ok, I know you cafe owners have been waiting for this; you can now update your own cafe data on MCR. That’s right, log onto HotShots and it’s all there. The idea is that you can manage your own record that goes out to the web, iPhone and (soon) the Windows Phone 7. That means if you change coffee, barista, or even ownership, you can let the world know.

More to come… MCR

Yep, we have just been told by the Victorian government that we are a part of Victorian culture and as a publication (electronic and physical) we need to give one to both the Victorian State Library, and the Australian National Library to go into national archives. Also, it looks like they will, as of now, take a copy of the whole MCR web site for future Melbournian’s, so hello to you future coffee lovers, my grand kids, and great grand kids, and beyond I hope…Love from Peter Christo circa 2010!

How about them coffee beans!!

Pic: Off to history you go!!

Steve Agi (thecaffiend) is moving on from MCR after adding an afterburner to us for these two blurry years. His contribution has been amazing and we will miss his unique style. Mind you I assume we will be seeing him around the coffee traps. Steve has a few new caffeine fueled opportunities (I am sure he’ll let everyone know in due course) he wants to pursue, and who are we to hold him back. We wish Steve all the best with his coffee fueled adventures.

Hi all, here’s an email I got that asks an important question.

The Question:

Hi,

My wife and I have been here for a week on holidays from Brisbane. I downloaded your app for my iPhone and have been using it to find great coffee.

I found a place right near where we were staying which was not on your app, it is in little Collins street near 362 it runs off a little allyway. We got a coffee there the first morning as we could see people standing at this little window getting coffee. It’s part of Gills cafe and I understand that they are a commercial bakery. I spoke with the barrister this morning, they use rommcaffe coffee, it is very nice I must say it rates very highly with us, we had a coffee at Brother buda place the first day we got here and I would rate the coffee at Gills up there with Brother Buda.

I am not sure how these places make your list but thought that this little place was worthy of this app.

Regards

Denis

My Answer:

Hi Denis,

Thanks for taking the time out to email us. I think we may have reviewed Gills, I know I have been there a couple of times. Here’s how it worked, works and will work:

We were originally just a blog, and over time we developed into a group of bloggers, aka the Melbourne Coffee Review. We then chose our top 100 cafes and published a guide, and the iPhone application(no small feat I assure you, I had to abandon my consulting business). It was a subjective thing to a large degree, but we pretty well nailed the main good ones, a few perhaps were line ball.

We call any cafe with +1 Bean a ‘Hotshot(tm)’, so we established a listing of those cafes (including the top 100) under http://hotshots.melbournecoffeereview.com and now open this up for voting by people like yourself who appreciate good coffee and cafes (web, sms and soon iPhone) for a few months.

Anyone can register a candidate hotshot, and then two things will happen. 1. People vote over about 3 months, (which means new little gems can get on our radar) and then 2. We review the list. We choose the top 120-130 based on score but we also look at comments and our own knowledge of who is good and who has used facebook etc to load up the votes. My team and I then choose the top 100 for the year. That happens midyear for the following year.

Once that is completed, we push out to the publication, iPhone application and then sleep for a week for sheer exhaustion and over caffination.

Cafés of course are bought and sold and established in melbourne all the time. New little gems pop up and disappear. We are exploring ways to have our users update our systems, but we are not quite there yet.

Thanks again!

Peter
PS: We are coming to Brisbane!