“When You Can’t Be There to Celebrate”
April 20, 2007
Found via WebWare: BuyYourFriendADrink.com
Pretty neat idea here… buy your friend a drink via SMS. Currently limited to a few bars in 4 select towns in New York and New Jersey.
Coincidental that I’d find this today, as I’m going to miss an out-of-state friend’s birthday party tonight (Happy BDay, Mike)… I would definitely have tried out the service if it was available at the bar in Boston they’ll be going to.
I have to wonder if there isn’t some larger platform they couldn’t piggyback on, to increase their bar coverage. Credit card companies, for one, ought to be able to manage this… a generic way to send money around via SMS. I know Discover Card will let you generate 1-time use card numbers in general. If they could figure out how to package that into a generic platform for making SMS purchases, they would own a piece of a whole new class of transaction.
Update 1: On second thought, this idea feels more like something Paypal or Google Checkout should do.
Update 2: The folks over at Webware posted an update after (successfully) trying the service last night.
Beer: The Goat Edition
April 19, 2007
Some great stuff found via this Engadget article: “Beer to Thank for Consumer Electronics Explosion?”
“Before beer was discovered, people used to wander around and follow goats from place to place. And then they realized that this grain [barley] could be grown and sprouted and made into a bread and crumbled and converted into a liquid which gave a nice, warm, cozy feeling. So gone were the days that they followed goats around.”
-brewer Charlie Bamforth
Funny how things come full-circle. In these days of urban living, probably the only thing that would get me follwing a goat around (or at least thinking I was follwing a goat) would be a few pints. So it goes.
See also this USB shot glass. Not gonna lie, I’d definitely buy a pint version of this. Finally a game I could beat little kids at: Drink Drink Revolution!
Also well worth checking out is this epic marketing ploy from Microsoft. You just know Hugh’s Blue Monster didn’t have anything to do with this one, because then they would have had to use South African wine instead of Australian beer. (Sorry, Hugh, just getting your goat. =P)
Sidebar: Shouldn’t some folks in Redmond be worried that I’m more interested in MS’s marketing than any of their actual technology these days? Discuss. Use both sides of the sheet if necessary.
In other news… it’s Thursday, otherwise known as the start of the working week for my life’s true calling. And in some ways, going out to the bar tonight will mark the beginning of Spring Weekend… one of the social-est and the drunk-est weekends each year at Brown University. Sure, I’m not a college student anymore, blah blah blah, but I’m sure a good time will be had all the same. You bring the warm, cozy feelings, and I’ll bring the goat.
Happy-Hour Mashups Reviewed at Webware
March 30, 2007
Providence Beer Map
March 9, 2007
In an earlier post, I linked to Dethroner.com’s review of 9 beer-mapping sites. I think some of them are pretty neat, but there’s at least one major problem… none of them have very good coverage of my current home, Providence, RI. Since I know there are plenty of beer-loving geeks in this city, I’d like to get the ball rolling on a Providence Beer Map.
I was originally tempted to roll-my-own solution, but fortunately I came across Platial first. It took 2 minutes to set up and WordPress has built-in support for loading the MapKit into the sidebar of this blog. Most importantly, anyone can add locations as they see fit, as well as tag, rate and comment spots. It looks like a great and easy way to start building our database. Awesome.
That said, Platial is a generic tool, so I can easily imagine outgrowing it rather quickly as we start using it to find hangouts. Fortunately, if that does happen, and I decide to roll-my-own more focused app, scraping out the spots we’ve put into Platial will be pretty easy, so entering spots now isn’t going to lock us in or anything bad like that. Sweet.
I’ll be adding to this map at a leisurely pace, and I encourage other Providentialites(?) to pitch in their favorite gin joints, etc. If you’re not local, I encourage you to start your own Platial map and post the link in the comments.
Kegulator
March 7, 2007
Just found Kegulator via http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/06/the-much-needed-beer-calculator/
Solves the problem of figuring out how much beer to buy before a party. Neat idea, although my experience with keggers is that you’re not really sure how many people are going to show up in the first place. Mashup this functionality with the RSVPs from an Evite, Facebook event invitation, or other service, and we’ll be really talking.
Home brewing looks like fun.
February 24, 2007
Here’s a smart guy with some recommended reading for homebrewing. I haven’t read any of the books, nor have I ever brewed beer at home… but both are on my to-do list. Yep.
The Internet as a tool for drinking…
February 22, 2007
There’s plenty to talk about in due time, but for now I’d like to get the ball rolling with a log of all the cool social drinking apps out there… any I’ve missed, please tell me in the comments. Thanks!
- Mixed drink stuff
- Beer stuff
- Wine stuff
- Bar/Happy-hour stuff
More later…
