McDonald's Twitter Campaign Goes Horribly ... - Business Insider

A twitter campaign by McDonald's backfired when people started sharing the wrong kind of #McDStories (via @bored2tears).

McDonald's kicked things off on Thursday with the hashtag #MeetTheFarmers, in a campaign meant to draw attention to the brand's guarantee of fresh produce.

Later in the day, however, the burger company used a dangerously vague hashtag: "When u make something w/ pride, people can taste it," McD potato supplier #McDstories

People took this hashtag and started talking trash. The Daily Mail gathered some of the best:

UPDATE: Here's an emailed statement from McDonald's social media director Rick Wion:

Last Thursday, we planned to use two different hashtags during a promoted trend ? #meetthefarmers and #mcdstories.

While #meetthefarmers was used for the majority of the day and successful in raising awareness of the Supplier Stories campaign, #mcdstories did not go as planned. We quickly pulled #mcdstories and it was promoted for less than two hours.

Within an hour of pulling #McDStories the number of conversations about it fell off from a peak of 1600 to a few dozen. It is also important to keep those numbers in perspective. There were 72,788 mentions of McDonald's overall that day so the traction of #McDStories was a tiny percentage (2%) of that.

With all social media campaigns, we include contingency plans should the conversation not go as planned. The ability to change midstream helped this small blip from becoming something larger.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-twitter-campaign-goes-horribly-wrong-mcdstories-2012-1

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VOLNAISKRA: 5 of my favourite gaming apps

PC gaming is pretty much as male as hobbies get. As the most graphically advanced and customisable gaming platform,?it combines three of the cornerstones of being a man:

1. our primal need to seek out and experience beautiful things
2. our never-ending fascination with watching stuff blow up
3. our compulsive desire to tinker.?

There's a special sort of satisfaction in playing a great game and knowing that the experience is even better than what came out of the box, because you took the time to customise it.....by fiddling with driver or .ini settings, installing mods, and/or upgrading your system in some way. The following 5 tinkerable utilities all help you get the most out of your games.


1. ? ?DXTORY?

What it does:?lets you limit your FPS to whatever you want

Dxtory is a fully-featured app that lets you take screenshots and videos of your games. It excels at this, offering more robust options than the popular Fraps. But what I love most about it is its FPS-limiter feature.

There's a myth circulating the internet that claims that humans can't see over 30 frames per second - one which has gained significant popularity among the gullible and the half-blind. But if you're neither of these, you've no doubt noticed with your own eyes that?framerates in most games tends to fluctuate a lot, which can be very noticeable and distracting (even if the overall frame rate is high and it's fluctuating between, say, 60 fps and 50fps).

Our eyes are designed to detect?aberration. If you look at a 1920x1080 screen that is all white except for a single black pixel, you'll have no problem finding that one black pixel, even though it's outnumbered by the white pixels?2,073,599 to 1. Similarly, while your peripheral vision is useless at making out the fine detail in things, it remains excellent at detecting movement. Because noticing change is what our eyes are best at.

The downside of this is that?our eyes are very good at noticing variations in the frames-per-second of games, which can be distracting and impede immersion. Some higher-end games combat this by introducing motion blur, though even that only partially alleviates the problem.?The only real solution is to try and force a constant framerate, which is where Dxtory comes in.

Among its many features, Dxtory lets you set a framerate cap for your games, on a per-profile basis. So you can set different framerate caps for different games, and dxtory will remember them and faithfully apply the right profile when you load them up. In other words, it's basically set-and-forget.

For example, I use a limit of 47 for Batman: Arkham City, which?used to fluctuate between 45 and 60 fps. 47 is still pretty decent, and now that the fps barely ever fluctuates, the overall experience feels smoother than ever.

The full version of Dxtory is a little pricey, but the free version is perfectly useable if you're just using it for FPS-limiting or screenshots, with only some minor annoyances placed in your way (you need to wait 10 seconds to launch, and it loads up a webpage when you quit).

2. ? ?EVGA Precision

What it does: overclocking for dummies

Download it?here.?(note: you?don't?need an EVGA brand graphics card for it to work)? Graphics cards are built conservatively, and usually have significantly more grunt in them than what the factory settings expose. To really squeeze the maximum juice from your card, you have to enter the crazy world of water-cooling systems, voltage increases and painstaking stress-testing. But for the rest of us, a simple program like EVGA Precision can provide a modest framerate increase without much hassle or risk.

Now, when it comes to overclocking, I'm strictly a layman, so if you want to do anything more than the conservative tweak I recommend here, you'll want to find a proper overclocking guide somewhere else. If you go overboard or fiddle with things you're not meant to, you can easily?damage to your machine. A gentle overclock, however, is a pretty safe and worthwhile thing to do. Please note though that even the slightest overclock will proably void your warranty and could decrease the life of your graphics card. Proceed only if these things don't concern you.

There are plenty of overclocking programs out there, though I like EVGA Precision for its simplicity. Once you load it up, it will show you your graphic card's current settings. Unless you've overclocked before or you own a factory-overclocked graphics card, these will be the defaults (to confirm what the defaults of your cards are, check the official specifications of your card on the manufacturer's website).

As a rule of thumb, increasing the core clock (aka graphics clock) and shader clock (aka processor clock) by 10% is considered quite safe. For example, a?GTX580's defaults are 772 MHz and 1544 MHz respectively, so increasing them to about 850 and 1700 should be fine. You can also slightly increase the memory clock, although this will likely have less of an impact on your gaming experience. Once you have changed your settings, check the "apply at windows startup" box and you're done. If you notice your games crashing or any weird visual artifacts (unlikely but possible), then lessen or undo these changes. Otherwise, just let EVGA Precision run in the background and do its thing.

A conservative overclock of 10% will likely give you an increase of 3-5 frames per second in most games. If this doesn't sound like much, it's because it isn't. But hey, it's essentially 'free', and takes 2 minutes to set up. The next time you're juggling a game's graphics settings to try and find the best balance between good visuals and a playable framerate, this bonus 3-5 fps will be very welcome.

3. ? ?xmouse

What it does:?makes your extra mouse buttons work in all games

Xmouse is a little program that runs in the background that you can use to map different keys or functions to different mouse buttons. Useful if you have extra buttons on your mouse that a game doesn't recognise.

It supports multiple profiles, so you can use different configurations for different games. Though personally, I just globally map my two extra mouse buttons to the F and V keys. Then, whenever I first load up a game, I just go to the control settings and make sure that F and V are mapped to something that I want quick access to?(eg. melee attack, throw grenade, use binoculars, etc).

Xmouse is useful beyond gaming too. For example, I've set it up to make tilting my scrollwheel left and right activate "back" and "forward" in my web browsers and windows explorer, which speeds up my navigation speed significantly.

4. ? ?Steam Mover

What it does: Lets you split your Steam games library across different drives

Between auto-patching, crazy sales, and creating a thriving environment for indie developers, Steam has created a better world for PC gamers. Though it has several drawbacks too, one of which is that all your Steam games need to be on the same hard drive. Most of the time that's ok, but it can be annoying if your main hard drive is filling up while another just sits there with plenty of unused space on it. Or if you've bought a super-fast SSD, and wouldn't mind shifting a couple of games onto it - such as ones that have long load times, stuttering issues and/or cause you to die and reload a lot.

The only way I know of to split up your Steam games across more than one hard drives is to 'trick' Steam by moving your game folder from, say, drive C to drive D, but creating a 'link' between the two locations so that Steam thinks the game is still on drive C. This is fairly straightforward and can be done with some simple cmd.exe commands. But easier still is to simply use Steam Mover, which automates the process and lets you move games back and forth with a single click.5. ? ?SMAA Injector

What it does: adds anti-aliasing to games that don't normally support it

This wondrous little thing lets you add anti-aliasing to games even when trying to force AA via your graphics card drivers doesn't do anything. It doesn't smooth all edges perfectly, but it gets most of them, and comes at a surprisingly low performance cost. It even lets you toggle the effect on and off in real-time to see the difference.

Once you download the files, installation is easy, but be aware of a few things:

• You'll need to copy either the DX9 files or the DX10 files into the game folder; if you don't know whether your game is DX9 or DX10, just try each and see what works (try DX9 first; it's more common)
• If you experience an overly bright screen when using this in a Steam game, open up?injector.ini in notepad, and set "weird_steam_hack" to 1.?
• injector.ini also lets you select which key you want to use for toggling the effect on and off, though the author hasn't explained which keycodes correspond to which keys. This page should help you.

Source: http://www.volnaiskra.com/2012/01/5-of-my-favourite-gaming-apps.html

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2 more cruise bodies found, oil pumping to begin (AP)

ROME ? Salvage experts can begin pumping fuel from a capsized cruise ship as early as Tuesday to avert a possible environmental catastrophe and the ship is stable enough that search efforts for the missing can continue, Italian officials said.

The decision to carry out both operations in tandem was made after instrument readings determined that the Costa Concordia was not at risk of sliding into deeper waters, Franco Gabrielli, chief of the national civil protection agency, told reporters Monday on the island of Giglio.

"The ship is stable. ... There is no problem or danger that it is about to drop onto much lower seabed," Gabrielli said.

The Concordia rammed a reef Jan. 13 on the tiny Tuscan island and capsized a few hours later just outside Giglio's port as it carried 4,200 passengers and crew on a Mediterranean cruise.

Taking advantage of calm seas, divers on Monday found the bodies of two women near the ship's Internet cafe, raising to 15 the number of confirmed dead.

There are 17 people still unaccounted for, but Gabrielli has said an unregistered Hungarian woman might have been aboard ship. The woman's relatives have told Italian authorities they haven't heard from her since she called them to say she was aboard the ship.

The ship's Italian captain, Francesco Schettino is under house arrest near Naples as prosecutor's investigate him for suspected manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his vessel while some passengers and crew were still aboard. He has insisted that he was coordinating rescue operations from a lifeboat and then from shore.

Costa Crociere SpA has distanced itself from the captain, contending that he made an unauthorized deviation from the programmed route. Schettino has reportedly told investigators that Costa officials had requested that he sail close to Giglio in a publicity move.

Schettino's lawyer, Bruno Leporatti, told reporters Monday that tests on urine and hair samples found that his client had not been under the influence of alcohol or drugs before the crash. Prosecutors could not confirm the report, since they cannot speak about the investigation while it is still under way.

Despite earlier fears, officials said the crippled cruise ship, with a 70-meter (230-foot) long gash in its hull, is not expected to roll off its rocky seabed perch and be completely swallowed by the sea.

An Italian geologist, on Giglio to monitor the Concordia, told Sky TG24 Monday the ship was barely moving.

"It is moving at the rate of about one or two millimeters an hour," said Nicola Casagli, adding the ship has moved up to 3mm an hour when tides come in or out. "The ship responds to the tides."

The sea has been calm for several days but he said waves were expected to grow larger in the next few days.

In all, seven bodies await identification, but Gabrielli said officials have DNA from the relatives of all of the missing passengers and are working to confirm names and nationalities. He said the search would continue "as long as it is possible to inspect whatever can be inspected."

Meanwhile, Italian Admiral Ilarione dell'Anna said the fuel removal could begin as early as Tuesday, addressing growing concern among residents and environmentalists that the heavy, tar-like fuel could leak from the ship's 17 double-bottomed tanks.

"They should start the oil drainage operations on the ship. At this point those who died will not come back to life. Even if they pull them out later, unfortunately it won't make a difference," Andrea Ginanneschi, a resident of Giglio, told The Associated Press.

Dell'Anna predicted it would take 28 days to remove all of the fuel, without any interruptions. Officials said the first tank to be emptied will be one above the waterline.

Eight kilometers (five miles) of oil barriers, including absorbent ones, have been laid in the area to protect marine life and the coast in the pristine waters off Giglio, which are prime fishing grounds and a protected area for dolphins and whales.

Recovery experts from the Dutch salvage company Smit have previously said they will create holes in the top and the bottom of each tank, heating the fuel so it flows more easily and pumping from the top while forcing air in from the bottom. For the underwater tanks, sea water will be used to displace the fuel, which becomes thick and gooey when cooled.

Already, some diesel and lubricants have leaked into the water near the ship, probably from machinery on board. Officials have characterized the contamination as superficial.

"Smit has been ready for a week to begin pumping fuel from the tanks, awaiting only the go- ahead," said a company statement. "For this purpose, SMIT has mobilized an oil tanker with emergency response equipment including sweeping arms, booms and a skimmer."

It said the vessel arrived on Monday.

The company also said Italian authorities have indicated it can begin the removal once a second absorbent boom is in place around the ship. The booms are used "to reduce the possibility of polluting shorelines and to help make recovery easier."

Besides 2,200 metric tons of heavier fuel, there also are 185 metric tons of diesel and lubricants on board in addition to chemicals including cleaning products and chlorine.

__

Barry reported from Milan. Andrea Foa reported from Giglio.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120123/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_italy_cruise_aground

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Gingrich, Romney Ham house standoff fizzles (AP)

GREENVILLE, S.C. ? So just where was the beef?

It turns out that the great ham house standoff had no sizzle, no matter how you sliced it.

GOP presidential rivals Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were expected to cross paths at a campaign stop in Greenville as they rallied voters on primary day. But the much-hyped Republican run-in failed to materialize after Romney showed up at Tommy's Ham House earlier than originally planned.

A sea of "Newt 2012" and "Romney" signs jostled in the packed restaurant.

Romney departed about 20 minutes before Gingrich arrived. When Gingrich walked in he said, "where's Mitt?"

Earlier, Gingrich urged voters to support him if they want to stop Romney from winning the nomination.

Gingrich stopped by The Grapevine restaurant in Boiling Springs not long after the polls opened g. He told diners who were enjoying plates of eggs and grits that he's the "the only practical conservative vote" if Republicans want to slow Romney, described by Gingrich as a Massachusetts moderate.

Gingrich said he would put a stop to federal actions against South Carolina's voter ID and immigration laws.

The former House speaker, who has seen his support rise in the days before the primary, said "polls are good, votes are better."

After disappointing finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, the former House speaker hit his stride as the nation's first Southern primary neared, rallying conservatives behind him as the most viable alternative to the former Massachusetts governor.

Fueled by fiery debate performances and assisted in part by his Southern roots, Gingrich counted on a strong performance Saturday in South Carolina's GOP primary to catapult him back into the top tier of White House hopefuls.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120121/ap_on_el_pr/us_gingrich

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2 sentenced for attack on US Rep. Boswell's farm (AP)

DES MOINES, Iowa ? Two men who pleaded guilty to breaking into U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell's southern Iowa farmhouse armed with a BB gun last summer were sentenced Friday to prison.

A Decatur County judge sentenced David Dewberry, 20, of Fremont, Neb., to 25 years in prison for first-degree robbery. Cody Rollins, 20, of Lamoni, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for aiding and abetting an attempted burglary.

On July 16, Dewberry, armed with a BB gun, forced his way into Boswell's farmhouse, grabbed the congressman's daughter and ordered her to give him money, County Attorney Lisa Jeanes said. As the 78-year-old lawmaker scuffled with Dewberry, Boswell's adult grandson pointed a shotgun at Dewberry, chasing him off. Boswell suffered minor injuries; no one was seriously injured.

Authorities said Dewberry and his family had lived in Iowa before moving to Nebraska. His mother had been friendly with Boswell's wife and Dewberry had been to the Boswell home.

Boswell was not in the courtroom Friday but submitted a statement, in which he addressed Dewberry, saying he was pleased Dewberry decided to do the "honorable thing by pleading guilty to your crime and accepting your punishment after committing the terror that you put our family through that summer night."

"What makes the whole matter more frightful and disgusting to us is that we once welcomed you into our home," the statement read. "Your sinister motives and plan were appalling. It is by God's grace that no one was seriously injured. We hope you realize how lucky you are that you weren't killed that night."

Prosecutors said Rollins helped plan the crime and drove Dewberry to Boswell's home.

"Unfortunately, this is a case where two young men made a really horrible choice, it was a big mistake and now they're going to have to pay the consequences of their actions," Jeanes said. "I am very glad no one was seriously injured."

Telephone messages left Friday for Dewberry's and Rollins' attorneys were not immediately returned.

Boswell's official residence is in Des Moines, where he moved after redistricting in 2000, but he kept his farm, in Leon located about 60 miles south of Des Moines, and visits often

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120121/ap_on_re_us/us_congressman_home_invasion

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Newt Gingrich, Filled With More Excrement Than Your Average Politician (OliverWillisLikeKryptoniteToStupid)

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AP sources: US seeks new home for Yemen strongman (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration is engaged in an intensive effort with Yemen's embattled strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh to find him a new home, preferably not in the United States, U.S. officials say, so that his violence-wracked Arabian homeland can proceed with a transition to democracy.

President Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, is leading the diplomacy, which appears to have gained steam this week when Saleh sought out U.S. Ambassador Gerald Feierstein in the capital, Sanaa, to discuss where he could go. The meeting came shortly after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called out Saleh for not living up to his commitments to leave Yemen and allow elections ending his 34-year dictatorship, the officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.

But Saleh has few options, leaving the U.S. administration in a bind as it tries to find a nation willing to host a wily leader accused of committing gross human rights violations over a year of internal conflict. The 69-year-old leader may have transformed himself from a firm Arab ally of Saddam Hussein into a vital counterterrorism ally of the United States, but even Washington doesn't want to be the one forced to provide him a new home.

The administration's unwillingness reflects, in part, the shifting U.S. foreign policy calculus prompted by the Arab Spring.

Political asylum for Saleh in the United States, or the appearance of preferential treatment from an administration that has championed peaceful and democratic change, would be highly unpopular with Yemeni political groups likely to take part in future governments. It also could anger people across the Arab world fighting to oust corrupt and authoritarian rulers.

Despite agreeing last year to transfer power to his vice president ahead of planned February presidential elections, Saleh is continuing to wield power behind the scenes and frustrate the efforts of Yemen's would-be reformers. Talk from Saleh allies about possibly postponing next month's vote has only further enraged Yemen's opposition. Meanwhile, al-Qaida has taken advantage of the political instability to enlarge its foothold in the country.

Al-Qaida's advance, in particular, has Washington on alert. Brennan and other officials are looking for ways to remove Saleh from Yemen as soon as possible so Yemen's political elites can get back to the business of fighting terrorists instead of each other. Earlier this week al-Qaida's Yemen-based branch seized the town of Radaa, an outpost 100 miles south of the capital and a key gateway to the regional center of Zinjibar, which has been under the terror group's control since last spring.

Without an end to the power vacuum in Yemen, officials fear al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula will be able to raise funds, win recruits and increase the possibility of another international terrorist attack. The group is blamed for trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas 2009 and cargo planes bound for the United States a year later.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing sensitive diplomacy, U.S. officials said Saleh has resubmitted a visa application to enter the United States and that the administration is actively considering his request. Fearful of appearing to harbor an autocrat with blood on his hands, the U.S. has withheld approval for a visa since December when Saleh asked to visit the U.S. to get medical treatment for injuries he sustained in a June assassination attempt.

Officials had demanded assurances that Saleh wouldn't remain in the country. Some said if the U.S. were to let him in now, it would be to stay, though one administration official insisted Washington wasn't involved in any matters related to the permanent relocation of Saleh. They all said no final decision has been made.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates already have rejected Saleh, officials said. They said other possibilities are still out there, but if no country steps forward the United States might be forced to choose between Yemen's future stability and America's own popularity in the Middle East. In that case, the administration likely would let Saleh in, administration officials said.

In Sanaa, an official from Saleh's ruling party said the leader told allies at an internal meeting Friday that he once again wanted to travel abroad for medical treatment. Saleh sought approval for the trip, the official said, describing it as a delaying tactic because the Yemeni president doesn't need party authorization to go abroad.

Demonstrators began protesting against Saleh and calling for his ouster in February. The Yemeni government responded with a bloody crackdown, leaving hundreds of protesters dead and sparking wider violence in the capital with rival militia.

International pressure has mounted for months for Saleh to step aside. A June rocket attack on his compound left him badly burned and wounded, and led Saleh to seek medical treatment in neighboring Saudi Arabia for three months. American officials had hoped he would remain there, but the Yemeni leader returned and violence worsened.

In November, Saleh agreed to a Saudi-backed deal to hand power to his vice president and commit to stepping down completely in exchange for immunity. The deal further angered Saleh's opponents, who demanded he be tried for his attacks on protesters. While he has transferred authority, in principle, to his vice president, he has continued to pull strings in Yemen's government through loyalists and relatives still in positions of power. Many fear he'll continue to rule in practice if he remains in Yemen.

"The instability in Yemen is of great concern, first and foremost to the Yemeni people, but also to the region and to the world," Clinton told reporters this week during a trip to the Ivory Coast.

Saleh has made "agreements with respect to the way forward that have not been fulfilled," she said. "We regret that the president has thus far failed to comply with his own commitments to leave the country, to permit elections to go forward that give the people a chance to be heard and be represented."

Even before Yemen's uprising began, it already was the poorest country in the Arab world, with a weak central government, deep tribal divisions and several separate conflicts.

___

Associated Press writer Ahmed al-Haj in Sanaa contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120120/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_us_yemen

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