Find Nestoria on Buyers Edge

Published by Ed on March 10, 2010 in partnerships. Comments

Fellow Nestorites,

we’ve gone live with a new integration with Buyers Edge! Buyers Edge is a service to help match prospective buyers with qualified buying agents and thus reduce the cost and stress associated with buying a new home. Although very common in some countries, particularly the US, buying agents have traditionally been less popular in the UK. Buyers Edge hopes to change that. Given that we spend all of our time thinking about how to make searching for property as easy as possible, it seemed natural that we should work together. Users of the Buyers Edge site can search the Nestoria database in a co-branded environment:

buyersedgeuk

Best of luck to Buyers Edge, and as always happy house hunting to all of our users!

Finally for all of our international readers I’m pleased to announce that we’ve gone live with two similar partnerships today – in Spain with regional media group El Correo Gallego, and in Germany with the popular online community answers site gutefrage.net.

Nestoria Interview – Chris Osborne – WhereCampEU

Published by Ed on March 9, 2010 in events and interviews. Comments

Fellow Nestors!

I know lately we’ve been on an interview tear, but today we had the chance to speak with Chris Osborne – one of the lead organisers of this week’s WhereCampEU to be held here in London.

Many of you will remember Chris from past Nestoria posts – he’s the man behind the regular #geomob events, and he worked with us last year on our Where Can I Live project. Chris thus officially becomes the first Nestoria team member to move up into the lofty realms of Nestoria interviewee. (And to think I knew him back when…. ). By day he hangs his hat at ITO World, which both fights the good fight to improve public transport for all of us and creates mindblowingly cool data visualisations.

WhereCampEU is sure to be a great event, showcasing the cutting edge of what’s happening in the European online geography space. We’re very pleased that Nestoria is a sponsor (along with geo upstarts like the Ordnance Survey, Google, Bing and Yahoo! amongst many other forward looking oranisations). We’ll hopefully be announcing a little geo-innovation of our own before the event (watch this space). We look forward to meeting any Nestoria blog readers at the event. Please say hello!.

Chris, thanks very much for making the time to chat with us.

1. You are organising the first WhereCamp in Europe. Can you explain what a WhereCamp is and what made you want to organise one?

I went to my first WhereCamp last year in Silicon Valley, right after the Where2.0 conference (editor’s note: Chris was kind enough to guest post a summary of Where2.0 with us last summer), and loved the participative nature of the event. Its an unstructured conference, or unconference as the kids say, with a blank timetable that the attendees create themselves by running sessions or doing a lightning talk. As the name implies, its all about geography, place and location technology. As something of a geography geek, I had so much fun that I just had to organise the first WhereCamp in the EU.

2. Who do you expect will attend the event?

I’ve worked hard to attract a wide cross section of attendees, a quick glance at the ticket list shows over 13 different countries represented from diverse backgrounds – government, web2.0 startups, National Mapping Agencies, OpenStreetMap people, academics, bloggers and your good selves at Nestoria.

3. You say you are passionate about “neogeography”. What is neogeography and what’s so exciting about it?

Neogeography is about community map-making, people generated maps where we remove the separation of the map maker from the map consumer. I’m really excited about the opportunities for an enhanced democracy that comes from people having more knowledge about their environment and being able to participate in decision making. At ITO World, we work on visualising complex transport networks so that communities can view how planning decisions will affect them. In my local community, Clapton, residents have already rejected one new housing development this month partly due to a lack of transport planning.

4. What’s the most exciting development in internet technology in the past few years to you?

Right now, I’m mostly interested in how people are interacting with technology. I have been focused on technology for too long now and am taking a step back and looking at user interaction. I think the touch screen is actually what is going to drive more and more IT/internet usage as it provides a natural interface that we haven’t seen before. The greatest trick Apple ever pulled was convincing people that the iPhone wasn’t a computer but a mobile phone. I expect to see much more embedded, touch-screen computing devices in all manner of places we haven’t seen before.

What’s something that you’re still waiting for, an app, service etc. that you’d like to see in the future?

WhereOnEarthIsMyBus.com

Thanks Chris for the chat, and also for organising the event. We’re looking forward to it!

On a final note: For anyone who needs a reminder of the current age of online cartography awesomeness that we live in, check this sweetness out (made with OSM data, free and open geodata FTW!)

past Nestoria interviews: Kevin Burke, Nick Turner-Samuels, and Josh Devins.

Rentright listings now on Nestoria

Published by nomsa on March 4, 2010 in partnerships. Comments

Fellow Nestoria’avi,

I’m pleased to announce that we are now working together with Rentright, a website dedicated to rental properties that provide fantastic content and functionality. Property searchers can now find Rentright listings on Nestoria. Here’s how it looks:

rentright SERP

A big welcome to our new partner! Another small step on the path of making it as easy as possible for you to find your next home!

Nestoria Interview – Kevin Burke – Smarta

Published by Ed on February 23, 2010 in interviews. Comments

This month we chat with Kevin Burke, COO of Smarta.com and social media enthusiast. Prior to joining Smarta, Kevin ran European business development for Pluck, and is also a Yahoo! veteran. He has a BA in history from Williams College and an MBA from INSEAD.

Kevin, thanks for speaking with us.

1. What is Smarta and what problem does it solve?

Smarta is an online resource for people thinking about starting a business or running a small business. We are backed by some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs including Bebo’s Michael Birch as well as Dragons Theo Paphitis and Deborah Meaden. Approximately 15% of all 16-64 year olds in the UK are thinking about starting a business and being an entrepreneur has become the number one career aspiration for university students. The current market for business startup advice is dominated by professional service firms who provide expensive, and often mediocre advice, and by government organisations like Business Link, which are staffed by people who have no practical business experience. Smarta offers free, practical and actionable advice from real entrepreneurs in the form of how to articles, video interviews and an online network. It is a place where people can get inspiration, learn from the mistakes of others and connect with people who can help.

2. What are the common mistakes entrepreneurs typically make?

We recently wrote a guide called “40 schoolboy errors made by entrepreneurs” and I think that does a good job of summarizing many of the key mistakes.

3. 2009 was a brutal year for the UK economy. What opportunities does the recession hold for entrepreneurs and start-ups in general, and web based start-ups specifically?

It may sound trite, but there has never been a better time to start a business. Although investment capital is difficult to come by, the cost of website development and hosting has gone down, and web based start-ups can run with very little overhead. To quote Doug Richard “We are entering a land grab of expertise. Each individual has the opportunity to be the brand or nexus around something.” The key is capturing mindshare around a particular topic, and listening to the buzz in social networks to stay on top of the fast changing appetites of customers.

4. Two weeks ago Google announced their most recent foray into social with the launch of Buzz – and promptly suffered a PR disaster as it became clear that not everyone wants to “socialize” with all of their e-mail contacts. As an online veteran, how do you see the contrast and interplay between broad social networks from the internet giants like Facebook – with 350M+ users all around the world – and niche vertical networks like Smarta?

Broad social networks, with their ease of use, have done a great job of spurring mass adoption of social media, and introducing people to the benefits and power of online social networking. Facebook and Twitter have enabled a whole new form of communication. But as we have seen in other sectors of the web, there is a natural point at which fragmentation occurs. If people are passionate about golf, or blues bands, or politics, they will want to interact with communities of like minded individuals, rather than broad communities. If I want to ask for advice about setting up VAT, I won’t ask my Facebook friends, I will ask the Smarta community. A key difference is that broad social networks espouse networking for networking’s sake, whereas the vertical networks tend to be content and topic led – those that do the best job of facilitating conversation and debate among members will be the most successful.

The broad social networks and the vertical communities will develop a symbiotic relationship. Currently, individuals have multiple identities at multiple sites. A key trend for the future is to bridge these identities together into a single, portable profile that can be transported across the web. We are starting to see this with Facebook connect. The barriers to entry to joining vertical social networks and inviting friends will continue to decrease, spurring greater adoption. At the same time, individuals’ activity feeds and identities will become more robust, reflecting their participation across the web. We will gradually see a move away from anonymous posting and will see robust profiles as the way people build reputation and trust within and across social networks.

Kevin, thanks for your time and insight. As a niche vertical search engine. We know the dilemma, but also the power, of being very focused. For anyone considering making the plunge and starting their own business (go for it!) we recommend checking out Smarta. Learn more about Smarta via their blog or by following smartahq on twitter.

past Nestoria interviews: Nick Turner-Samuels, Josh Devins, and Stoycho Vlaykov

Nestoria on the Yahoo! homepage

Published by Ed on February 11, 2010 in New Features, events and tools. Comments

Fellow Nestorhooligans,

As devout blog readers will recall, we’re big fans of all things Yahoo! for their great tools and even better open data attitude. As one example of many of why we love the big purple machine, I’m delighted to see we’ll be co-sponsoring WhereCampEU in a few weeks (along with several other lovely folks I should note – bless you each and every one).

A while back Yahoo! embraced the “if you love the user, set him free” attitude and began integrating third party content on their homepage – one of the most heavily trafficked sites in the internet. This is amazing on so many levels – great for users, daring business wise, and phenomenal technically. When Yahoo! rolled this feature out in the UK they partnered with well known brands like the BBC and TfL. That makes sense, as those sites have great content that users value. They also opened the platform and allowed anyone to build a Yap (Yahoo! Application). Which is also great, as it encourages technical innovation (which we like).

But now, dear Nestoria fans, is where things get very interesting for those interested in free and easy property searching. To kick start UK interest in the new yap platform, a few months ago Yahoo! announced a contest, inviting 50 different companies from across the UK tech scene to build yaps. The best part – the prize for winning would be featured on the Yahoo! UK homepage, one of the most visited sites in the UK.

Well, we do like a challenge, so we dove in head first and whipped up our own yap. It gives me great pleasure to announce that we won! From today the Nestoria UK Yahoo! Application is available to help any Yahoo! user find property to buy or rent quickly and easily without even leaving Yahoo!

Just like Nestoria itself, our yap tries to be very simple but also very functional – to get you to the information you need as easily as possible. The Nestoria yap takes the user’s location settings (in an anonymous fashion of course) and defaults the location. So things should hopefully “just work”.

Here are some screenshots of the yap in action.

Nestoria Yap featured bottom left on www.yahoo.co.uk

Nestoria Yap featured bottom left

Small view

Small view

Large view

Large view

Change your settings

Change your settings

For all the Nestoria groupies out there, catch some video coverage of some of the Nestoria team in action at the competition. Many thanks to Yahoo! for hosting a great event, opening up a great platform, and giving a small start up like ourselves such a great opportunity. Congratulations also to the other competitors for their innovative yaps. Second place went to PayPal, while Capital Radio earned third.

As Javier correctly mentions in the video, what really matters is that you, our users like it. So please tell us what you think.

In keeping with our “write once, launch everywhere “philosophy, and with our basic guiding principle of “it’s not a party unless the Italians, Germans and Spanish can join in” we’ve also released local versions of the yap inGerman, Italian, and Spanish. Enjoy!

Of course, any mention of a new tool would be incomplete without a bit of focus on the technically interesting bits. We’re particularly pleased that this project resulted in a new bit of open source code for the world. Our man Alistair, who headed up the project, released Net::Yap, a perl wrapper for doing the Yap OAuth dance. May 1000’s of new perl-based yaps blossom!

BTW – for all the true app addicts out there, don’t forget to take the Nestoria Facebook app for a spin. While you’re at it, take a peek at all of our tools to make property searching easier.

Drop in pageviews

Published by Ed on February 10, 2010 in Nestoria Rank and New Features. Comments

Fellow Nestorinos!

One thing we occasionally get asked about here at Nestoria is how many pageviews users generate. My typical response, generally to the horror of the question asker, is “too many”. Why? Well, because it’s easy to create more pageviews – just don’t give people the best answer. Instead force them to click “next”, “next”, “next” to find what they want. A good search engine should be presenting relevant content to users as quickly as possible and sending them of to that content. More pageviews would indicate we’re doing a bad rather than a good job.

Why do I bring this up now? Well, a few weeks ago we began intensively testing a fairly significant change to the Nestoria search results page, and we’ve now rolled it out to all users. The goal: reduce pageviews dramatically by helping users get to their dream home as quckly and simply as possible. Not to bore you with the technical jargon, but we’ve now gone to a full AJAX implementation – basically relevant content should just “automagically” appear as you move the sliders, the map, etc.

Screen shot 2010-02-10 at 19.15.40

So far feedback and measured behaviour has been very positive. As with any change, it’s unlikely we got everything perfect on the first try (actually this isn’t the first try – we’ve tested many implementations of this), so please let us know your feedback. And big thanks to all of you who have already sent your thoughts.

Whether you like this change or not, of one thing you can be certain, even as you read this note, a significant percentage of Nestoria users are exposed to a new test. The path to perfection is endless. We grow by walking it.

One final technical note – big thanks to everyone working on jQuery. We made the switch, and are loving it.

Nestoria on Layar

Published by Ed on January 29, 2010 in New Features and partnerships. Comments

Fellow Nestorphreaks,

the other day we announced our new partnership with Samsung UK in which Nestoria serves as one of several “Layars” that allow the user to find relevant local content via augmented reality.

Well, our very own Nomsa and Matteo (who loyal Nestoria fans will know from their roles as authors over on the Nestoria Deutschland blog and the Nestoria Italia blog) took our Samsung phone for a spin and made a little video that show how the Layar works for your Friday afternoon pre-pub enjoyment.

We hope you like it – and bear in mind, we’re an internet company, not professional video producers.

Have a good weekend!

PS – for those of you who love watching the Nestoria team, slide your browser on over to this entry on the Yahoo Developer Network blog where you can catch some of us in action. More about that soon.

Nestoria Interview – Nick Turner-Samuels – Samsung Mobile UK

Published by Ed on January 26, 2010 in interviews. Comments

Fellow Nestorites,

I’m pleased to announce that we’ve launched a Nestoria Layar application today in partnership with Samsung UK.

For those that don’t know Layar is an innovative new “Augmented Reality” technology that allows you to use your phone to “see” where things (in our case properties to buy or rent) are. It’s a totally new way to explore your environment, and for us it’s another attempt to make finding your next home as easy as possible. We’ll do a post later this week that goes into the nuances of the application (with video – this is a case where seeing is believing), but today we wanted to speak with the Nick Turner-Samuels, Head of Content for Samsung Mobile UK.

Nick has been at Samsung for the last several years in a variety of roles. Prior to that he worked at BBC Online and he has experience in online classifieds in the jobs sector. All of which means he’s uniquely placed to discuss the innovation happening between the mobile and online space and what implications it might have for online classifieds.

Nick, it is great to have you as our newest partner, especially on such a ground-breaking service. Thanks for making the time to speak with us.

1. 2009 seems to be the year mobile internet usage finally took off in a big way. As someone with years of experience in the mobile content business what’s your perspective?

It’s interesting to see the massive changes in how people are using their mobiles. The old models of major portals providing walled gardens (sometimes with good intentions of providing a good experience on a mobile browser, sometimes just to make money) have changed hugely in a short space of time.

On one side, an industry based on ringtones, java games and wallpapers has had to innovate very quickly or risk dying (as well as companies who aggregated such content). People are expecting apps for their mobiles to bring them new features and benefits, not just customisation, and native games for powerful alternatives to the portable gaming market.

On the other side, browsers are now capable of quickly displaying almost any web page (Even showing Flash & Ajax content), making the internet finally accessible with ease. WAP (a major mobile industry platform in itself) is quickly being replaced on medium to high end phones by web.

Another interesting aspect is the influx of major web players seeing mobile as the big growth market. Just look at the huge increase in users of Facebook on mobile over the last couple of years, or see how much attention is being paid to mobile by Google (Android Platform, buying AdMob, etc), to get the gist. The power game of who is ‘owning’ the customer is sliding between Operators and Manufacturers to web 2.0 players to OS providers, and it’s not clear just yet who will come out unscathed.

2. The big success story of the mobile internet has been Apple’s iPhone. Now Google’s Android is reaching maturity and several other operating systems seem to be innovating as well. Who will win the Android vs. iPhone battle? Or is that battle even the relevant one?

The success of the iPhone has been without doubt, massive – and has led to a lot of shift within the industry. But it’s currently limited to a few expensive devices and the form factor is not to everyone’s taste (no keys, for example). While the general public may not yet heard of Android (it’s likely they don’t care what platform they are running anyway, just that it works well, and has good apps), those in mobile industry and tech followers know Android is going to be very very big in 2010. It will provide even more competition amongst device makers to produce the best devices, because to a certain extent, it levels the playing field. While the Operating System is very good and cheap to use, everyone knows it is Google’s, and they are making it for a reason. And ultimately, they can change things at any point without anyone else’s say so…

Samsung is currently the world’s second largest phone maker, and sold 40m touch-screen phones in 2009 alone. In 2010, our strategy will be Smartphones for everyone, which means we have opened up our software to developers in much the same way as Apple. We’ll be offering a substantial marketplace for all developers to make money from and expect to bring our first phone to market in the first half of the year. Expect big things in the OS battle…

3. One of the most innovative new mobile applications is Augmented Reality (AR), with the Layar service (with whom Samsung work) being one of the leading innovators in this new field. What can users expect from this new technology?

AR is going to be one of the biggest growth technologies in the next few years, and mobile will play a central part of it. In simple form, it’s about overlaying what you are looking at (like a mobile screen) with extra information, in near-real time (think Terminator, perhaps). Currently, this has been best used in simple form for innovative marketing (hold a basic printed up to your webcam and a product will pop out of the image, which moves as you move your simple image around), but future applications could see you putting on some glasses with and being able to change parts in your car with ease, or help trainees perform surgery. Plenty of examples of AR are on the internet for you to see, but its set to explode.

One fascinating development has already happened. Layar, the world’s first augmented browser, has created a platform for visual search results from the internet. Simply move your phone around you and up will pop the latest property search results from Nestoria, with details and a simple click for more information or directions to the property integrated into Google Maps. There are plenty of other ‘Layers’ too, with lastminute.com, hotels.com, Barclays and more joining up with Samsung, in addition to all the other companies developing for the platform. Visual search will become second nature to mobile users very quickly, and it’s an exciting space to be in at the moment.

4. Before turning to mobile, you worked briefly in the classifieds industry for leading jobs sites like Monster & smartwork.com. What impacts do you predict from mobile innovation for the classifieds industry?

There will be more of a shift to location-aware classified listings. I would expect to see some of the major players in classified general services, automobile and more move into displaying relevant listings and services based on accurately knowing where you are without you needed to do anything. There been too much talk about this sort of thing in the past, but 2010 onwards should finally be where we see this picking up. It’s about how it makes money the most that will really drive the services.

Mobile is the instant, always on, two-way enabler. Not only can you get information and use it straight away, from shopping comparison on a product in store, to finding the nearest cash point/property to rent in your area, or viewing a photo of a prospective builder’s work, but you can review, find directions to, contact or meet other people who use such a service, immediately. And with Open platforms like the new Samsung Bada, the possibilities are endless (shameless plug!).

Thanks Nick. 2010 is certain to be an exciting time for the mobile industry, and most of all for consumers. The technology has finally reached maturity in terms of usability and affordability, and we’re delighted that Nestoria can be a part of the innovation.

For those interested in keeping up with what Nick’s up to, you can follow him on twitter @nickts.

past Nestoria interviews: Josh Devins, Stoycho Vlaykov, and Mark Keating

Nestoria Sponsors WhereCampEU

Published by nomsa on January 21, 2010 in events, web 2.0 and what's hot. Comments

Dear Nestorgeofans,

Nestoria is proud to announce that we are one of the sponsors of WhereCampEU, the first ever European edition of the fabulous geo-unconference. And everyone’s invited:

WhereCamp Europe is open to everyone; from über hacker to beginner, from GIS to neogeography, from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and beyond, from mobile, from web development. If you have an interest in geography and how it’s changing the way in which we interact with the world then you should come along.

The event takes place on Friday March 12th 2010 and Saturday March 13th 2010 in London, the venue is provided by The Guardian. If you want to come, tickets are free, but tend to be gone quickly. So follow @wherecampeu on Twitter and keep an eye on their blog – rumor has it the next batch of tickets will be released end of this week.

Browser wars (Take 5)

Published by Ahmed on January 15, 2010 in about us and technical. Comments

Fellow Nestanalysts,

No, the browsers haven’t all gotten together to create a funky tune in an unusual meter. Rather, it’s simply time for the latest instalment in a series of posts (1 2 3 4) which concern themselves with the popularity of various browsers, as used to access Nestoria.

Why

To be honest, there’s more than one reason we’re interested in keeping track of how users access Nestoria.

However, the single largest concern is user experience. Using Nestoria should be easy, intuitive and a consistent experience, no matter what your choice of browser. Keeping an eye on browser usage lets us test and tweak Nestoria so that we can achieve these goals.

Microsoft: losing ground

gen browser

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has managed to lose a further 3% share of the ‘visits pie’ since our last review (in June):

2% of that goes to Chrome;

1% to Firefox;

1% to Safari; together with

a 1% decrease in ‘others’ (Opera, Camino and the like).

Slow but steady

ff saf chrome

Whilst change may not happen overnight, the browser arena is definitely an interesting space, and it’s nice to see that things are far from stagnant.

Even my parents know of and use Firefox – that has to say something about this open-source browser’s impact on society, although adoption seems to be slowing when compared to that of less established browsers.

The uptake of Google’s Chrome is an indication that users can be lured by promises of speed and stability (having said that, I’m sure a whacking great banner on the world’s most popular homepage doesn’t hurt either).

Perhaps Safari’s success can be attributed to the rising market share of Macs, or perhaps impressive standards compliance.

Firefox 2: Going, going…

ff2 ff3

Firefox 2.x usage pales in comparison to that of it’s 3.x brethren, representing less that 1% of browsing on Nestoria.

3.x versions account for nearly 18%.

IE8 & 7 = substitutes, IE6 = no substitute

ie 6 7 8

The most obvious (and probably correct) conclusion that can be drawn from the above graph, is that IE7 users are the new IE8 users. They switch from new to newest, and this is reflected in the almost mirror-like red and blue plots. I suspect these are home users, free to upgrade to the latest and greatest at the instruction of Windows Update.

Many ‘corporate’ users have no such freedom, but instead are subject to the oversight of their IT departments. I would hazard a guess (not for the first time in this series), that the majority of our IE6 users are browsing from workplaces, where IE6 still reigns supreme. Will Windows 7 succeed where Windows Vista failed, and bring with its success the banishment of IE6? Tune in next time (or the time after) to find out.

iPhone >> Penguins

small os

As predicted, more users visited Nestoria using iPhones/Pods in this period than they did using Linux-powered computers (no, not including OS X). There was an especially sharp uptick in such usage around the festive season – I think there were a number of happy iGift recipients around that time. It should also be noted that these figures don’t include iPhone app usage.

Also interesting is that Symbian visits continue to increase, whilst Android really hasn’t made that much of a splash.

That’s all for this instalment. We’re always keen to hear your thoughts and opinions on topics we blog about, and those we don’t. Please get in touch, comment below or tweet at us.

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