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Show HN: goodbre.ws, a fully open source recommendation engine for beer

goodbre.ws

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Re: Show HN: goodbre.ws, a fully open source recommendation engine for beer

#21

Post by Tossrock »

davidcelis wrote: post #11
HaloZero wrote: post #9

How long until I can get recommendations? I rated a few beers but it would be nice to have at least some kinda estimation on how many I would have to rate.

Recommendations start getting generated immediately after you rate a beer. The site is in its infancy, of course, so recommendations may start out rocky but they'll get better as more people (and you) rate more beers. The sad state of the cold start! How long it takes for the recommendations to refresh is tougher to say, but it shouldn't be more than a few minutes. I can see that the workers that process them are act…

I liked three beers about an hour ago and my recommendation page is empty. Is the queue backed up due to an HN traffic spike?

Re: Show HN: goodbre.ws, a fully open source recommendation engine for beer

#22

Post by jlgreco »

davidcelis wrote: post #8
jbarciauskas wrote: post #5

My comment is that UX wise, I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing on the site. It took me a few minutes to realize there was a search bar in the upper right that really is the focus for finding the beer you like and seeding the database to get recommendations. I'd add some sort of initial training session, and generally feature the search bar as a sort of "improve your recommendations, rate some beers!" f…

Thanks, this is exactly the kind of thing I need to hear. As the person who made the site, I already know how to use it. I'll look into ways to make this all more obvious.

Also in the UX department, some search suggestions as you type could be nice, if that wouldn't add too much cost. Not a deal-breaker by any means but I found myself expecting it.

Re: Show HN: goodbre.ws, a fully open source recommendation engine for beer

#23

Post by davidcelis »

hmrmaxwell wrote: post #19
davidcelis wrote: post #2

Thanks for looking guys. This site has been a side-project/hobby of mine for a while now. The past few days for me have been spent rewriting it from the ground up to be a much better site. I know that there are other beer sites out there, but I think that there is something special about making a service like this freely available and open source, and I'm really proud of what I've created. You can check out the code…

What algorithm are you using to make recommendations? I've been looking around in the recommendable source but can't seem to find it.

That's under `lib/recommendable/acts_as_recommended_to.rb` towards the bottom. It's a combination of the `similarity_with(rater)` and `predict(object)` methods. Additionally, I detail the algorithm here: http://davidcelis.com/blog/2012/02/07/collaborative-filterin...

Re: Show HN: goodbre.ws, a fully open source recommendation engine for beer

#24

Post by adastra »

davidcelis wrote: post #17
dmix wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sites page loads are really fast. Well done in that respect.

PJAX, man. Loving it.

Whoa. Ok yeah that is seriously fast. This is the first I've heard of it -- if anyone cares to comment, I'd be really interested to hear what the limitations of pjax are. As used in this application anyway it's pretty impressive.

Re: Show HN: goodbre.ws, a fully open source recommendation engine for beer

#25

Post by michaelkscott »

adastra wrote: post #24
davidcelis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PJAX, man. Loving it.

Whoa. Ok yeah that is seriously fast. This is the first I've heard of it -- if anyone cares to comment, I'd be really interested to hear what the limitations of pjax are. As used in this application anyway it's pretty impressive.

If I recall correctly, it was written by github co-founder (defunkt) and powers github. It's pretty solid.

Re: Show HN: goodbre.ws, a fully open source recommendation engine for beer

#26

Post by modarts »

jlgreco wrote: post #22
davidcelis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, this is exactly the kind of thing I need to hear. As the person who made the site, I already know how to use it. I'll look into ways to make this all more obvious.

Also in the UX department, some search suggestions as you type could be nice, if that wouldn't add too much cost. Not a deal-breaker by any means but I found myself expecting it.

Minor recommendation on the search bar: the search button is a bit too small of a target. I know that most sophisticated web users hit enter when searching, but a sizable proportion are still click-happy.

Re: Show HN: goodbre.ws, a fully open source recommendation engine for beer

#27

Post by the_bear »

I rated a few beers, but my recommendation screen is empty. I get that it's a new site, so I can accept that it might be tough to get recommendations right away, but it would be really helpful to explain why there aren't any results. Is it because I haven't rated enough beers? Is it because there aren't enough other users that have similar tastes? Is it because there's a delay before results show up?

Also, I had to try searching for some beers multiple times because my search didn't quite match how it's entered in your database. For example, I didn't realize that "redhook" is one word instead of two. I know that search is tricky and it's perfectly understandable, but I just thought I'd let you know.

Other than that, it looks great. I'll definitely be checking back for recommendations in the future.

Re: Show HN: goodbre.ws, a fully open source recommendation engine for beer

#28

Post by corroded »

davidcelis wrote: post #11
HaloZero wrote: post #9

How long until I can get recommendations? I rated a few beers but it would be nice to have at least some kinda estimation on how many I would have to rate.

Recommendations start getting generated immediately after you rate a beer. The site is in its infancy, of course, so recommendations may start out rocky but they'll get better as more people (and you) rate more beers. The sad state of the cold start! How long it takes for the recommendations to refresh is tougher to say, but it shouldn't be more than a few minutes. I can see that the workers that process them are act…

LIke a few other people here, I also didn't get any recommendations even after liking(and disliking) beers. I'll follow up tomorrow and shoot you an email or tweet if I still don't see any recommendations. Good job! You even got the Philippine beers :)

Re: Show HN: goodbre.ws, a fully open source recommendation engine for beer

#29

Post by themanr »

Maybe have some filtering by country visible on the home page. It took me a while to figure out you actually had British beers in your database.

Also, I realise you're a ruby programmer but you should really consider including Python IPA http://littlevalleybrewery.co.uk/our-beers/python-ipa :)

Re: Show HN: goodbre.ws, a fully open source recommendation engine for beer

#30

Post by themanr »

davidcelis wrote: post #13
mmurph211 wrote: post #4

Nice site. I found all the beers I was searching for easily. I think I'd use this more on my mobile phone while at the bar vs on my desktop.

Yeah if I knew Objective-C I'd code up an iOS app for the site. Once I know for sure the desktop version is stable, I'll at the least be looking into making a more mobile-friendly site.

Maybe you could release an API so other people could write clients.
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