Beer + Twitter + Maps = Family Circus Style Pub Crawls
Twitter is a one hundred and forty character blog. “That’s dumb”, is likely what you are thinking and I must admit that I was skeptical at first too. But twitter is heavily integrated into mobile and non mobile devices and inputs like text messaging from your phone or updates from your instant messaging program. If used correctly, twitter can be a great way to keep up with what your friends are doing and it can also be a great way to receive updates to blogs you wish to follow.
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.
April 6th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I love this. I hope your bus ride post at 5:11 wasn’t really from Crete. Stay tuned for tweets from my return to Lake Tahoe next week.
April 6th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
No, rather than entering street addresses I was entering intersections yesterday when riding public transportation. I think I entered “north and wood,chicago,il” and google didn’t recognize that intersection properly.
I think I will add another button on the twitter submission that will simply check the address before submission. It will require at least one extra click since almost all phones have issues with javascript.