WineRac - For Your Bottle Viewing Pleasure
Written By: Matthew Apsokardu on Thu, Jun 26th 2008
Wine is such a traditional part of human culture, it's difficult to envision anything besides rows of bottles in a dusty cellar. With such an old-world persona, it stands to reason that wine has seen a sluggish transition into the online universe. Classic Wines has worked hard to bring vino into the 21st century, and now has taken a dynamic step into presenting costumers with all the information they could want -- WineRac.
Don't be fooled -- WineRac shouldn't be interpreted literally. This is not an ornate wooden cabinet used to store bottles (far from it, actually). WineRac is actually a sophisticated piece of computer software used to gather, sort, and optimize information about the thousands upon thousands of wine bottles in existence.
Wine on the internet is still in infant stages. Wine lovers and producers are trying their best to insert as much information about bottles as they can, but the sheer size of the market makes progress seem limited. After all, more producers are popping up nowadays than at any point in history. In fact, wine is overtaking beer in American popularity polls! It's no wonder new vineyards are interested in revolutionary ways to stand out from the crowd.
Current wine aggregators utilize scrapping methods that can gather wine info from other sites, but struggle to create comprehensive, organized resources. WineRac uses a method of retrieval and active classification (RAC) in order to validate and categorize information. By collecting and filtering bottles in this fashion, WineRac can churn out optimized info that is easily searchable and provides users with what they really want to know.
Besides scrapping, there is another popular method of sharing wine -- feeds. A feed is a method of transferring all the information about a bottle (varietal, vintage, ratings, etc.) from one resource to another. The problem with feeds is that there is no standardized method of formatting. Without no real standards to speak of, feeds can be very hit or miss. WineRac aggressively sorts information in non-standard feeds and puts it to use where other software trips and fails.
So why should visitors to Classic Wines care? Not only does Classic Wines provide them with unparalleled articles, videos, and educational content, they are now running cutting edge technology to provide an extraordinarily comprehensive wine bottle list. With this progress, Classic Wines is one step closer to becoming your one-stop-shop for all things wine!
