The first thing you will notice is that this McDonald's looks less like somewhere you wake up after a three-day bender and more like a weird Hot Topic that also serves chicken nuggets. Writes the AP:

The eatery is outfitted with outlets for plugging in laptops, upholstered vinyl chairs instead of Fiberglas seats bolted to the floor, subdued lighting and employees whose all-black uniforms suggest a hip boutique.

Over here, past walls decorated with "what looks like zebra design but is actually French architect Phillippe Avanzi's magnified thumbprint," we have a woman who is easily impressed:

"It's like a lounge," said Kimberly Burgess, one of many patrons who did a double-take after entering the newly renovated restaurant in Manhattan's Chelsea section. "It's so different from all the other McDonald's. It's beautiful."

We're guessing most of those other double-taking patrons weren't thinking "It's beautiful" but "The fuck happened to this McDonald's?"

Now, if you walk past these "reproductions of Danish designer Arne Jacobsen's chairs," you will notice some unhealthy-looking businessmen on their laptops. This is because, as McDonald's spokeswoman Danya Proud told the AP:

"People are using our restaurants differently today than they did five, 10, 20 years ago. People are multi-tasking, doing more on a given day. ... You want to be able to open your laptop, log on and get some work done while you're eating."

Expect more emails from your boss like this: "John, those invoices need to be on my desk when I get back. -Bob ***SENT FROM MCDONALD'S***"

Yes, the new Chelsea McDonald's is basically the Versailles of fast food restaurants. And McDonald's is spending more than $1 billion to renovate its other restaurants so we can all eat in such splendor. But watch out, McDonald's!

McDonald's is not alone in seeking to update its image. Rival Burger King announced plans last month to overhaul its 12,000 locations with industrial-inspired corrugated metal and brick walls.

It's all about choice: Do you want to eat gross food in Europe, or in a music video from the early nineties?

Trump, known for mispronouncing "h" sounds as "y" sounds and for making up his own net worth based on a magical fantasy formula, has now been whittled down to a 10% stake in his own Atlantic City casinos. Which are bankrupt, btw. For the third time.

And who was formerly on the board of these failed gaming monstrosities, and "involved in the negotiations with creditors"? Ivanka Trump, currently occupied with her full-time battle against the mean business press, which she is waging on Twitter.

Tell us the secrets of your success!
[Pic: Getty]

There was chatter in recent months the bi-coastal Dorsey (pictured) might plant his forthcoming venture in his second home base, New York, or even in his childhood home of St. Louis ("St. Louis will play a very large part in its story," he said of the startup last month).

But we hear Dorsey's been hunting for office space in San Francisco, Twitter's stomping grounds. He's hinted at as much on his Twitter stream: "I think we just found awesome office space," he wrote, just a couple of hours before he was "standing outside the... office" of SF-based Zendesk.

Dorsey's new startup is in "stealth mode." Since that's just Valleyspeak for being coy, we still know plenty about the company: it would enable person-to-person electronic payments via iPhone, MG Siegler wrote in TechCrunch this past spring, and the company has been awaiting regulatory approval, according to the St. Louis Business Journal.



It's a good idea; in fact programmer Max Levchin created the same capability for the Palm Pilot, the iPhone's old ancestor, before he and his co-founders expanded the idea into the financially successful internet-wide payment system PayPal.

So why is Dorsey framing his payments company as a new iteration of his old microblogging startup Twitter, of which he remains chairman? Dorsey told a St. Louis audience his company would have "similar ideas" as Twitter but "in a completely different industry," according to Nick Lucchesi of the Riverfront Times alt weekly. Is Dorsey hinting at additional publishing capabilities no one knows about yet?

More likely, the man who has said he would "never leave Twitter" is just extracting some free hype from a brand that clearly remains his baby, as far as Dorsey is concerned. In this regard, the prototype Twitterer thus remains the quintessential Twitterer: always self promoting.

(Pic by Esther Dyson)

Dot-com address acquisition is a dubious vestige of the first internet boom, when branding reigned supreme over profits and functionality, before entrepreneurs realized people would just look for them on Google. It was also Foursquare's first use of a $1.35 million investment from Fred Wilson's Union Square Ventures and O'Reilly AlphaTech; the software company tells Business Insider it couldn't have switched to foursquare.com from playfoursquare.com without the seed capital.

Investors obviously weren't deterred by the Google theft rumors, either. Some people inside the Googleplex believed Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley launched the iPhone service with code from Dodgeball, which Google bought from him in 2005 and then shut down. Crowley apparently told people at this year's South by Southwest conference the same thing, reasoning that Google wouldn't mind since it wasn't using the code anyway. It seems a safe bet that either Crowley was right or the rumors were wrong, since it's hard to imagine O'Reilly and Union Square Ventures sinking in money if Google were poised to sue.

The incentive to dispose of — or ignore — the issue would have been strong; the iPhone bubble is fast inflating, and your typical venture capitalist hates to be left out of a good hype cycle.

(Pic: Crowley, by See-ming Lee)

In August, Page Six reported that Oxfam, who sent Davis to South Africa to do AIDS relief as an Oxfam Ambassador, severed ties with the acrtress because her work with Ahava. Oxfam is opposed to the company using materials from and manufacturing their products in the disputed Palestinian West Bank region. Now, a tipster tells us, that Ahava hasn't renewed Davis' contract. She's out of both her job and her charitable work!

We tried multiple times to contact both Ahava and Kristin Davis' spokesperson for comment on the story and never heard back from either.

Ahava signed Davis to be their first spokesperson in 2007. The move got them a bunch of press from the likes of Star magazine. She even did a promotional video and photo shoot (pictured) in the Dead Sea in June 2008 to promote the brand. A source told Page Six that, at the time, she didn't know about Oxfam and Ahava's competing agendas. This July, protest group Code Pink launched their Stolen Beauty Campaign, which seems to have brought Davis' conflict of interest to Oxfam's attention.

Back in August, a spokesman for Oxfam told Page Six that, "Both Kristin and Oxfam do not want this issue to detract from the great work we have done in the past and plan to do in the future." Let's hope now that Ahava has gotten rid of her, she can use the increased attention from the Sex and the City sequel to promote for Oxfam instead.

Update: Davis' publicist called us back and confirmed that her contract with Ahava "has expired." She also pointed us toward a statement that Oxfam released after the initial Page Six story saying that the group will continue to work with Davis in the future.

Lottery players across the Golden State will soon delight to see the images of Seal, Michelle Branch, the Go Go Dolls and the band Taking Back Sunday staring up at them as they scratch their kids' lunch money away two dollars at a time. The premium rock star branded tickets will sell for two a shot, compared to the low rent, non-pop star branded single dollar scratchers. Players betting two dollars have a 1 in 3.61 chance of winning a prize, with $10,000 being the maximum Seal fans can hope to walk off with. Increasing the fabulous synergy, 2400 winners will receive music downloads.

California Lottery Director Joan Borucki said in the press release annoucement, ""We are excited to partner with Warner Bros. Records to bring a one-of-a-kind game to our players by combining the fun of winning with the excitement of music. Our players have expressed great interest in music-themed prizes, and this game, coupled with our interactive Web site, will bring a new level of playing to our customers."

After all, a Dylan flourish would make the disc all the more gift-able!

The index is actually "in a sales process... earlier stage," Carney reports. If someone completes a buy of the index, it certainly won't be for its informational value; the Dow was born 113 years ago with just 12 stocks and still has just 30. It's been surpassed by several indexes tracking thousands of stocks, weighted to reflect reflecting the entire market.

No, the Dow's value is in its media ubiquity — in newspaper, television and radio reports, even online, it remains the favored way to summarize market gyrtions. The free branding is of limited use to Murdoch and his also-ran Dow Jones Newswires, and would be worth more to competing financial information services like Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters. But if they buy and rename the index, it will inevitably become less popular. If CNBC or the New York Time is going to have to introduce readers to a new index, why not switch to a high-fidelity one not run by a direct competitor?

So the DJIA might go to a Bloomberg-type company, or just sell for cheap as a free advertising play — "OfficeMax Industrial AverageTM" here we come! But the real competition will be in the scramble to replace the average. S&P 500? Wilshire 5000? Russell 3000? Whatever, so long as business news is just that much more boring.

Not really, no! It has, of course, been tried before. But then the flagrant non-branding itself becomes like a brand, and etc. down the rabbit hole. Still! It's one of those maybe-futile gestures that you have to admire, at least for the sentiment. Assuming it's genuine:

Throughout the years I've become uncomfortable with this business of branding and brand identity. I'm not the type of person that buys something for the brand name. I've also never done a very good job at creating a captivating identity to our own brand logo. Also, within the streetwear culture, the promotion of a company's brand has become downright silly to me.

If this raises the future eBay resale value of my Freshjive shirts I am all for it. In a few years they'll be throwback and not all cookie-cutter like all these robots wearing the "no brand" Freshjive shit.

[Read the full interview, via]

Frank Bruni, former restaurant critic: Bruni already got the chance to talk up his own kiddie bulimia in the NYT mag. Just the beginning! He'll be talking about it on Nightline on August 19. Sample transcript quote:

[Nightline]: You were 8 years old on the Atkins Diet?

Bruni: Yeah… the Atkins Diet came out in hardcover when I was 8, if I have my arithmetic correct. ‘Cause I remember mom bought it in hardcover so this was serious stuff and I remember leafing through it and learning about ketones and ketosis and you know, having no idea what that meant, I was 8 years old, but I thought, ooo that's profound stuff. If I can get into this ketosis thing I'll be home free. I'll be skinny.

Bruni is now the Food Critic With Food Issues.

Jill Abramson, managing editor: Not just managing editor for news; managing editor for puppies, too! She is the Serious News Lady With a Smooshy Marshmallow Puppy Center.

Alex Kuczynski, former shopping columnist: Rich Botox Lady Who Will Talk About Same, Endlessly.

David Carr, media critic: The Marlboro Man of Media. With a heart of gold!

Jennifer 8 Lee, metro reporter: Hard-Working Internet Addict Who Loves Chinese Food.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, Dealbook columnist: Wunderkind Who Could Totally Be a Rich I-Banker But Isn't Yet. The next Steven Rattner?

All The Opinion Columnists: Suave Expert on [Made Up Topic] But a Snazzier Writer Than Usual! Also, too rich!

And of course, the one future Self-Brand we'd like to see speaks for itself:

AG Sulzberger: Baller.

CocoPerez.com has been exposed in dribs and drabs; the website Evil Beet snuck past its password protection, then the website became freely available for maybe half an hour, now it's back to being password protected.

The site is meant to be more advertiser-friendly, and consequently finds Hilton doodling fewer crude captions on pictures. But his nasty side shows through sometimes, as in this caption:

Then there's this sarcastic headline, complete with Hilton's trademark double exclamation points:

But there's also analytical rigor! Evil Beet noticed that Hilton has been reposting items written for his old site, expanded with more "analysis." Below is a post about Harvard University's obnoxious new clothing line. On PerezHilton.com, the coverage ended with, "This is all fine and well, but there is one lingering question… why???" On CocoPerez.com, it ends,

This is all fine and well, but there is one lingering question: why?? This is from so far left field. We would understand if The New School or RISD or any number of artistic/fashion focused schools launched a line - it would still be unusual but at least a logical progression. But this?? This is just so random. Especially since Harvard isn't exactly thought of as the apex of fashion. This is like Janet Reno announcing she's launching a line of lingerie. You just can't get your head around it because it's so…bizarre.

Well, at least they've got our attention!

It is for this value-added piercing insight that the new site is apparently sponsored by Gap. We'd be surprised if many more sugar daddies sign on: Hilton's biggest advantage has been that he'll say anything, no matter how tasteless. But now he wants to make bank by playing nice, leading to muddles like CocoPerez.

We're just out here promoting Radio Shack, or uh, The Shack, whatever you want to call it, you know. Anyhow we have to sit out in public talking to webcams all day, give us a fucking break.

Radios are old, right? Get rid of that 'Radio' anchor weighing down your valuable forward-thinking brand of the future, by all means! But for god's sake, replace it with something. Otherwise you get this:

[Our] tipster says that in-store signs will reflect the change this week, and storefront signage will begin to be reworked as "The Shack" sometime later this year.

Forget the old "Radio Shack." The new home of sophisticated electronic retailing is "The Shack."
With everyone broke, this should go over well.
[Endgadget. Pic via]

Beer sales are down this year, surprisingly. Instead of going to the trouble of developing new products, beer companies have figured out that all they need to do is put their existing swill in a new package, and people will become excited! A beer bottle that turns blue to tell you when it's cold, to use one well-known, stupid example. And now: draft beer in a box:

The product, which is recyclable, is aimed at the 30% of beer drinkers who say they prefer draft beer to the bottled or canned variety, said Andy England, chief marketing officer at MillerCoors. "We're really trying to meet that occasion when you just got back from work and want to reward yourself," rather than "the party occasion," he said.

Why not "reward" yourself, with a frosty glass of beer from a box in your refrigerator, alone? The next step is death.
[WSJ. Pic: Flickr. Beer in a box costs more than an equal amount of beer in cans!]

GOOD: The updated stash box, by Base. People already like their own stash boxes so they'll probably like these. Keeps weed dry!


BAD: Corny ass stickers, by The Heads of State. Weed is cool. Slapping corny stickers with slogans like "Uptown Schwag" on your weed package is not cool. Why would you do such a thing? Narcs.

See all the designs at Print Mag [via Fast Company]