates with all social software platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, WhoIsI). Imagine conveying your health status in 140 characters or less – what a breakthrough!!!

Now available for the iPhone, Toot 2.0 is already gaining a wide acceptance with users:

• “I waited in line two hours at the Apple store for my iPhone, had to wait another 45 for AT&T to run a background check and initiate my cell phone account…now I can’t wait to get home and Toot on my iPhone!” said one Apple zealot.
• Another user wrote: “I have been Tooting all day and all night since I got my new iPhone. It feels great – but I wonder if there is some way I could wash off my phone – it’s beginning to smell.”

Forget Twitter, forget FriendFeed, forget Google Talk – it’s time to Toot 2.0 on your iPhone!

Information regarding Toot1.0 can be found -> here.