Okay, you probably won’t believe me, but…
A few months ago, probably while walking around a town I’d never visited before, I pondered the amount of time I waste in such situations by looking for a good pub. Now, I’ll admit I’m something of a beer geek; while some people would walk into the first vaguely structurally sound establishment they came to, ordering a pint of generic lager, I’m a bit fussy. I want a place that pumps proper ale, and if there’s a choice of places, I want the most interesting ale.
So, I thought, wouldn’t it be great if you could use your mobile phone to get information about the pubs in your immediate vicinity? My mind returned to this idea occasionally over the next few weeks, but I hadn’t thought about it in a while until I read Gizmodo this evening. Bah! Someone got there before me.
It’s a great idea, but it’s flawed. It seems to work by establishing your location based on the cell you’re in, which is perfectly reasonable, except an average GSM cell can cover a lot of pubs and a *lot* of walking. I’d far rather have a system where you could enter “streetname/town” or somesuch. Something like that could then work dually via a WAP site as well as SMS.
But the biggest flaw is that they used the Good Pub Guide for their pub database, rather than the far superior CAMRA Good Beer Guide. This, combined with the lack of geographical accuracy, meant my first try (from home) generated the name of a pub over two kilometres away, when there’s a truly wonderful CAMRA-approved place just 50 metres away. Still, it’s early days, and I’m grateful that someone has put cellphone technology to another good, practical use.