Tuesday, May 13, 2008

A Peek Into My Cellar

CellarTracker, my preferred cellar management and tasting note program, has rolled out some fun new features that you may want to check out. Even if you are familiar with the program, you may not know that there are now ways to highlight posts made by your favorite tasting note authors, and allow friends to peek into your cellar.

To the right, you see a screen shot from Cellar Tracker, with the new featured areas highlighted with red indicators. I know it's a little small, but if you click on it you will enlarge it and be able to see how the new features appear on the home page.

Using the new features is simple. You can either search for a user in the search box on the upper left, entering their handle (mine is "drdebs") and using the pulldown menu to search for "users". This will take you to their profile page where you can indicate they are a favorite author or make them a "cellar buddy" so they can see the contents of your cellar. Or, if you are reading tasting notes and find an author who seems to share your palate, you can make them a favorite author simply by clicking on that option which appears for each tasting note in the database. Lots of bloggers and readers of GWU$20 are CellarTracker users, and it will be interesting to see how these features develop in the coming months.

By clicking on Buddies in the top menu bar, you will be given options on how to manage the people you've identified as friends and favorite authors. You can opt to only see tasting notes from these folks (although why you would do that don't ask me--the whole point of CellarTracker as far as I'm concerned is the enormous range of tasters), ignore tasters that you don't find helpful, and tweak the program in other ways.

I've started checking my buddies list and giving reciprocal favorite author stars and cellar access to people who indicate that they are readers, so if you want a peek into my cellar don't hesitate to indicate that you are interested on my profile so that I can do the same.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I strongly prefer Corkd.com. The buddy features are more fully developed and it's WAY more attractive than Cellar Tracker!

Dr. Debs said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dr. Debs said...

Sorry, major typo in my post. What I meant to say is to each their own. I want the best possible cellar management tool, and in my experience that's CellarTracker, which has the most users and the most features that I need. The buddy thing is value added--it's NOT why I use CT primarily.

Nancy said...

I will read your post on Cellar Tracker since I know nothing about this, but right now ... well, I've been on line since breakfast and that floor isn't going to mop itself, is it?
However, let me thank you for including my blog in your "worth reading" list. I had no idea and I'm so flattered. Thanks again.

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with your assessment of cellartracker. I have played around with ALL the others and CT is much more robust with a hefty database of wines and users. I am new to the wine thing...still in a very academic stage where all I am doing is reading reviews, blogs, etc and buying what I can afford. I have about 70 bottles of pure randomness listed on CT. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE to see your collection, if I could be so lucky!

IF you are interested in how I began collecting wine, please feel free to read this post on my blog:

http://www.cafeleone.net/2008/04/08/listening-to-me-wine/

Thank you for an excellent blog!

Dan Leone

Dr. Debs said...

Welcome, Nancy. And I'm glad I'm not alone in loving CT.

Dan, I've friended you or buddified you or whatever the correct term is. I enjoyed your post, and peeking into your cellar. We've got some pretty compatible wine tastes!

Don said...

I totally agree with you Deb on Cellar Tracker being the best cellar management tool available. I rely heavily on the reviews there.

On the new Buddy feature, I'm still trying to figure that out. I named you and Sonadora as buddies, mainly to see how it works. Sort of a guinea-pig approach (you being the guinea and me being the pig of course).
However, if you don't know the cellartracker user name you're out of luck -- and, as a CT user, you can look at any other users cellar -- am I missing something?
At any rate, I love cellar tracker.

Real quick - I notice several Bonny Doon selections in your cellar -- I've heard a lot about them, but never tried them -- any specific BD recommendations.

Cheers .. DRHamp