***UPDATE 9/22/2009***
The Beer App hit 100 breweries and 1000+ beers.
Beer Locator function has been added to the Beer App
3 Brewers have responded to the Penultimate Beer Survey
The Beer Locator is now working. If a beer has any known locations there is an option at the bottom of the Information Page to find locations near you. You can enter an address and see locations within 25 miles that sell/serve the beer. It also has the price and container style (22oz. bomber, 6 pack of 12oz. bottles, pint, etc). All locations are also clickable links that return a list of all beer at the location.
Currently, there are only a few beers with locations around the Eugene, OR area. If you would like to see the locator work, search for one of these beers and put 'Eugene, OR' or '97401' in the address box.
Total Domination
Believer
Radiant
Watershed
Oakshire Amber
Overcast
One last thing. I am working on user logins right now. I haven't got the rating system in place, but once logins are working, you will be able to add beers/breweries, add locatins and map beers to locations. I will be handing out logins to 100 or so people in a week or two who would like to be beta testers.
When I am ready to start the beta, I will post here with an e-mail address where you can get a beta invite.
As always, I am looking for suggestions on ways to improve the Beer App. I am also looking for a name for the Beer App; I may turn it into a contest. You can leave name ideas and suggestions here.
Cheers!
Kevin
***UPDATE 9/12/2009***
Quick update.
Yesterday the Beer App hit 800 entries. These 800 entries span 80 breweries in 26 states. Results are now shown in blocks of 20 with "next" and "previous" buttons where appropriate. Also, the Penultimate Beer Survey has had 3 responses so far:
Matt Van Wyk - Oakshire Brewing
Fred Colby - Laughing Dog Brewing
Ben Love - Hopworks Urban Brewery
Cheers!
Kevin
***UPDATE 9/9/2009***
I have started the Beer and Coding in Eugene's Penultimate Beer Survey. It is a 20 question survey I am sending out to members of the craft brew community. I am posting responses on my site as they arrive. Matt Van Wyk at Oakshire Brewing was kind enough to return the first survey. His answers have been posted.
Also, last night the 400th entry was entered into the Beer App. I am still hard at work getting the user logins set up. Before that I will need to add another feature. I need to enabled paged results. Some of the searches now return 50+ results, so I am implementing 20 results per page with "next" and "back" buttons. This should be done by this weekend.
Cheers!
Kevin
***UPDATE 9/4/2009***
This is just a quick update. The Advanced Search option in the Beer App is now working correctly. Advanced Search currently lets you seach by:
Beer Name
Brewery Name
ABV
IBU (on the ones where I could find the info)
Style (amber, stout, etc)
Sub-style (espresso, oatmeal, etc)
Availability (winter, spring, year round, etc)
Serving Type (on tap, bottled)
By the end of the weekend, I hope to have the searching complete. I will be adding City, State/Province and Country as search criteria. I will also be creating a new Serving Type table. This will expand the options to include 12oz 6-pack, 22oz bottle, on tap, growler, etc. I will also be moving "organic" from a sub style to a flag and adding a "retired" flag. Both of these will be searchable.
I am hard at work creating the user login section. Until it is finished and you are allowed to add your own entried, I will continue adding breweries/beers myself. Currently the following breweries have been entered:
Ninkasi
Oakshire
Deschutes
New Belgium
Lost Coast
North Coast
Dogfish Head
Rogue
Eugene City Brewery
Terminal Gravity
21st Amendment
Oskar Blues
This list is increasing constantly.
If anyone has any recommendations, let me know. I am trying to make the interface as easy to use as possible.
Cheers!
Kevin
***UPDATE 9/2/2009***
I just wanted to let everyone know that stage 1 of my Beer App is up and running. At this point, you can search for a beer by beer name, brewery or both. There are only a couple breweries indexed, but I am adding more throughout the week. By the end of this weekend, the Beer Information page should be displaying IBUs. I should also have the "Advanced Search" working by then. The advanced option will enable you to search and filter by an piece of information instead of just name and brewery.
Since it is going to be impossible for me to index every beer in the world myself, I am hard at work on stage 2; user accounts and content submissions. When stage 2 is complete, you will be able to create an account and contribute beer/brewery listings. This one might take a little while. In addition to the task of creating user accounts, I am also determining how I want to assign rights based on valid contributions. The system I have in mind right now will give each user X contibution points per day (with a hard cap, so they don't increase indefinitely). These points can be spent to add beer and brewery entries. As you contribute, your user rating increases. When your user rating is high enough, you will be able to flag other entries. Entries can be flagged as having "incorrect information" or "duplicate information". A cronjob (automated task) will run every night that corrects posts that have received enough flags. If a post you flagged is removed/corrected, your user rating increases and you are rewarded some more points. If one of your entries is flagged and removed, your rating goes down. Your rating at the time you contributed an entry will determine how many flags it takes to remove it. Like I said; this is a bit of work, so it may take a while.
After that, step three is the rating system. Step four is the itegration with Google maps to let you map where a beer is available.
If any of you guys/gals have suggestions, I appreciate the feed back. You can either leave a post here, or send an e-mail to the address on my site. Thanks again for the support.
Cheers!
Kevin
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Hey all.
I just wanted to let everyone know that my website is now live (link in signature). It is a blog about the two things that monopolize most of my time; drinking beer and writing code. On the beer side; posts will cover reviews, interviews with people in the craft brew industry, and information about beercentric festivals and fund raisers. On the coding side; you will find information about developments in the homebrew scene, reviews of various technology I leverage either at work on on my site, and a walkthough of the development cycle as I create my site's beer app. There will inevitably be some complaining about PCI compliancy. I am a retail programmer and much of my time is being spent getting the company I work for ready for their first independent PCI audit next year.
The beer app is a community driven web app for finding information about beer. It will use a chess-like rating system where users can compare beers. Users will be able to create accounts and track/compare their own preferences to those of the community. It will also use Google Maps to allow users to flag where they found a particular beer. Other users who want to try that beer can ask for the closest location.
If anyone has any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave them here, or on my site.
Cheers!
Kevin
Beer and Coding in Eugene