How many times have you found yourself standing in the booze aisle at the market staring at all those bottles of wine, unable to decide on what to pick for that get together you’re already late for? One time, I spent a near 45 minutes cross referencing beer and wine brands in my smart phone’s web browser in order to pick out just the right varietal. Well now there’s an easier way to make these decisions and it’s all thanks to the new mobile app called Next Glass. From Gizmodo:
Kurt Taylor, founder and CEO of Next Glass, told me the idea came from eating out with friends, suffering through “one of those novel-sized wine lists,” and ending up drinking something terrible. It wasn’t so much that it was a terrible wine. (The waiter had recommended it because it was his favorite.) That particular wine just wasn’t what Kurt and his friends wanted.
Enter science and technology. Taylor decided to chase the demand for a smartphone-driven booze-recommendation engine like any good American entrepreneur would: with algorithms. In order to build the app, Taylor and his team traveled around the country collecting samples of beer and wine from as many local breweries and wineries so that they could analyze the chemical make up of the booze in a lab. (They shipped in lots of products from overseas, too.) Those chemical profiles were then linked together not only based on flavor but also attributes like region of origin and even the type of bottle or cork involved. (Via)
There are obvious correlations between this booze recommendation engine and the likes of Netflix or Pandora. The difference is instead of movies and music, the Next Glass app analyzes the data about the bottles you enjoy to predict how much you’ll appreciate a new beer or wine. And like any successful mobile app, there are social features built in that allow you to view your friends’ ratings so you can see how much they might appreciate the bottle you’ve chosen.
While some of the downfalls of the app appear to be the availability of certain beers and wines located in stores. Next Glass will soon be adding geolocation-based features and are planning to work with liquor stores on inventory-management. And while you may not need your mobile phone telling you what it thinks you should be drinking, the app may prove to be a fun alternative than listening to the store clerk’s recommendations.
(Source: Next Glass / Gizmodo)