We have a full fledged mobile site (beermapping.com/m) with search, forums, reviews and even proximity functions available. And our system also works with all recent versions of google’s mobile mapping software. If this interests you, check out our Mobile Functions page.

Here is what we have to say about our mobile functionality on our tools and applications page:

Mobile Functionality

The Mobile Lookup page is simply a scaled down version of our regular location search functionality here on the main site. We’ve set up our Mobile Lookup page to be a very easy to remember url:
http://beermapping.com/m (the M is for mobile).

We also have set up some Mobile Map functionality that is now linked from the Mobile Maps Lookup page. You can read more about the Mobile Map functions click the following link:
Mobile Maps and Applications

Reviews, score breakdowns, weather, traffic and maps are all available through the beermapping.com/m url. We’ve even included a tiny version of the regular forums as well if you like to participate in discussions while on the go. As far as we are aware, there isn’t a beer based website around that is providing the level of mobile functionality that The Beer Mapping Project is giving you. Recently we’ve also integrated Twitter into our mobile application.

If you have any ideas about how we can better help flesh our our mobile interfaces, please let us know in the comments. We know that many of you will mention or ask about iPhone apps or applications for other platforms. Well, there are some applications under development for iPhone, Android and possibly Blackberry. The only one that we have been working on in-house is the Android application. You can watch a teaser video of it here.

Note: Even though our beers are mobile, we would still like for you to be responsible and avoid drinking and driving. We encourage our users to add any public transportation options to their reviews and if there is no public transportation readily available, please find a designated driver.

The new feature is a little graphic that appears in what used to be some white space above and to the right of the location address information. This graphic is actually a dynamically generated image that is provided to us through one of google’s chart technologies. We’re using this technology to create what is called a QR Code (quick response code).

Here is an example of what the QR Code looks like on the review page (note the big red arrow):

These codes can be scanned via some special software that you can install on many different types of smart phones. Android phones can use the “Barcode Scanner” application to scan the codes. iPhones and Blackberries and other phones can possibly use an application provided by BeeTagg or possibly the Kaywa Reader.

After the image is scanned your mobile device will decrypt the QR Code and show you the information contained within. In our case, a scan will put the mobile version of that page onto your phone, allowing you to bookmark locations you want to visit or look at later.

An example of a QR Code containing the url for the mobile page for 21st Amendment Brewpub:

If you are still a bit confused as to what we’re talking about here, or if you just want to see this scanning technology in action, watch the following 45 second video. It is a bit blurry, but we hope it gets the point across!

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.

The process has changed slightly and is more streamlined. You simply have to be a registered user of the site and click the link onthis page.

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.

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!

Ok, it’s not so much designed to function with tiny screens, as it simply has no design; therefore smaller screens can display it fairly well. Also this page happens to be the only lookup that I have scanning through all of the locations in the database (the main search here is just brewpubs and breweries).

The mobile page is generally just a quick lookup page that does not have any direct connection with the maps themselves. The page tries to provide links to both the location’s official site and three reliable outside sources of beer-information.

Feel free to check out the page at beermapping.com/m. And bookmark it on your mobile device.

Check out opera’s mini simulator here.