McDonalds

The 404 988: Where do you guys know how to post videos to Facebook? (podcast)

Great news for our live listeners--the stream is back! Please bear with the short delay that allows the stream to buffer.

We'll keep working on it, and in the meantime we put together a great show for you today with fun stories about a dummy politician citing an article from The Onion, the pitfalls of online dating, prototype headphones with built-in proximity sensors, and a conceptual McDonald's ad campaign that uses seedbombs!… Read more

The 404 980: Where it breaks my heart to see her eat those nuggets (podcast)

McDonald's posted impressive quarterly earnings two days ago, but a scoop from the UK Sun newspaper today exposes the astonishing truth behind McDonald's Chicken McNuggets: you shouldn't eat them everyday for 15 years straight.

The show title today is ripped from a quote from the mother of 17-year-old UK factory worker Stacey Irvine, who's eaten nothing but McDonald's Chicken McNuggets since she was 2 years old. Shockingly, doctors maintain that her diet may have been a factor in her sudden anemia and swollen tongue veins that caused her to collapse yesterday.

Speaking of things getting ripped off, we'll also talk about the Australian Transport Minister that just got caught copying Michael Douglas' speech from the movie "The American President," and the NFL installing computers on the sidelines of the Pro Bowl for players to tweet fans during the game!… Read more

The 404 935: Where vampire power sucks (podcast)

Still don't have a Halloween costume? Check out Superpunch's list of downloadable masks--just print and cut them out, add a string or a Popsicle stick if you're extra lazy, and off you go. Happy Halloween!

Vampire power, also known as standby power, is a reference to some electronics sucking up juice even when they're turned off, but it also works for our ongoing Halloween show title theme! Check out this article on the Learning Thermostat to see what Nest Labs is doing to kill vampire power.

The iPhone Dev-Team is already close to finishing a preliminary jailbreak on the iPhone 4S that will eventually work with the iPad 2 as well, but what happened to good old analog piracy? As it happens, Activision Blizzard is knee-deep in pirates already circulating bootleg copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.… Read more

Mac vs. PC via McDonald's Wi-Fi guide

In an effort to help customers troubleshoot Wi-Fi connections, McDonald's has painted a stark portrayal of the difference between the Windows and Mac experience.

This Twitpic post is a prickly reminder of the ghosts of Windows past. In the photo (below), McDonald's makes a valiant effort to help hapless owners of laptops running Windows Vista or XP make a Wi-Fi connection in its restaurants. Inadvertently, the photo--based, apparently, on a dated McDonald's pamphlet--also makes a statement on the complexity of Windows versus Apple's Mac.

As is immediately apparent, the pamphlet shows the connection to a Mac … Read more

Secret Service nabs Apple Store spy camera artist

Steve Jobs believes in art.

But there seem to have been some at Apple who are slightly less inclined toward it after discovering that an artist had installed software on around 100 Apple Store computers.

The software was set up simply to capture shots of people's faces every minute as they stared into the laptops of their dreams. As 25-year-old Brooklyn artist Kyle McDonald explained to Mashable, we all have very particular expressions when we are in the throes of Mac hypnosis.

"I thought maybe we could see ourselves doing this we would think more about our computers … Read more

The 404 851: Where some things even Justin Timberlake can't bring back (podcast)

We're taking a three-day weekend to celebrate Independence Day, which means that tomorrow we'll make our annual walk-of-shame to McDonald's for breakfast. So it's only appropriate that today we talk about a Consumer Reports survey that confirms McDonald's as the worst beef-on-a-bun you can buy.

Wilson insists on waiting until tomorrow for the return of Tang That Tune, so today's stories include Justin Timberlake investing in the return of MySpace, a TIL about the etymology of popular software company names, and the long-awaited review of the HP TouchPad tablet.

The 404 Digest for Episode 851

Justin Timberlake wants to bring Sexyback to Myspace. TIL how Apple, Google, Intel, Microsoft etc. got their names. "Science" confirms In-n-Out Burger is the best...guess which is the worst!

Episode 851 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

An ingenious way to control a billboard with your iPhone

Though advertising is largely dead, sometimes people come up with wonderfully inventive things that make you stand and smile. Often, those people are in Sweden.

Here is just one wonderful example. It is for McDonald's. The bright minds behind this thought it would be, as the narrator of the video says, "extra fun" to have people stand around in a nice square, whip out their iPhones and play digital Pong on a large billboard.

If you managed to last 30 seconds without being defeated, you would get a coupon for something delicious at Ronald's house.

Particularly … Read more

McDonald's hires 7,000 touch-screen cashiers

"Welcome to McDonald's. My name is HAL 9000. May I take your order?"

McDonalds recently went on a hiring binge in the U.S., adding 62,000 employees to its roster. The hiring picture doesn't look quite so rosy for Europe, where the fast food chain is drafting 7,000 touch-screen kiosks to handle cashiering duties.

The move is designed to boost efficiency and make ordering more convenient for customers. In an interview with the Financial Times, McDonald's Europe President Steve Easterbrook notes that the new system will also open up a goldmine of data. McDonald's could potentially track every Big Mac, McNugget, and large shake you order. A calorie account tally at the end of the year could be a real shocker.

The touch screens will only accept debit or credit cards, adding to the slow death knell of cash and coins. This all goes along with an overall revamp of McDonald's restaurants worldwide aimed at projecting a modern image as opposed to the old-fashioned golden arches with a slightly creepy (to my taste anyway) clown guy hanging around the french fries.

This puts McDonald's one step closer to opening up its first Alphaville location. At least our new computer overlords will be nice enough to serve us a Filet-o-Fish. Maybe they'll even throw in an iPad with the Happy Meal one of these days.… Read more

The 404 822: Where there's too many chefs in the kitchen (podcast)

The Internet can be a breeding ground for bad ideas, and today's show highlights a few of them, like naming your kid after a Facebook button, making a fatal planking error, and replacing McDonald's cashiers with robots. There's good news today too, though--Seth MacFarlane just got the green light to reboot "The Flintstones."

The 404 Digest for Episode 822

Israeli couple names their kid "Like." Australian man planks to death...this is probably the Internet's fault. McDonald's in Europe to replace cashiers with touch-screen terminals. "The Flintstones" getting a reboot by Seth MacFarlane.

Episode 822 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more