Hey Beersurfers,

We’ve been doing a lot of structural work to the site in the last few weeks. First, we compiled a fairly exhaustive list of the breweries and beers available worldwide. This amounts to over 10,000 breweries and 13,000 beers. Then we set out to map the locations of over 12,000 bars and brewpubs to surf. For now, these are mostly in the United States, but we have efforts underway to expand this listing to Canada, Germany and beyond in the coming weeks and months. We are in the process of updating the site to include all of this data!

Our hope is that this seed of locations and beers will make the site useful from the day it launches, and very easy to grow. You will be able to link beers and bars by updating which beers a particular bar has on tap and in bottles. Not only will this help to define the type of bar and it’s atmosphere, but it will allow beersurfers to search for where they can find a particular beer near them.

In a related vein, we are also actively verifying each address in our database to enable beersurfers to search by proximity. Once this feature is enabled, we will be able to prioritize search results by location. Eventually, this information will also allow us to objectively estimate how much bar clustering is occurring at any particular location – an excellent tool for pub crawling.

Speaking of pub crawls, we have also added the ability to invite your friends to meet you at a particular bar. Once you have found the perfect bar serving just the right beers in a great neighborhood, you’ll be able to invite your friends along from the same page. Whether they are beersurfers or not, all you have to do is identify the recipients and add a personal message. We will send them an email with information about the bar, a link to directions, and your message. Engineering a pub crawl will go from requiring intimate knowledge about a city to something any visitor could do in five minutes.

With all those time savings, you’ll have plenty more time at the bar. That’s why we’ve made the bar rating system iphone friendly. You’ll be able to upload your opinions and ratings onsite, as well as invite your friends to come join you if you find a real gem.

Other incremental improvements have also been made, and we have more enhancements in the pipeline. Stay tuned.

~D

When E and I first had the idea for this site, it was all about traveling. We saw beer as a magical gateway to the real lives of people the world over. I still believe in that ideal because beer in its many forms is so central to social interaction in so many cultures; it is indeed such a gateway. But, however transfixed we may be by the wonderfully eye-opening experience that is traveling, the cruel reality is that most of us spend most of our time near home. Now, I personally like my home, and no one can say that New York isn’t a diverse place. So, why not extend the adventure to the home front?

Our hearts will always be with the intrepid traveler looking to connect with locals in a foreign place. But let’s face it, just about everywhere in modern America is a foreign place. We all carry our existing social networks with us wherever we go, forever plugged in by cell phones etc. It seems that adventure is only a power button and a stroll away. To that end, the site will be geared towards both local and foreign adventures. Whether you are 1 or 1000 miles from your doorstep, we’re dedicated to finding you a great place to have a beer and a conversation.

~D

Hey everyone!  E here.  Sorry for the brief hiatus, but we here at Beersurfing have been extremely busy preparing to get you all drunk.  I just wanted to take a moment thank you all for taking the first survey – your answers were extremely valuable to me and D, who is very diligently cracking away at them to build a viable beer and bar recommendation model.  Meanwhile, I’m adding more and more sections to the site every night, which many of you may have noticed.  Probably not, since most of it is stuff I haven’t posted publicly yet.  The most noticeable change so far is the account system – you all can make accounts now*, a step which will be required if you want to start receiving bar and beer recommendations.  This will also be required to take the next survey, as we’ll be mapping your responses to your overall preferences, as well as using your email and the location you specify to notify you of your personalized selections.

One drawback to this approach is that we need a large amount of data to get started.  Within the next couple of days we’ll have a mechanism in place for everyone to start adding bars and beers to the site, posting pictures of them, rating them in various ways, and posting reviews about each one. When enough bars and beers have been added to the system, we’ll send out an email to all registered users, as well as those who left their email address with us on the last survey.

Time to get back to work.  D and I appreciate your interest in our website, and we look forward to getting to know each of you.

~E

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_{*Unless both of you IE6 users try to register – you won’t be able to show me where you are.  I’m still searching for a solution}