It's nearly two months since I announced that I was working on the beer engine again. There's nothing much to see but I have been making a little progress. I've got the bare bones of the map browser working. Getting the data back and forward turns out to be the easy bit. Collating the data and presenting it on the client is the fiddly bit. I once wrote some javascripts to sort, filter and display archived invoices (stored as XML on a CD) using only a browser. I wish I could remember exactly how I did it.

http://phptest.beerengine.com/map2.php kind of shows you what I'm up to but till I get some quality time to work on it things like map pointers and rollovers are just items on a wish list.

I've also dipped my toe in location based content for smartphones. I've got a page which will display a map of your current location on an iPhone. Big deal, Google Maps does it all the time. The difference is that my page has access to all the data in the beer engine and I know how to use it. The usual problem of lack of time is frustrating.

http://phptest.beerengine.com/wai3b.php if you really need to know where you are.