What is Meet4Drinks?

Meet4Drinks is like eVite, but for impromptu casual meetings between friends at conveiently located pubs, bars or coffee shops. The idea for Meet4Drinks comes from my desire to learn more about building useful location-aware applications that blend the various location web services with the capabilities of Apple iOS devices. Meet4Drinks should make it painless for a user to setup a meeting, invite one or more friends and then find a centrally located pub, bar or coffee shop for the meeting.

User Stories

Register with Meet4Drinks web site.

Users register on http://www.meet4drinks.net in order to use the service. A user name, password and e-mail address are stored on the system. An confirmation e-mail message is sent to the provided e-mail address to activate the account.

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Log into Meet4Drinks web site.

Existing users can log into the web site using their user name and password.

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Manage your Meet4Drinks profile.

The user profile contains a list of common travel starting points and a list of favorite meeting locations. The user should be able to type in addresses for travel starting points on the web site or from the iPhone application. The list of favorite meeting locations can be similarly edited from either application. The user profile also contains an indication of the user's notification preference. Does the user wish to receive Meet4Drinks notifications via e-mail or push notifications.

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Invite friends to meet for drinks.

The user proposes a meeting and invites friends much like scheduling an event in a calendaring application. The invitation includes a name/topic for the event, a proposed time for the event and a list of e-mail addresses for friends to invite. Invitations can be created from either the web application or the iPhone application. The user who creates the invitation can set a flag to indicate if he/she will permit other attendees to propose alternate locations for the meeting.

When an invitation is created it is stored on the server and each attendee is notified of the invitation. Notification is either by e-mail or push notification, depending on whether the e-mail address matches a known Meet4Drinks user. If a match is found then notification is done according to the user's preferences. If no match is found then an e-mail message will be send. The e-mail message contains a link to back to the web site plus a custom protocol link that would directly launch the iPhone application and open the event on an iPhone.

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Search for a meeting location (pub, bar, coffee shop) located a convenient distance from all meeting attendees.

Meet4Drinks assists the meeting organizer in selecting a location for the meeting once those invited have indicated whether they plan to attend. The Meet4Drinks server handles computing the starting point for a search and the radius of the search for locations. The locations where each attendee has indicated that they will be traveling from is not disclosed to the meeting organizer.

The application should display a map with markers/pins for all of the locations that are within the desired area. It should be possible to adjust the criteria for the search and refresh the map (ex. include pubs and bars but not coffee shops). Pressing on the marker for a location should disclose more information about the location (name, address, phone number, Yelp rating if available). The organizer can select a location from the map as the destination for the meeting. Once selected the location is updated back on the Meet4Drinks server and the server will notify attendees of the change.

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View drink invitations.

The application should provide a simple list of drink invitations. The status of each item in the list should be visible. Clicking on an invitation should display details of the invitation (attendee status, meeting time, location, etc.). The user should be able to start navigating to the meeting location from his/her current location. The user should be able to propose a different venue for the meeting. The user should be able to accept a different location that was proposed by another attendee. The user should be able to accept a new drink invitation from a friend.