I'm glad to announce that my recent pet project, Beertraq, is now in a (somewhat closed) beta stage! The basic idea is there and functioning, but the extra functionality isn't done and it's far from polished. Nonetheless, it's time to take her for a test drive!

Note from future-Nick

I got lazy and never finished Beertraq, and Untappd ended up releasing not long after. Though it took them years to implement a barcode scanner in the app, which was going to be a core thing in Beertraq.

So what is Beertraq, you ask? It's a way for you to keep track of which beers you've tasted, compare those with others, read beer reviews, and most importantly discover new beers to try. I originally got the idea from The Flying Saucer's UFO Club, where members work toward a goal of drinking 200 different beers. Once they complete the task, they get their name on a plate which gets put on the wall of the bar. The cool part about the UFO Club is that it's all computerized, using a magstripe card to login at a kiosk in the bar. You can also log in to their website to check your progress and read reviews on there. I figured that if The Flying Saucer can have that system for their bar, I could do the same for the world.

If you're interested in becoming a BeerTraq beta user, send an email to beertraq (at) beertraq (dot) com with the email address you want to use for your account. All I ask is that you give feedback by filling out issue requests with bugs you find or suggestions you might have.