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Social Media Valentine's Day

McKinney #shredyourex campaign: “Warm your cold hearts with the healing power of sweet destruction”

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By Nesh Pillay, Reporter

February 10, 2015 | 2 min read

MicKinney launched a campaign today aimed at helping singles connect and “shred” their exes this Valentine’s Day.

Users are asked to tweet or Instagram a picture of their exes to @shredyourex, using the hashtag #shredyourex. They would then go to shredyourex.tv to watch “a live feed of your photo printing directly into a paper shredder above a digital fire.”

According to a press release from McKinney, all paper shredded will go toward keeping animals at local animal shelters warm.

To do this, McKinney “hacked the printer API, which uses the Common Unix Printing System (or CUPS).”

Instagram and Twitter are then searched by a “thin PHP wrapper” for posts to @shredyourex that include both the hashtag and a picture.

“If a post contains all three, ShredYourEx sends the image directly to the printer. The wrapper will not accept the same user’s information more than once in 24 hours, ensuring that one person cannot print multiple images each day,”

According to McKinney’s full stack developer, Brandon Waring, the toughest part was creating the wrapper to search social media.

“The printer responds to a different language than what is more commonly used in the Web,” he said. “So, having to play middle man between it and the Web was tough. I had to use Bash, which, with help from PHP, both the Web and the printer can understand.”

This campaign is part of “McKinney’s Ten Percent” - a series of efforts to encourage employees to set aside 10 per cent each day to focus on creativity.

Social Media Valentine's Day

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