mckinney
Latest
Jolly Tracker forces holiday cheer with a shock to the face
The holiday season is supposed to be a happy time. But lets be honest, between the stress of picking out gifts, racking up credit card debt you can't afford and being forced to spend time with your creepy uncle there isn't a lot to smile about. Enter the JöLLY Tracker. It's a wearable of a different kind -- one that monitors just how much you smile. And, if you're not keeping that frown turned upside down, it gives you a gentle "reminder" to smile in the form of an electric shock... to the face.
Beercade replaces arcade coin slots with beer taps, rewards winners with brew
Forget prize tickets or high scores. The minds at McKinney creative agency may have come up with the greatest reward for arcade victors -- an ice cold pour of beer. Created as a marketing tool for Big Boss Brewing Company, the aptly named Beercade features The Last Barfighter, a Street Fighter-like arcade game set inside a biker bar. To begin, two players place their cups in the tray below their respective tap, which replaces the machine's coin slots. Beer-thirsty combatants can do battle with a selection of five characters, all named after Big Boss brews. After three rounds of intense fisticuffs, fire throwing and unicorn horn impaling, the winner's cup is filled with a sample of beer from a keg placed within the machine. Don't believe us? You can click past the break for a video of the machine in action.
HP's Phil McKinney teases three mystery prototypes on Twitter
Well, this is certainly interesting -- that's HP CTO Phil McKinney pictured above in a pair of redacted shots that were posted to Twitter by HP's Mark Budgell. Described only as "early protos" by McKinney himself, the pictures show what appears to be phone-sized device, a tablet-sized device and, perhaps most curiously, something on McKinney's wrist (all mysteriously blacked out). Before you get your hopes up too much about a new wave of webOS devices, however, you might want to take a look at the second part of Budgell's tweet, which encourages folks to vote for McKinney's SXSW 2011 panel -- a panel in which McKinney promises to make some "bold predictions for the future - backed up with a number of breakthrough prototypes," and specifically talk about what the future will look like in "5 to 10 years." Now, we can't be certain of course, but that doesn't exactly suggest these are right around the corner. Head on past the break for a slightly bigger image.
HP's in-house webOS competition yields about 500 apps, says CTO
A little backstory: HP has an annual in-house event for its employees called TechCon, and this year a challenge was issued to the engineers to make the best webOS app (free phones were offered as incentive). Got that? Good. This week, HP CTO Phil McKinney had a brief chat with Pre Central over Twitter, where he revealed that the contest culminated in about 500 produced apps, and that "[they] are in the final stage of selecting 'best app' winners." Does that mean we should expect a large bump to the current catalog of programs? We can't say for sure, but we wouldn't be surprised if many of these are already available to download. Additionally, we can't say anything as for the overall quality of submissions. Edging closer to the 4,000-app milestone is great and all but not if it includes 250 different Angry Birds clones. Still, we're ever-hopeful and can't wait to see what exactly it was that came from the internal coding challenge.
Time Warner Cable brings 11 HD channels to North Texas
Earlier this year, Time Warner Cable decided to add 11 new high-def channels in Dallas, Texas, but many of the surrounding North Texas towns were inexplicably left out. A half year later, TWC is finally making things right by bringing the newcomers to Allen, Frisco, Stonebridge, The Colony, McKinney, Princeton, Wylie, Sachse, Parker, Murphy, St. Paul and Fairview. For those who have forgotten, we're talking CNN HD (740), TBS HD (744), History HD (745), Food Network HD (752), HGTV HD (753), A&E HD (754), Discovery HD (756), Animal Planet HD (757), National Geographic HD (771), Versus / Golf HD (786) and Fox Sports SW HD (787). Apparently, the carrier is also working to expand these even further, with Carrollton, Arlington and Addison (among other locales) to get 'em "in the immediate future." [Disclosure: Engadget is part of the Time Warner family]
