Pub Monopoly is a mobile web application designed to run on smart phones or other
similar mobile devices.
After a rudimentary test, I have detected that you are not visiting with a mobile
device. If you think this is wrong please click here.
Pub Monopoly will still work in desktop browsers, however the page will look stretched
on large monitors and geolocation results will most likely be less accurate.
Pub Monopoly is a free location-based social tool which allows users to find and
check in to a selection of pubs along the 22 London streets featured in the popular
standard British edition of the Monopoly board game. Participants of the bar crawl
can use the application on their mobile device while they are out-and-about sampling
the delightful alcoholic beverages that London pubs offer.
The list of pubs in this application have been personally verified and are eligible
for the Monopoly pub crawl.
Be sure to check out the demonstration video on the right
Check in
You can check in to any venue by tapping the large 'check in' button located at
the bottom of every pub page. 'Checking in' is a core part of Pub Monopoly and is
a feature that is only made accessible once your current location has been successfully
established.
When you visit any pub page your browser will prompt you to share your location with
Pub Monopoly which allows the application to verify your check in, and present location
based information to you such as maps, distance and walking directions.
Pub Monopoly verifies that you are allowed to check in to a venue by checking that
your current position is less than a certain error threshold. The accuracy of the
geolocation response is also factored in to ensure that you can check in even if
your device lacks accurate location sensors.
Checking into a venue allows you to keep track of which pubs you've visited during
your pub crawl and each check in will increase your distance travelled metric and
will improve your rank on the leaderboard.
Accounts
To view certain pages of Pub Monopoly you must first be signed into an account.
Being signed into an account allows Pub Monopoly to disambiguate between users since
the application provides a personalised experience to each user.
Registering for an account is dead simple — there's no unnecessary hoops to
jump through. Simply choose a unique username (you will be told if its been taken)
and a password, next, enter your chosen password once more to verify you didn't
make any mistakes. Passwords are stored using military-grade SHA1 encryption.
To sign in, simply enter your username and password and optionally check the "remember
me" box to be automatically signed in whenever you revisit the site.
Navigation
Navigating around the application is also dead simple. At the top of every page
is the main navigation allowing you to jump to the home, pubs or profile pages at
any time. In addition, the account controls are always present at the top right
of the screen.
Blue pagination arrows lets you go to the next and previous pages of the leaderboard
and also allows you to navigate to the next available or previously available pub
page that has not already been checked in to. Greyed out arrows indicates that navigation
in that direction is not currently possible.
Profile
For signed in users, Pub Monopoly has an individualised profile page to show a few
interesting statistics. Information about the sign up date, distance travelled and
number of check ins are presented on this page. As a fun extra, your profile page
will also tell you how many more miles are needed to be travelled to equal the distance
between the Earth and the moon.
From the profile page, you can reset your check in data which allows you to re-check
in to previously checked in to pubs. This is useful if you decided you liked the
pub crawl so much that you want to participate again. Resetting check in data does
not delete the previous check in history entirely which preserves the information
shown on the profile page.
The leaderboard is a fun way to see the most loyal user of Pub Monopoly since it
is essentially a list of all users ordered by their number of check ins.
Technology
Pub Monopoly is built using the latest technology. The application is written in
ASP.NET Model View Controller 3 using the C# programming language with views being
rendered with the ASPX view engine.
Entity Framework is used to map relational data stored in Microsoft SQL Server 2008
to .NET classes.
The latest version of HTML, HTML5, is used for markup, with the data-* attribute
used to store latitude and longitude values in the DOM acquired via the browser's
geolocation functionality.
CSS3 is used for presentation and layout and the popular jQuery JavaScript library
is used for page behaviour, designer-friendly DOM querying and its extensive AJAX
function.
Google's JavaScript maps API is used to render a map with pub and current location
markers. A call to Google's direction service provides walking directions.
All logos are copyright to their respective owners.
How can I access it?
Pub Monopoly is available by simply typing http://pubmonopoly.com
into any modern mobile web browser. If your user agent is compitable you will be
automatically redirected to the mobile site.
If you are too lazy to type a URL then I have good news for you! Simply scan the
QR code on the right with any suitable scanner app you have on your phone and just
like magic you will be taken to the site.
There is no app store to visit, no platform restrictions, no install process and
no unnecessary hoops to jump through. All Pub Monopoly requires in an active network
connection and a browser which supports the geolocation API.
