We’ll be shutting down the company behind Shizzow, but Mark Wallaert will continue to run Shizzow as a side project to keep it in service for our loyal users.  He will be running it on his own, and as of now there are no plans for future development on the platform.  Dawn Foster and I don’t have the personal bandwidth to continue contributing to Shizzow, so we will be moving off of the project.

We named our product “Shizzow” because I’ve used that term for 10 forevers as a word to describe elation, and to me that word completely encapsulated the idea of spontaneously gathering with friends.  Shizzow was designed to be a friend finder, and we have met so many wonderful people with this service as the catalyst.

Before signing off, I must extend a heartfelt gratitude to the city of Portland for being our own personal cheerleaders through our beta and public launches.  The memories I will always treasure are seeing all of your tweets and hearing all of your conversations in which you evangelized Shizzow.

I’d like to give knucks to Scott Kevton and Ray King, who served as fabulous advisors; bows of gratitude to the publicity given by Rick Turoczy at the Silicon Florist, Cami Kaos and Dr. Normal at Strange Love Live, Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write Web, and Adam Duvander of MapScripting; pint glass clinks to Sue Brown, Matt Gifford, Reid Biels, Bill Jackson, John Nastos, Don Park, Sam Grover, Ken Baer and the other developers who pounded on the Shizzow API; and high fives to Sam Keen, Gus Torres, Carolynn Duncan, Aaron Hockley, Ryan Buchanan, and the countless number of others who have helped along the way.

Finally, we want to thank everyone who used Shizzow. It was a great ride, each of us learned so much during the process, and we look back on our time at Shizzow with fondness and no regrets. Thank you for all of the great times.

Cheers,
Ryan

Ken Baer, Taplister’s iPhone App Guru, is a Portland native and long time Tech, Trek, and Beer Geek. He spent about 20 years writing 3D animation software (Hash Inc’s Animation:Master) on the Amiga, Mac, and PC, and worked on OMSI’s Star Trek Federation Science exhibit in the early 90’s. He is actively involved in the local animation scene through ASIFA-Portland, and spent some time doing scuba and fencing. Ken is an active Mac developer, and has jumped into iPhone development with both feet. He is excited about his work on iPhone apps for Taplister, and is committed to making very cool apps for craft beer fans everywhere.

Dawn: Can you start by telling us a little bit about Taplister and Beer Signal?

Ken: Taplister is a web site dedicated to providing up to date information about what craft beers are on tap around Portland. The site has a bot that gathers information via Twitter using our #ontappdx hash tag. So, the data is provided by not only the pubs around town, but also the patrons. Anyone that visits some of the websites for these pubs knows that if they list what beers they have on tap, that information is often out of date. That’s because pubs often don’t have time to update their web sites as often as would like. By getting patrons and beer fans into the act, we can have a database that is a lot more helpful.

So, on Taplister.com, you can search for a beer and see who’s serving it in Portland. You can also see what’s on tap at your favorite bar or pub. Pubs that sign up with us also have the option of having a “PubCam” installed, which shows a live image of their on tap board. It doesn’t get more up to date than that!

Beer Signal is an iPhone app that uses the Taplister engine. The app helps you find a pub, see what they have on tap, and invite your friends to join you. You start by selecting a pub from the Taplister database. You can see their active beer list, the live pubcam (if they have one), and information like their location (with a map), hours, happy hours, and how many taps they have. Then choose what friends you want to invite. You build a list of local, beer drinking friends and enter their Twitter names. The app keeps this list and allows you to select who you want to invite. If you are at the pub now, you can send the invite with Shizzow or Twitter. If you are planning a meetup, you can set the time and date, and send the invites out all once as Twitter direct messages. The app also allows you to tweet what beer you are drinking and if it is off tap. And finally, you have full access to the mobile Taplister site in the app, including searching for a specific beer.

Dawn: How did you get the idea to start this project?

Ken: I met Kerry Finsand at my first Beer and Blog. I literally walked into East Burn (coincidentally our first client), sat down in the last empty chair, introduced myself to the guy next to me, who was Kerry, and started talking about beer and the iPhone. Kerry and Scott Wray had been working on the idea for the web site for a couple months I think. They also hooked up with Kevin Scaldeferri who’s doing the web server and the bot. Scott worked with Joe Mendonca on designing the web site. Ezra Johnson-Greenough a.k.a Samurai Artist has been doing a series of interviews with brewers that’s on the site. And recently, we’ve been working with Derek Arent on logos and branding. All of us are big craft beer fans. This project is all about the beer. I wanted to make an iPhone app for it that really leveraged some of the power of the device. I thought it would be cool to make it easy to invite your friends out for beer.

Dawn: Why did you decide to integrate with Shizzow?

Ken: It was such a natural connection. I’d heard about Shizzow at a Lunch 2.0 I went to early in the year, but didn’t really hear the details of what it was about. So, while I was writing code for Beer Signal, I took a break and did a quick search to satisfy my curiosity about what Shizzow was. It was exactly what I wanted to do. Beer Signal is about finding pubs, discovering great beer, and getting together with friends so you can enjoy it together. We want people to spend more time socializing in person, and not just online. We also want to support our local drinking spots, and bring them the business they need in this tough economy. It seems to me that Shizzow is all about that. It also didn’t hurt meeting the people behind Shizzow and being in the same city. If we can help them succeed in our own little way, all the better.

Dawn: Where can people go to learn more about Taplister and Beer Signal and what plans do you have for future improvements?

Ken: Taplister.com is the place to be for the latest on what’s pouring in Portland. There’s a search right on the front page to search for beers using our exclusive beer search engine. Also, the Taplister.com site will autodetect if are on a mobile device and bring up the mobile version of the site.

You can go to BeerSignal.com to learn more about the app, and read the documentation. Beer Signal is currently available on Apple’s iTunes App Store.

There’s a lot we want to do in the future. This is just phase 1. Down the road we want to incorporate beer descriptions, reviews, and user ratings. We also want to work more with brewers and distributors, and be able to collect valuable information for them about what people are drinking and what kinds of beers people are asking about. We also want to expand to other cities. Portland has an amazing craft beer culture. But, it seems to be spreading to other cities, and we want to be there too. One thing I’m interested in developing is more visual ways brewers and users can define a beer’s flavor profile, and then be able to search on that so users can discover new beers that they would likely enjoy.

But, this all begins with everyone using the #ontappdx hash tag, and helping us maintain the best beer list anywhere!

• Mapping party at Multnomah Central Library from 11am - 4pm on Saturday.
• Forest park trail mapping from 9am - 2pm on Sunday.

You can find many more details in the Silicon Florist post on the topic. Have fun!

Brady also has an interesting take on this issue over on the O’Reilly Radar blog.

“I am personally looking forward to these services becoming ubiquitous so that I can track my location and aspects of my life, but as they currently stand these services are not poised for mainstream adoption. They need to do more to prevent people from embarrassing or endangering themselves.”

Quoted from XKCD on the Future Self.

Remember to shout responsibly, people. There are some things that I just don’t want to know about you!

How does it work?  If you have Gears installed, you will be prompted to allow Shizzow to access information about your device.

Gears will attempt to auto-detect your location when you visit your Shizzow dashboard.  On Android phones it will use a combination of GPS, wi-fi triangulation and/or cell tower triangulation, while on most other devices it will use wi-fi triangulation.  If Gears can pinpoint your current latitude and longitude, it will hand that data to Shizzow, which will display a list of nearby places.

Visit gears.google.com to install Gears and to determine if Gears is installed on your device.

If Gears cannot tell precisely where you are at, it will typically place you in the center of the nearest major city.

As always, feedback is most welcome at GetSatisfaction.

Top Shouters

• stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter. design graphic marketing promotions sxsw web
• donpdonp: Don Park - biker. hacker. bicycle burrito cafe
• gjlutz: G. Lutz
• wajiii: Bill Jackson - Meh. ajax apple baconsnob geek java linux mac unix

Top Places

• Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub: absinthe beer finetapselection
• CubeSpace: cubespace meetingrooms officeforrent
• SW DESIGNS

Trailblazers (People who go to new places)

• rich: Rich Vigorito
• stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter. design graphic marketing promotions sxsw web
• fred: Fred Sobotka - Another consultant who lurks around SE Portland when he’s not lurking elsewhere. db2 portland sql stumptown

People who tag places (and make Shizzow better)

• cedr: coffee croquet scooter secretagent
• stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter. design graphic marketing promotions sxsw web

How to use the Twitter friend import:

• Go to your preferences page
• Click the Twitter link in the sidebar
• Activate the service by allowing Shizzow to access your Twitter information
• Click the Import your Twitter friends link
• For friends who are already on Shizzow, you can choose which ones you want to listen to.
• For friends who aren’t on Shizzow, you can invite them, which sends them a Twitter direct message with a request from you to join Shizzow.

What we do or do not do with your Twitter account:

• You never need to give us your Twitter password, we use oAuth to give you control over whether we can access your account.
• Shizzow will not automatically tweet from your account.
• Shizzow will not import all of your Twitter friends; you will need to manually select individual Twitter friends.
• For your Twitter friends who do not already have Shizzow accounts, Shizzow will allow you to send a direct message through Twitter to individually selected friends that you would like to invite to join Shizzow.
• After the friend import process, your account will be setup to automatically tweet your shouts through Twitter, but you can disable this at anytime by visiting the Twitter Preferences page. If you never want us to post your shouts from Twitter, simply disable your Twitter access after importing your Twitter friends.

We’re hoping this makes it easier for you to find your friends and use Shizzow. We would love to hear more about your experiences using the Twitter import on Get Satisfaction.

We also made a few other cool improvements in this latest release:

• Added favorites as a drop down menu on our mobile version (m.shizzow.com) without an extra refresh, and we added the search box to the bottom of the mobile page to make it even easier to shout from your web enabled phone.
• We made some other improvements to the signup process for new users to make it easier to get started on Shizzow.

As always, please let us know what improvements you would like to see in Shizzow. Most of our new features and bug reports come from you, so keep posting them to Get Satisfaction!

Top Shouters

• easterbunny: The Easter Bunny - Bringing baskets filled with colored eggs, candy and toys to the homes of children on Easter.
• b3gl: Jerry
• stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter

Top Places

• Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
• Urban Grind Coffeehouse NW
• CubeSpace

Trailblazers (People who go to new places)

• fred: Fred Sobotka - Another consultant who lurks around SE Portland when he’s not lurking elsewhere.
• rich: Rich Vigorito
• stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter

People who tag places (and make Shizzow better)

• dougie: Doug Coleman - A freak for the web
• dswiese: Sean Wiese
• sechrest: John Sechrest
• hollyblackman: Holly Blackman - getting into as much social networking as possible for work.

New and Improved Tagging

We changed our tagging system for places to show only the most popular tags on the place page, and when you click the link for more, you get a nice tag cloud with big text for the popular tags. This is one way to push obsolete tags down the page. If a place without wifi is tagged with wifi, you can push it down the list by tagging it with something like no-wifi, which would become more popular as more people begin to use the tag.

Add New Places and Edit Places via m.shizzow.com

Quite a few of us were frustrated that m.shizzow.com didn’t have a way to add a new place. We heard you loud and clear, and you can now add places from your mobile device using m.shizzow.com. As a bonus, you can also edit places to update an address or correct other information on the place page.

IM Notification - Now with More Links

We’ve improved the experience for those of us who get our notifications via XMPP instant messaging by adding links to the shout within the message. Gone are the days of wondering exactly which Stumptown my friend just shouted from and having to log into the web interface to find out. Now you can click on the link to go directly to the shout to find out more information.

Support for Mexico, Central America, South America and South Africa

We’re continuing to add support for new countries as time permits. Mexico, Central America, South America and South Africa were the latest additions, but you will continue to see support for more countries trickle out.

We also fixed a few other bugs. Remember, we are not skilled in mind-reading or ESP, so we can’t change things that we don’t know you want, so keep those bug reports and feature requests coming at us by posting them on Get Satisfaction!

Top Shouters

• maestrojed: Jed Herzog - Livin in Portland OR. @betheoutlier’s my passionate venture | Most used Skillz: webDev & video prod. | Interests: music/Jazz, the web, art/street art/graffiti.
• donpdonp: Don Park - biker. hacker.
• mattg: Matthew Gifford - Really needs to add his bio to Shizzow

Top Locations

• Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
• Urban Grind Coffeehouse NW
• OCP