Last week, McDonald's initiated a Twitter campaign aimed at encouraging people to share their McDonald's stories on Twitter using the hashtag #McDStories. The campaign featured a promoted tweet linking to a video (see above) of a potato farmer, which was intended to encourage people to share happy tales from the Land of Mickey D's. What could possibly go wrong?
Suffice to say that the campaign backfired horribly, with the #McDStories hashtag being quickly hijacked as a public forum for airing all grievances McDonald's related. Find out more about what went wrong here and here, and check out what McDonald's social media director had to say about the whole debacle.
Noel Gallagher, formerly of the British mega band Oasis, always struck me as a songwriter of the old guard, one of those guys who strives to capture in song something both universal and intangible. I read somewhere last year where Gallagher said one of the things he dislikes most about the digital music marketplace is the ability it gives people to listen to tracks outside of the artist's intended order of play. He said that the best artists put a lot of time and thought into ordering the tracks on an album so as to create an ebb and flow that takes you on a musical journey of sorts.
To that end, Gallagher has taken a unique approach to the release of the first three singles off his solo debut album, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. The video for each song tells a short story. When viewed together in succession, the plots of the three videos interweave to form a larger narrative in a style not entirely dissimilar to a Quentin Tarantino film. Even the cinematography is reminiscent of Tarantino, switching visual styles from story to story but always with plenty of eye-candy to keep your interest.
For the three of you who will actually take the time to watch the 19-minute video above (that's like 2 hours in Internet time), you're in for a real treat. They don't make 'em like this very often.
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Unless you've been avoiding the Internet today, you probably already know that Wikipedia, The Oatmeal, Google, and many others have made public protests against SOPA/PIPA, a nasty little piece of legislation which promises to curb online piracy while secretly undermining the pillars of our beloved InterWebs and a tiny little thing called due process.
What would a world without the Internet look like? Leave it to "South Park" to help us imagine. Kind of ironic, because [enter movie trailer voiceover guy] "In a world ruled by SOPA…" the website you are reading right now could be shut down for posting the video above.
Today on WSAV Tech Tuesday, we talk about AutoMD, a website that can help you decide if your time and money are better spent doing auto repairs and maintenance yourself or paying a mechanic to do them. The site also features an extensive how-to section and can facilitate quotes from multiple local auto service shops.
On a recent Tech Tuesday we talked about about the hot new visual bookmarking tool, Pinterest. If you've been wondering how a brand might use such a tool then you're in luck. Pinterest has given Mashable a list of the the brands it believes are using Pinterest in the true spirit of the Pinterest community. Check out the Mashable article for Pinterest's rationale or jump directly to each brand's Pinterest page (linked below) and have a look for yourself.
Here's a quick list of cool/interesting things I found this week while going Lewis and Clark on the Internet. Enjoy!
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If you dig snarky humor, this one's for you. My favorite line: "Maybe she's born with it. Nah, I'm pretty sure it's Fotoshop."
Thanks, AdVerve!
What information consumes is rather obvious. It consumes the attenton of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. - Herbert Simon, 1978 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics
The clip above, from the IFC television show Portlandia, lampoons a scenario that (at least in my world) is becoming all too real. If everyone and everything is a content producer now (and they are—just look at your Facebook and Twitter timelines and you'll see video games and streaming music services making updates on your behalf), then the coming Information Apocalypse is being ushered in with open arms.
How then can one take shelter from (and make sense of) the daily barrage on our attention spans? Well, beyond learning to say "no" every now and then, LifeHacker gives us these five steps for boosting your reading comprehension.
My favorite piece of advice: Stop following people and reading things only because you feel like you should rather than you want to. [paraphrased] Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some social media and RSS Spring cleaning to do.
Once the world is overrun with undead freaks, the key to your survival might depend on knowing how to do the following things:
The perfect house for surviving the zombie apocalypse is for sale. Includes private airfield, subterranean bunker and missile silo.
This one’s for real and it can be yours pre-apocalypse for a paltry $1.75 million, or post-apocalypse by excessive force.
Nice find, Celby!
It’s hard enough to keep up with lock keys and combinations in a pre-apocalyptic world, so you can only imagine how impossible finding those things might be post zombie apocalypse. This video shows us how to open common padlocks with aluminum from a soda can.
Never, ever waste ammunition opening a lock if it can be avoided. If you haven’t yet found bolt cutters, this is one skill that could come in handy.
Once the grid goes down, there’s no telling what tools we take for granted on a daily basis will no longer be at our disposal. That’s why it’s always a good idea to know a workaround.
Also comes in handy when being chased by a pack of hungry zombies. (And they’re always hungry.)
Zombies, Run!, coming in 2012, transforms your daily runs into training for the zombie apocalypse.
The Zombie Bottle. Contains the following items: one 6-inch steel de-braining spike, two anti-moaning earplugs, one emergency bite cleansing kit (I’m not sure what good that will do), two bite-sealing bandages (see previous comment), one chocolate candy bar, broken bottle doubles as a weapon.
Via Geekologie.
The Crovel gets my vote for the ultimate zombie apocalypse survival tool. For $85, you get an all-in-one tool that combines the following items: shovel, crowbar, pry-bar and nail remover, axe, hoe, hammer, serrated knife, cleaver, saw, machete, can opener, grappling hook, and chair.
They forgot to add skull smasher. If this thing can’t save your butt in a pinch, I don’t know what can.
I have my doubts as to whether or not I would trust having nothing but the Vagabond Mobile Safe House between me and a mob of hungry zombies (are there any other kind?), but nonetheless it’s a cool concept.