Almost two years ago, I was having a drink with Keith in The Alembic Bar on my last night in San Francisco:
Keith buys me a beer from the local microbrewery. I opt for an amber ale while he plumps for an IPA. After the first sips, we compare tasting notes and once again speculate about a beer-oriented version of Cork’d.
Well, like Tom says, everyone’s got ideas. It’s following through that counts. So that’s exactly what Blue Flavor have done. They built 97 Bottles:
97 bottles is a totally free, new service that lets you review, recommend, and learn about all kinds of beers. Use it to keep track of your favorite brews, find drinking buddies, and more.
It’s currently in private beta or, as they put in their nicely-crafted copy, in the cask fermenting.
But here’s the twist: if you have an OpenID you can sign in with that without waiting to be added to the list of beta testers. That’s smart. As Jeff put it:
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s OpenID evangelism!
So head on over and sign in with your OpenID. I’ve been kicking the tyres, adding some new beers to the site and reviewing existing ones. It’s a well-crafted social network: fun and useful.
All it needs is a little sprinkling of microformats.