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truello · 09-16-2010, 04:52 PM

Hi All,

I just finished up a beta version of an Android app that I think anyone who goes to a (supported) beer festival would find useful. Essentially it's a replacement for the paper and pencil beer lists that they hand out for you to take notes on or mark that you tried it.

Right now it's only setup for GABF but I have a lot of plans to add functionality and really hope to get more beer festivals supported.

If you're going to GABF and have an Android phone, please try it out and let me know what you think! It's free

Cheers,
truello

Nova5 · 09-16-2010, 05:44 PM

Think you can swing ready it for Festival of Beers at The Joe in Charleston? its on the 25th of sept.

truello · 09-16-2010, 06:03 PM

I'd definitely be willing to try. I'm eager to get more festivals in here.

I'll take a look at the list. I'm hoping to get to the point where the festivals will provide me with the lists. GABF couldn't provide theirs (since its a huge judging competition) so I had to do it all myself... 4800 beers entered

(In most cases I entered all of the beers they listed on their website, since I don't know which they'll bring).

**Beehemel** · 09-16-2010, 08:41 PM

I've got a couple friends out there this weekend with Android phones, so I forwarded this on to them. Looks like a promising app if you can keep up with/expand the festival lists!

qulith · 09-16-2010, 09:03 PM

I just downloaded it and it looks good. I'll give it a good Q&A on Saturday at GABF. Thanks.

truello · 09-17-2010, 01:54 PM

I have some questions for those who've either tried it already or even those who aren't Android powered (like myself, believe it or not) but would use something like this...

- Would you like the ability to make your comments public and view others?
- Would you be interested in using this app for non event-related tastings (i.e. you're out at the pub and try a new beer)?
- If an event was listed but no breweries/beers would be listed, would you take the time to Add Brewery and Add Beer each time you wanted to make a note? Or would it only be worth your time if it was ~75% complete already?

qulith · 09-17-2010, 03:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by truello

- Would you like the ability to make your comments public and view others?

Yes, the whole community aspect is a awesome idea. You could also look into tying into the Twitter, Facebook, and the other social media APIs so someone could post status updates to their friends as they drink. Basically an online play by play of what is drank and what it is like for those friends not fortunate enough to be enjoy a brew.
Additionally, if you are branding the posts, you are going to be opening yourself up to a much wider audience of people who are likely to give the application a try.

Quote:

Originally Posted by truello

- Would you be interested in using this app for non event-related tastings (i.e. you're out at the pub and try a new beer)?

Yes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by truello

- If an event was listed but no breweries/beers would be listed, would you take the time to Add Brewery and Add Beer each time you wanted to make a note? Or would it only be worth your time if it was ~75% complete already?

I probably wouldn't do this at a tasting event, since I would rather spend the time drinking, then dealing with the finicky Android keyboard. But if you were to tie in pubs as mentioned above, then yes, since I am sitting, drinking a pint, and killing time anyways I would enter in the Brewery and the beer. Why try to manually enter all bars in anyway when you can get the community to do it for you

.

truello · 09-23-2010, 04:24 AM

Thanks for your input. It definitely helped me make some decisions about future development. One of the most overwhelming responses was that people wanted to rate beer, outside of events such as GABF.

I just released an update to version 1.1 with a few easier fixes.
- "Personal Tastings". It's a dateless event that has every brewery/beer and allows you to make notes outside of an event.
- Number of votes added to "note" screen. A rating of 5 with 1 vote is much different than a rating of 5 with 20 votes. I wanted to reflect this.
- Ability to delete a comment. I noticed a lot of people were un-rating beers and erasing the text, which indicated that people seemed to need the ability to delete a note.

Hopefully I can reach a much wider audience now, especially with the Personal Tastings. I never considered some of these things because there are already great sites like beer advocate and ratebeer, and I wasn't trying to duplicate their efforts, but this is a little more convenient.

I have a ton of ideas that will really take this beyond a simple beer notepad and turn it into a full featured community. Going to take my time over the next couple of months working on it though.

Nova5,
I emailed the event organizers for Festival of Beers at The Joe, however I haven't received any response with a list of breweries at the least. They also don't have it published on their site. I'd happily add the event for you, if you want to manually input stuff. Or if you somehow have access to a list, that's a good start I could work with...

Nova5 · 09-23-2010, 11:44 AM

Tru, No idea whats going to be there. first time i'll be going is this year.

Nova5 · 09-23-2010, 11:52 AM

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=111239722224823&ref=mf

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT MELISSA MCCANTS AT *phone left on FB* OR MELISSA@RIVERDOGS.COM

she might have more info on the beer list.