If you pay any attention at all to technology news, one of the big buzzwords right now is Web 2.0. For the uninitiated, Web 2.0 refers to the “next generation” of web services, where content is mostly created by individuals or collaboratively (rather than being created by big companies) and the web experience is more like desktop applications, utilizing technologies like web services, AJAX, and RSS. Blogs and wikis are generally considered to be part of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. (For a more detailed description of Web 2.0, see Wikipedia.)

You’re thinking: What does this have to do with me and the pursuit of good beer? I’m glad you asked!

Two interesting sites came to my attention recently. Both would be considered Web 2.0 applications and can help you and I and other thirsty beer seekers out there find good beer.

Beer Mapping Project

The Beer Mapping Project at beermapping.com is a project to help people find good beer using the Google Maps API. While it is U.S. only at the present time, it offers two types of maps: Regional Brewery maps and City maps. The Regional Brewery maps use icons to indicate the locations of breweries and brewpubs in six regions of the country. Everything from each of Anheuser-Busch’s locations down to little brewpubs way out in the hinterlands is listed here. Since it’s Google maps, you can drag the map around, zoom in and out, and get directions.

The other maps are City beer maps, and these are even more ambitious. For a given metropolitan area (and in some cases a State), icons are displayed for breweries, brewpubs, beer bars, and beer stores. I checked out Washington, DC and was shocked to discover how many good beer locations I didn’t know about.

At the time of this writing, Cities currently mapped include:

• Austin
• Baltimore
• Boston
• Boulder
• Chicago
• Cleveland
• Denver
• Detroit
• Los Angeles
• Madison
• Milwaukee
• Minneapolis
• North Carolina
• New York City
• Philadelphia
• Pittsburgh
• Portland
• San Antonio
• San Diego
• San Francisco
• Seattle
• St. Paul
• Washington DC

More cities are planned, but geocoding each address takes time. There are also forms to submit a missing location and to correct errors.

Coastr.com - the social guide to beer

Coastr.com is a social networking site centered around beer. Registered users can add beers that they enjoy and write reviews for them and, of course, find other people who like the same beers. Each user gets a rating, which is calculated on how many beers have been reviewed and how many people found the review helpful. Beers can be browsed by style, brewer, tags, and origin. If you really like a particular style or beers from New Jersey, this is helpful.

Additionally, registered users can add “places”. This is a little nebulous, but is supposed to be “establishments where you enjoy your favorite beers, as well as stores where you can purchase those great, hard-to-find brews.” I’d like to be able to categorize places like brewpubs out from other types of locations—I’d drive significantly further for a brewpub than for just a bar or beer store—but no such option exists. I give them credit for keeping things as simple as possible.

There includes a blog with the goings-on of the site, as well as a Wordpress widget (which you may very well see here on Hop Talk in the near future). They’re really embracing Web 2.0 and, in fact, received an honorable mention in the social tagging category in the SEOmoz Web 2.0 Awards.

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