The Buddy Activity page will display the site actions of the people you wish to follow. This function is only available to registered members (because you need a trackable account in order to have buddies to follow). But since registration is simple and easy, this should not be much of a deterrent.

This particular page is now tracking reviews, image uploads and forums threads that are added to the site by your buddies over the past 2 weeks. If your parents ground you from the internet and you have to miss a day or two, this page will let you jump right back in and check out what your friends have been up to!

If you don’t have any buddies, jump on it and make some friends on the site!

This feature, along with pages such as the Path Crossers page are implemented with the hopes that they are able to build a sense of community on the site.

If you need some more bling for your Google Homepage, check out an example of the blog below and click the “+ google” button underneath the example widget to add it to your personal homepage.

If you have an idea for other tools or widgets that Beer Mapping can create and release into the wild; feel free to use our contact page and tell us about it. Or leave a comment below or in the forums.

Our newest “Widget” will contain pertinent information about a location in our database. All locations are available to be used in a widget, you simply have to click the proper link on the review page to have the ability to copy and paste the code into your site.

The code for this widget is all in javascript, so you don’t have to worry about iframes or php code. We have done our best to ensure that this widget will not interfere with any other css or styling that is being used on your page.

For an example, of how the widget works, you can check it out in use below. We have selected the Russian River Brewing Company. All you have to do is click the “widget button” (image of review button below) on the review page of a location you are interested in featuring, then copy and paste the code into the html (or blog post) of your site.

The widget will show phone number and address information, the url of the location featured, a thumbnail of the highest scored image we have in our database for that location, and it will also display the coordinates available that will serve as a link to this location on a map.

The widget will conform to the height of the thumbnail image (unless closed) and it will conform to the width of the area of your site where the code for the widget is placed.

p.s. I stole the idea and a lot of the code from crunchbase. I hope they don’t sue me!

Doing nothing this weekend? In the Chicago area? Like beer? Like food? Like entertainment?

If you answered yes to more than 2 of the questions you just read, you should come check out the 2nd Annual Beerfly Alleyfight. The Beer Mapping Project is a sponsor of this year’s Beerfly Alleyfight and we hope to see you there!

When: Saturday, May 17th from 1PM to 5PM
Where: Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery - Chicago
How Much: Tickets are $20.00 and include food, home brew, and performances.

Click here to read more about this event and purchase tickets

What is a Beerfly Alleyfight?

Good question. May 12-19 is American Craft Beer Week and to celebrate we are starting the Beerfly Alleyfight. The Beerfly Alleyfight is a new event that will not just pair, but tri-pair, beer, food, and art. Ten Home Brewers will be given basic ingredients to brew a beer for the May 19th event. They will pair it with a food they make (or they have someone make) and then they will be paired with a Chicago artist (could be a writer, a painter, musiican, a dancer…)who will interpret the pairing in an ass-kickin’, alleyfight way like you’ve never seen. Artists include Neo-Futurists Diana Slickman, Jay Torrence, dancer Mindy Myers, and more to come.

Do you know what your favorite brewery looks like from a few hundred feet up? If you can spot yours, feel free to post a link in the comments. We have collected a few images to show, but if you want to see more, check out this thread from the forums.

Goose Island Fulton Street Brewery
This first image is the closest production brewery to my house at the moment. Goose Island’s Fulton Street Brewery. The silo’s are fairly easy to spot sitting on the roof. Click on the image to see the Brewery on Microsoft Live Maps.

Hair of the Dog
The next brewery wasn’t easy for my group to find. And we were on foot! This is a brewery in Portland where those high gravity Hair of the Dog beers come from:

Three Floyds Brewery
Another producer of popular high gravity beers is Three Floyds! In this image you can see where hundreds if not thousands of people will be hanging out next weekend for Dark Lord Day. Also of note, the garden in back is where some of the produce for the restaurant is grown. It appears that at least one of the Floyds has a green thumb.

New Belgium
One of the greenest breweries around (or so I’m told) is New Belgium. I knew they made a lot of beer, but man, look at the size of this place.

There is an awful lot of Fat Tire in those tanks!

Bell’s Eccentric Cafe
This final location is one I will be visiting on Sunday. Bell’s Eccentric Cafe!

Can you find a Bird’s Eye View of your favorite brewery?

Beer Mapping Forums Integration

The integration we have set up here at Beer Mapping is on multiple levels. First you can simply grab the unique id from your twitter feed (click the “rss” button at the bottom of your twitter page and the url on the next page will contain that id. It should look something like this: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/10842552.rss We only need to paste the number, not the whole url.). Then when you have your twitter id you can place it in your user profile here at The Beer Mapping Project.

Once that is done, your most recently updated twitter status post (often called a tweet) will automatically show up in your forums signature on this site. The status is limited to 140 characters so it doesn’t take up much room and it is very easy for others to ignore if they don’t want to read them while checking out the forums.

The Twitter integration doesn’t stop there though. And here is where the kooky article title comes into play.

Beer Mapping Mobile Integration

Beer Mapping Mobile is now integrated with a twitter geocoder that will help you create a twitter post that is tagged with either a location in our database or the geographical coordinates of the address where you are posting from. If you want to make a tweet while on the go at a local brewpub, you can look that location up in Beer Mapping Mobile and you can then click the “Post to Twitter” link to make a status update from that location.

Once you select to post a tweet from that location you come to a page that will look like the image on the right. You enter your twitter username and password (we do not store this information) and your status update. Beer Mapping Mobile will take care of the rest. If you don’t want to post from a location, you can still get your location tagged with coordinates if you approach the Mobile Twitter page from this link (or a link just like it at the top of the mobile search page).

I can hear you now, “What good does any of this do”? Well, I’m glad you asked.

Because your tweets are getting either a unique id from a location in the Beer Mapping database, or latitude/longitude from a posted address, we can grab your twitter status updates that have this information and we can display them on a map on the site.

For example: here is my twitter map.

Family Circus Style Maps!

Now, you can be just like Jeffy from the Family Circus! We can all wake up on Sunday morning and see a map of your adventures hopping from brewpub to beer bar to brewery! You can view your map later to see if you can get an idea as to where you may have put down your cell phone. All the ladies that think you are hot can now watch your map to see if you are anywhere nearby where they might stalk you (The Beer Mapping Project is not responsible for the stalking).

Twitter is an awesome way of letting others know what you are up to. The Beer Mapping Project is a great way to find out how close you are to good beer. And with the addition of integrating your precise location with each tweet, we can create virtual pub crawls where anyone online can follow along.

Keep an eye on my map today (April 5th 2008) and I hope to document the Chicago Beer Mapping pub crawl. My goal is to post from each location we visit and possibly from some public transportation along the way.

Sign up for a twitter account and merge it with your Beer Mapping account today to get a dynamic twitter map that you can pass along to your friends.

After a search is performed, a user can choose to download the results of a search as a .csv based POI file.

The Point of Interest download ability is available to registered members who have subscribed to the service. A lifetime subscription is available now in the Beer Mapping Shop for 15 dollars.

Discussion about POI files and how you can easily format or manipulate them will be taking place in our forums. The discussion is open to all and that forum section can be found here.

Click Here to get Started.

If you are not familiar with our mobile applications, they are simply a streamlined version of what is already available here on the rest of the site. You can search by name, city, state or zip/postal code. Eventually we will update this so you can search by country as well (like you can on the main location lookup).

Once the results of your search are returned to you, you can see locations with addresses and phone numbers. From the results you can find the location you are most interested in visiting and you can click on it’s name. This click will take you to the new Mobile Location Profile page for that particular location.

As you can see from this profile page, we are including a map with zoom capabilities and we also are breaking down the overall score of this particular location (if it has been reviewed). The phone number here should also be a link that will work on most mobile phones to bring up the phone functionality and commence dialing.

As always the goal here is to give the end user as many helpful features as possible in order to promote craft beer, breweries and brewpubs. Be safe and responsible, and get out there and enjoy some new beers and new experiences!

Bookmark: http://beermapping.com/m on your phone’s browser!

Jay also seems to write for pretty much every beer magazine in existence. Draft, Beer Magazine, Beer Advocate, Celebrator and Ale Street News are a few of the magazines I have seen his writing within.

In addition to writing about beer news, commenting on articles written by neo-prohibitionists and posting some great pictures, Jay also makes sure to post about the people in the beer world who are currently experiencing a birthday. In his honor I felt it only fair to return the favor. Happy Birthday Jay!

The picture below is one I took of Jay trying to park his car inside the brewery at Hair of the Dog

Also, it just so happens that he has selected The Beer Mapping Project as his website of the month.

We now have a system that will allow you to have a map to your latest review sitting right on your blog or site (as long as it can accept html code and an iframe). The process is so simple, even my mother could do it!

If you want to take a look at what a personal review map might look like, you can scroll down to the bottom of the right column on this site where you can find a map displaying the most recent review on the site. This map looks exactly like the map that you can get to place where you wish.

If you want to set up one of these maps, all you have to do to start the process is click the button on your review list page. The following image displays what the button looks like on my review list:

Once you have clicked the button you are faced with a couple of options. The first is “displayed name”. If you have a blog where everyone knows you as “Steve” and your username here is “Sir Lageralot”, you can change the displayed name on your map to be “Steve” so your blog readers will know who is doing the reviewing on the map.

The other options control the zoom level (might want to select medium or far if you review mostly in rural areas) and the type of map selected (terrain is a cool option). Selecting these once will determine how the map will be viewed on your site.

If you want to see an example of how the options are tweakable, you can click here to see my map tweak page.

Once you have the map edited, all you have to do is copy the code from the form and paste it where you want it on your site. The code and the example map update automatically when changes are made to the options. But you can push the “Update Code” button if it makes you feel better (note: the button is a fake and it actually does nothing, other than reassure people that something is happening).

Please enjoy these maps, do with them as you will and support craft beer!

Examples of these maps in the wild (drop a link to your blog in the comments and I will link it here)

• The Beer Hall (map is in the right sidebar)
• Sports Beer Wine Life Maybe Not In That Order (scroll down to bottom to see the map)
• The Beer Nut (map is in the left sidebar)