Welcome to Beer Suggest

It's been a long time since I've done anything new with the website, besides post reviews and rate some beers. Well, that changed when I recently picked up an Android based smart phone. After playing with it, I decided to create an Android application for Beer Suggest.

I'm currently in the early stages and it's going slow because lack of time and having to learn a new programming language and a new API. My plan for it's creation is to release it slowly, in pieces. The first part of the website I'd like to expose to the Android app, is the Places Locator. I've already began work and have a fairly good size portion of this code completed. This functionality will allow you to use your current location via GPS, or enter a location and it will pull up all breweries, beer bars, beer stores, and homebrew shops withing a mile radius selected by you. You will be able to view this information via a list or map and get more details about the location. You'll also be able to read reviews and dial up the selected location.

In the future I'd like to allow someone to search for beer, rate it and/or review it, directly from your phone. The application will remain in Beta until all components are completed. During the Beta stage I'll be taking feedback and fielding feature requests,

Before anyone asks, at this time I have no plans for developing an iPhone, Blackberry, or Palm application. Stay tuned for sneak peaks and future updates to the project.

It's been a while since I've had time to work on new features for Beer Suggest, but I've finally found some free time. Similar to the Twitter integration launched last year, you can now integrate your Facebook account with Beer Suggest. Doing this will allow you to configure automatic status updates to your Facebook account when you rate/review beer and places. It's a great way to share the brews you have been trying with your friends who are not on Beer Suggest. It's a pretty simple process, and to make it easier, I've created a video tutorial, that will teach you how to use this new feature. Enjoy!

Lately I've been working on how to make the places section easier to use. Often you are in a new place, say on vacation or for work, and you want to know how to find the nearest beer places in your area. Currently you can use the places locator to specify a location and mile radius, giving you a list of locations. To provide a graphical view I've created a Maps View.

The Maps View allows you to see your search results on a map while still distinguishing the different types of locations(bars, restaurants, homebrew shops, and beer stores). The left hand column has the results in text form along with some basic contact information. Clicking on the name in the left hand column will produce a pop up bubble from the marker on the map. You can also choose the more info link to read reviews and further information about the location.

In the future I would also like for breweries to be included in the locator search results, as well as being able to distinguish between a brewery and a brewpub.

I made a small change in the way reviews for beers work. Before you could only review a beer once. This might not sound like a big deal, but there are several circumstances where it would be useful to review a beer again. Case in point, I reviewed a bottle of fresh Stone RIS however, I also have a bottle from 2008 that I have been aging, so I would need the ability to review the beer multiple times. Another common case would be having a beer on cask or firkin versus from a bottle. There can be a huge flavor difference when it comes to aging or how the beer is served.

Also I had several requests to sort the reviews for each beer by the newest one first. Before hand the reviews were shown in a sequential order. Stay tuned for more updates, I've got a lot of great ideas, just not enough time to implement them all as fast as I wish I could!

Today I launched the social media services section in beta. Everything should work correctly, but there is always the chance that something slipped by me. Starting today you can now link up your Twitter account with Beer Suggest. You can set it up so that a tweet is automatically posted anytime you rate a beer, review a beer, or review a place. I took the time to create a screencast that goes through step by step, showing you how to set it up.

Facebook will be the next service that I will add to the website. I don't have a time-line for this, but I'll be tackling that task next.

It's been quite some time since my last update, so I thought I should address where I stand with the social media integration. I've recently had more time to tackle this enhancement and have made some very good headway. The plan is to release this feature with Twitter integration by the end of the month. It may come sooner than that, but I want to provide adequate time for testing.

When this feature is released there will be a new tab in you profile called "Social". This page will list all available services (Twitter at the time of release) and whether that service is enabled or not. From here you will be able to enable/disable the service and then configure it. After the service is enabled you'll choose an action (rate beer, review beer, review place) and then specify a template such as "Just tried X beer from X brewery - X/5". The X's in this example would be substituted with the name of the beer, name of the brewery, and rating. This template will be used to automatically post tweets to your twitter page when you perform one of the actions above.

Wanted to apologize for the quick hiccup we experienced earlier. It only lasted for a minute or two, but that was enough to get a bunch of error messages from users. I was in the middle of pushing out some code changes. It should be fine now.

I haven't posted anything in a little bit, so I thought I'd give everyone an update on what's happening behind the scenes at Beer Suggest. As the title implies, Beer Suggest will begin to integrate with some of the big social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. I'm currently in the planning/early development stages, so I don't have a whole lot of details, but more information will be coming soon. Depending on the demand other social media services could be added in the future.

This service will allow you to connect your Facebook or Twitter accounts to Beer Suggest and automatically tweet(on Twitter) or post status updates(on Facebook) whenever you rate and review beers and places. Stay tuned for more information in the near future!