heineken

High-tech Heineken bottles light up when you say 'cheers'

The beer drinking experience is already fairly interactive. You open bottles, clink them against your friends' bottles, and dress them up in little cozies to keep them cold. Apparently, all that wasn't enough for Heineken, which unveiled a prototype of its new Heineken Ignite bottle last week at Milan Design Week.

The bottles incorporate LEDs, micro-sensors, and wireless networking. The technology can detect when the bottle is just sitting there, when a person is drinking, and when it's used for cheering. Various actions are set to trigger the light effects, or it can be remotely activated to flash in time with music.… Read more

Heineken's 147 years of making beer in Amsterdam

AMSTERDAM--Its green bottle is instantly recognizable. Its brand name is known throughout the world. It may not be the best beer on Earth, but it certainly is one of the most popular.

It, of course, is Heineken, and for many people a visit to the Dutch capital is not possible without taking a tour of the big brick building with "Heineken Brouwerij" emblazoned on the side: The old Heineken brewery.

Though the building no longer houses the actual brewery, today it is home to what is known as the "Heineken Experience," a self-guided tour through the … Read more

Heineken scores a Web hit

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, anyone with humanity, a pulse, and functional eyes, ears, and cerebellum watches Champions League soccer.

I know that not everyone has yet been converted to this phenomenon. Equally, this being a World Cup year, I feel sure that the beauty of the world's most popular game will continue to seep into resistant pores.

In Italy, despite the fact that they play a brand of soccer that makes the dead grateful, there is no one left to persuade. Which is why this stunning, brilliant, original, inspired guerrilla marketing should make you look at most tech advertising … Read more

Your own private kegger for St. Paddy's Day

So much for our trend-spotting skills. We thought for sure that, where beer dispensing is concerned, the next big thing would be built-in taps, whether they be for the fridge or the game console. Instead, what seems to be taking hold is the portable version, we assume for reasons of practicality.

Case in point (so to speak): The Heineken "BeerTender," which Gizmodo says it wrote about nearly four years ago, at long last is arriving on U.S. shores. The attractive dispenser accommodates a 5-liter mini-keg, though the long delay means it'll face some stiff competition. Even … Read more

Beer on tap, straight from the fridge door

It's a good thing colleague Caroline McCarthy is swamped at DigitalLife, or she'd be accusing me of blatantly poaching on her beat with this item. (And she'd be right.) But some things just can't wait.

Behold the "HomePub" fridge freezer from Sweden's Asko, which brilliantly designed a special tap recess so it wouldn't take away any internal space--obviously anticipating potential spousal objections. Appliancist says there's also a shelf inside made especially to store "spare kegs," as if there are such things. And the whole appliance, which lists for about $… Read more