Martini Groove

The nice thing about web developers is that, sooner or later, they're going to build a website based on their interests and make it pretty nice. Jean-Luc Thiébaut did just that with Connosr, the social networking site for whisky lovers. Now, because whisky snobs are, well, snobs, having their own site to talk about the vagaries of pungency and mouthfeel will keep Them off the backs of the gin drinkers. One can only hope. The site allows you to setup your own profile and then works in a lot of the same ways that the wine cataloging sites work. You can write notes on spirits you've tasted, put in ones you'd like to taste, see what your friends are saying about their experiences, and be called a "Rookie" by those that disagree with you. Check it out via the Web or iPhone. Connosr

Looking to get the peace and comfort that only Yoga can give?  Well, head on over to your nearest watering hole and get the flexibility you've always wanted! See more great moves here !

I <3 Camper!  Check it out.

Look!  An iPhone app!  These sure are rare! How about bellying up to the bar without actually having to move your belly, thus allowing said belly to grow?  myOrder can help with that.  myOrder is an iPhone app that allows you to order from inside your favorite bar/restaurant/snack shack.  The application uses the iPhone's faux-GPS to locate you, then you punch in your order, and voila!  Your order arrives without you having to stand four people deep and pray for a bartender's attention.  If you're a hot girl, this is not a problem for you.  If you're me, you don't drink much.  There's only a limited amount of places that you can use it right now, like San Francisco and your house.  Except when your significant other gets the order at your house it's called a "text message" and you better damn well remember that you owe them one.  You can pick up myOrder in the app store on iTunes. myOrder

The Happy Hour Lounge is all about casual banter, good music from multiple eras, and making sure that you know how to make a cocktail.  If only one person listens to the podcast and is able to get drunk, then Happy Hour Lounge will have fulfilled their mission.  In their most recent version they rocked some Ray Charles, talked about some great music history, and mixed a White Russian.  These are a few of my favorite things.  You can check out the podcast on crappy ol' iTunes or you can listen to them over at podbean.  I don't care how you do it, but you must listen.   The Happy Hour Lounge Podcast

The problem with Buyyourfriendadrink.com is that you have to use one of their participating bars.  GiveReal.com solves that problem by allowing you to use a credit card you already have.  Let me 'splain. Let's say you want to buy your friend a round for helping you move that Bowflex in to the laundry room where it can serve some actual use.  You can go to GiveReal.com and put some money in to their account.  Your friend gets an e-mail stating that you bought them a drink which then allows them to go on their site and register their credit card.  They can then use that credit card to purchase their drink at ANY restaurant or bar in America.  Since we've all become Facebook junkies, they even have a Facebook application.  Finally!  An application that you might actually use that doesn't involve a sex test or throwing a snowball at someone!  GiveReal.com

Are you training to be a bartender or just want to look like one?  MySpeedRail.com is the place for you! Somehow, they were able to do a 500 word press release that helps you garner practically NO INFORMATION WHATSOVER!  Except to tell you that you can't use it. The site will have a "variety of dynamic web 2.0 tools geared toward the professional bartender."  What are those tools?  I do not know.  Sounds like the perfect Web 2.0 business plan!  I'm sure it'll be wildly popular. It's in beta release right now so you'll need an activation code to get in.  If you have one, send it to me and I'll go Woodward & Bernstein on their asses and let the world know what it's about. MySpeedRail.com

So, Alder over at Vinography is probably the best blogger you'll read that's focused on wine.  Alder not only works on Vinography but also works for an e-commerce/web site development company.  You might see where this is going. There are a few cellar tracking points out there and I've pointed them out before.  Logabottle and Bottlenotes comes to mind and CellarTracker , with the latter being terribly user unfriendly.  Alder set out to solve this problem with VinCellar. It's easier to quote Alder here: The main purpose of this application is, of course, helping you do stuff with (or to) your wine collection -- from figuring out what you've got, where it is, how much it's worth, what you've bought, and what you want to drink, to what you probably should drink, what you should sell, and what you might not know about your wine consuming habits because you've never looked at the trends before. Pique your interest?  Well, you can also rate your own wi...

Beer 4 Chicks is a website that's not for the blonde bombshell in the beer commercial who gets on a strip pole at the mere mention of her favorite brand of beer.  No.  If that's you, stay away from this site.  Please, spend more time on my site. Christina Perozzi, who is hot enough to be in a beer commercial, is a beer expert and is doing for beer what Courtney Cochrane is doing for wine.  She takes on the dumb myths, plans cool parties, and informs women that it's okay to be a beer drinker and not have to take your top off at Lake Havasu Spring Break. The site has plenty of good info for everyone but is the beginning of a beer drinking community for women.  If you go to the site, look me up, my screen name is cougarhunter69. Beer 4 Chicks

Let's face it, the last party you threw had the same attendance as a Titanic Reunion Party (too soon?) even though you invited enough people to secure a Democratic Presidential nomination. Hey, not everyone can throw parties that barrel dangerously out of control so that the only way you can even recognize your own house is through the dental records of your cat, wherever HE is. PartyBluPrints (when they registered the domain they forgot the "e" but just said, "fuck it, we're party planners, not gud spellurs") helps you plan the whole thing, one might even say "from soup to nuts." The very second you have an idea for throwing that "My Mother the Car" DVD marathon party you can head over to their site and they'll give you everything you need for you to plan your party perfectly. From invitations, to the menu, to making sure that you don't play your Polka CD's all night. They have party plans for things like Guys Football Par...

It's kind of hard to look like a food-wine pairing pro when you're out on the town and ordering a Big Mac. Unless you thought to look it up before you left, your date will just give you a blank look when she asks you, "What wine goes with a Value Meal?" eWine match has solved the problem by allowing you to text the food you're having to 411511 and it will respond quickly with a few wines from different varietals that go well with the food. This is no "Red meat and red wine" service. If you put in "cheeseburger" you'll get results that include Cabs, but also Shiraz and Chardonnay. Try it for yourself. Sure, standard text messaging rates apply, but it beats the hell out of you giving all of your money to your phone provider because you're still trying to text your vote in for Chris Daughtry from last year. eWine match

Amazon has decided to start using their marketing muscle and hugely popular recommendation engine to start getting booze on your doorstep. Not too long ago, Amazon invested US$30 million in Wineshopper.com only to see that site go belly-up. Currently, they have a small partnership with Wine.com where Wine.com sells gift baskets on their site, but not wine. Some articles are stating that Amazon.com is going to hire a Senior Wine Buyer and handle things themselves. Decanter and others are saying that they have increased their partnership with Wine.com and all orders will be directed from Amazon to Wine.com. Though Wine.com has been successful in the last year, their business practices have come under quite a bit of public scrutiny of late due to the fact that they ordered a bunch of wine from other retailers and had it shipped to states that the retailers should not have shipped to, then proceeded to tattle-tale to state Attorney's General. Most wine bloggers are calling it ...

The how-to market has gotten fairly popular with WikiHow and others trying to get your attention. Howcast adds functionality to the how-to idea by making it easy to watch as well as making it easy to use over and over again. As an example, their How To Make a Classic Martini video shows off all of the cool features of their videos. Their video timeline lets you skip back and forth in the video to specific steps that are bookmarked as well as displaying text of the steps right below the video. As drink making guides are starting to abound (including this crappy one that Liquor Snob pokes fun at), getting good, easy-to-use information is becoming harder to find. There are lots more where this one came from on the site too. Also, Tamara is freaking hot. If you're going to watch someone teach you to make a drink, you might as well enjoy what you're looking at. Here's a sample of what the embedded player looks like, but head over to the site to see the full functionality.

We bloggers are an extraordinarily snobby bunch of wanna-be's. When we're all hanging out with each other (hint: we don't hang out with each other because we also have so much disdain for bloggers that we can't stand to be in the same room with them for more than 10 minutes, this hatred runs so deep that it usually ends in suicide once we figure out that we are, ourselves, bloggers) we make fun of the uninitiated by ordering drinks from TGI Friday's like an Aviation or walking around pronouncing the "t" in "Cabernet" and "Merlot." Well, now it's your turn to make us look like idiots (hint: that's not very hard). Mashable has created a list of 30+ resources that you can use to become every bit as good as a wine snob as the guy at work who boasts of his cellar containing a full case of 2006 Rabbit Ridge. Maybe even moreso. All About Wine

After a raucous game of Bunnies the other night I thought I'd try to some more definitive rules. I found my way back to TikiBarTV and their awesome explanation on the history of the insane drinking game. I love you Dr. Tiki. I love you.

Edit to the Edit: Clever logo should also have the full clever name. idrinkwell.com Edit: The site seems to be down. Not sure if we killed it or they were going to kill it and the new popularity made them take it down. I will give you info as soon as I have some. Going to new towns is never easy when you're looking for a good drink. You usually have to go on some concierge's advice who never goes out or, if the hotel doesn't have a concierge, some other guy in the bar who's been to that town two more times than you have. Zagat has introduced Drinkwell to let you know just where to go and what to expect from a city's local watering holes. Just as they've done for restaurants, they've put together a list of bars and clubs in most major cities that give you the booze ratings based on professional and user reviews. The ratings are based on the drinks themselves (quality of mixers, selection, etc), service, and then by cost, so you can show up anywhere in ...

In 42 Below's short history they've come up with some of the most innovative, clever, and tongue-in-cheek ads out there. They almost always cross the line and go well beyond it, then they put it on YouTube just for posterity. Vodka University is one of their creations and teaches you some of the basics of bartending in a not-so-basic way. They cover necessary items like shaking, pouring, and, my personal favorite, rimming. Oh yeah, the vodka's not so bad either. You can do a search on YouTube or use the power of the Quicktime plug-in to check out the whole experience at www.vodkauniversity.com

Let's pretend for a second that you don't know every little thing about cocktails and how to make every drink in the Bartender's Handbook (including the shown Fogcutter). Now, let's take a HUGE leap in to this imaginary world and say that you're out on a date at your favorite "date spot," TGI Fridays. Maybe ordering a beer just isn't what you want to do on this night out and if you have to hold another pink drink while carefully sipping and making sure the fancy toothpick doesn't go up your nose you'll walk in to a biker bar and yell "I love Clay Aiken" just because you know you deserve to get beat up. You decide you want to order something unique and different and probably something the bartender who's only real skill is the ability to blend the Choco-Banana 'Tini. Conversation ensues (and is taken from real experience): "I want an Aviation." "Um. How do you make that?" "With Gin." "Oh, ...

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If you're lucky enough to live in one of the By Your Friend a Drink.com markets, then you're lucky enough to get a free drink this holiday season. The company allows you to purchase a type of gift certificate so that you can purchase a round for your buddies, but they do it via gift cards and even text message validation codes. It's smarter to use their cards because if you buy a US$25 gift card, they throw in another US$5 for you to get your drink on. This holiday, if you request a drink card (it comes free and has US$10 on it) then buy a card for a friend, they'll match the gift card you buy up to US$15. That's a whole lotta free. Buy your friend a drink (.com)