That's probably what most of the users are thinking right now.  So first and foremost I should apologize for the fact that the site has been neglected.  As I'm sure everyone is aware the economy is pretty darn sweet right now (yes I'm being facetious) and so because of that I have been required to take on quite a few work projects.  Before I could devote a significant amount of time to keeping HopChart up to date, getting people's submitted beers and locations into the system.  However, for the last few months I simply don't have the time to devote to this and other things that need attention.

Before moving on I should chat really briefly about the process I do to add a beer to the system.

1. Check whether or not it is in the system under either some alias or it simply is just in the system.  Sometimes beers can just get by our nets and people will resubmit the same beer.
2. If it isn't in the system I will typically have to do a search to verify the authenticity of the submitted beer: name, brewery, abv, description, etc.
3. Sometimes I will have to add a brewery if one isn't in the system.  This requires me to:
   1. Look up brewery.
   2. Enter name, address, phone, description, etc
4. Then I make any necessary corrections to the beer.
5. Select the brewery.
6. Done!

So that doesn't look all that bad on the surface.  In reality when you're dealing with dozens and dozens of beers it becomes quite tedious and time consuming.  I'm not saying this to gather pity, rather I'm just trying to put some perspective on the fact that I don't simply hit an 'Add' button for every beer that comes through.  On the other hand I know it can be frustrating when you've taken the time to submit the information and you haven't received any gratification.  I truly apologize for this.  

I am currently in the process of revamping the way the beers are added to the system and will be training in a few of my friends to help alleviate the process (divide and conquer).

Until then I will try and push through as many as I can since I am currently in a bit of a lull with work.

Again, apologies to all the dedicated HopCharters who have stuck with this.  You'll get your points very soon!

Cheers! 

Thanks to the team over at Rage Digital for getting the app released.  It took a little while to get through the approval process but I'm happy to announce that the HopChart iPhone Application V1.0 is out in the wild!  I will be updating the site with a link to it, but you can get it here.

This is a first version so please let me know if you run into any problems.

So during our redesign one important feature was left back with the old design.  And that was the permission requests to publish to Facebook.  For the old guard of users who was using V1.0 they already provided permissions to publish but we've had a lot of new members who want to publish to Facebook and have probably been baffled as to how this works.  Well I just published the missing piece that will probably answer more than a few questions.

First, you have to link your HopChart account to Facebook.  You can do this in Settings or you might have done this when you signed up.

Next make sure the Publish checkbox is selected.

After you add a new drink you should see a message that describes that HopChart needs special Facebook permissions.  Just follow the instructions and make sure to select the 'Allow' option when each Facebook prompt appears.

If you have any questions or discover any bugs please send an email to contact@hopchart.com

Thanks!

Up until now all of the administration of brewery information has been handled by me.  A relatively tall task that opens the opportunity to make mistakes (darn my fat fingers) or miss newly released beers.  To help me out and to help you promote yourself and your awesome beers why not administer your own information!

Right now it will be a manual process to provide administrative access, but hopefully it can be a little more automated in the future.  First, if you haven't signed up for HopChart register for an account here, keep track of the email you used as I will need this to connect the administration permissions.  In order to make sure only brewery owners are managing their brewery information you will need to register with an email address tied to your brewery's website domain or an email address that is listed on your website.  We'll have to come up with other creative ways to prove you own your brewery in the event that you don't have either.

After you've done the above email me the email and brewery information and I will provide you a link you can access to manage your brewery!

Currently you are able to manage your profile and add/edit your beers.  More features will hopefully be coming!

*I should caveat that the editor will probably only work in modern browsers, such as Firefox 3+, Safari 3+, Chrome, and IE 7+, hey they're all free :P

HopChart along with Mark from the St. Paul Summer Beer Festival are proud to announce a new contest for HopChart users!  St. Paul Summer Beer Festival is one of the best summer beer festivals in the Twin Cities and this year proves to be even better than years past.  Tickets will go on sale March 21st, but HopChart users have a chance to win 1 out of a total of 4 pairs of tickets.

HopChart loves its current user base that is very active but with the weather starting to warm up we want to spread that love to others who may enjoy having an easy way to journal the beers they enjoy drinking.  Following that line of thinking this contest kicks off our first member drive.  Winners will be selected based on the number of new members our users can bring on board.

You can get details about the contest here:   St. Paul Summer Beer Festival Contest

You can get details about the St. Paul Summer Beer Festival here:  St. Paul Summer Beer Festival

Thanks for using HopChart!

We're excited to announce a major redesign of HopChart!  One night I just decided I wanted to make the design more conducive for providing  information to users.  About a week and half later I'm proud to roll out this redesign. 

There may be a few bugs and visual problems.  One I can think of right now (that makes me shudder) is how the site looks in Internet Explorer.  This is kind of my plea for all my HopChart users to dump IE :)  I can dream...  If the site looks funny on your browser and you're using Chrome, FireFox or Safari try refreshing by holding the Shift key and pressing the refresh button.  A style sheet may get jammed up in the cache.

Otherwise, hope everyone likes the design and I welcome feedback from anyone who has some!

Cheers!

When I first started tinkering with HopChart it was shortly after Facebook had released Connect, the platform that allows websites to  be more 'social' by allowing people with Facebook accounts to interact with their site.  This was a very early version of the Connect platform and in the mean time I spent most of my efforts building the other functionality of HopChart.  A few weeks ago I received a nice email from Facebook informing me that the Connect API I was using would be disabled February 16th.  So nothing like a little pressure to encourage an upgrade.  Well after a weekend of tinkering my friend and only other HopChart developer, Jordan, got the latest Facebook Connect API working. 

This updated Connect API is significantly better than the one we used before.  First, you will no longer see a pop up asking for your permission to post a drink to your stream.  Second, the extended review you add to HopChart will be used as your Facebook comment.  Third, this all will take place automatically.  All you have to do is provide HopChart permission to do so.  So if you have a Facebook account connected to your HopChart account, the next time you add a drink you will get prompted to allow these permissions.

Finally, this paves the way to publishing your feed with upcoming mobile applications, which we think is really exciting!

Thanks as always for using HopChart and don't hesitate to email any feedback or bugs.

Well the first month of 2010 is officially over and we're already almost a full day into February.  In the month of January we picked a winner for Winterfest (congrats Scott McGerik), have seen some new faces (awesome...and welcome!) and continue to see great beers from our current users.  So before anything else I just want to send out a huge THANK YOU to all the HopChart users.  The site would be nothing without you!

I haven't had a lot of time to devote to HopChart so those who have sent me suggestions they are definitely not going unrecognized.  There have been a few updates, the first and most noticable is the new filtering on Top Users, Top Rated, and Most Rated.  These filters show you:  Last 7 Days, Last 30 Days, and All Time (like it used to be all the time).  These lists are likely to change much more frequently and hopefully one day we can show some interesting trending associated with the beers that people like at different times of the year.  The iPhone web application also has some updates and now allows you to enter in a beer that doesn't show up in the list. 

A few things that are currently in the works are implementing a new Facebook Connect API.  Some have suggested changing the wording of the posts that occur on Facebook feeds and others have suggested not having to type in their comment twice.  Well with the new Facebook Connect implementation this will go away.  We'll allow you to alter the text that gets posted to your feed and pull the comment from HopChart and publish it as your comment.

We are also busy working on the first (of hopefully a few) native mobile application for the iPhone.  I've included a few screenshots here. 

We're pretty excited about it and hope that it makes the process of entering beers easier. 

Some things that are interesting to us include FourSquare API integration and possibly Yelp! API integration.

That's about it for now, thanks for reading and of course thanks for using HopChart!

We had the first ever HopChart Event to select the winner of the 2 tickets to Winterfest on Thursday night at the Edina Grill.  We had a good turn out and arrived to an absolutely packed restaurant.  Many of the active members were able to interact with and meet other members.  We also had some special guests from Lift Bridge and Fulton who hung out and met with HopChart users and also brought along some great raffle prizes.  But the highlight of the night was picking the winner of the Winterfest Tickets!  And the winner was Scott McGerik!  Who also happened to be in attendance so I didn't even have to coordinate to deliver the winning pair of tickets :)

Thanks for everyone who was able to make it to the event, I think I met everyone who was there but if I didn't I apologize.  Hopefully we can have more events in the future.

Special thanks to Ryan at Fulton and Dan at Lift Bridge for bringing the raffle prizes and special thanks to David at the Edina Grill for letting me have my event at such a great location!

Thanks for reading and keep HopCharting!

A few weeks ago I received an email from Evan Pedersen from The Well Fed Guide to Life asking if I'd be willing to be a guest on one of his podcast recordings.  I honestly didn't know much about the show but the idea of getting some more exposure definitely sounded great.  We settled on Town Hall in Minneapolis. 

The episode was dedicated to beer and HopChart.com.  After feeling a little nervous initially (I mostly stared at the recorder that sat in front of me) I think I became more relaxed.

Big thanks to Evan and Dave for having me on and letting me talk about the site.  The episode is available on iTunes and at this link