Over the last few days we’ve had several requests to add GeoRSS tags to our RSS feeds. Well dear users (especially friends in the developer community), your wish is our command. As of now all our RSS feeds are geotagged. Have fun!
If this is all a bit too techie for you, don’t worry. This is one of many small steps we’re taking to allow developers to create tools to make finding a property easier.
If this isn’t techie enough for you, don’t worry either. Next week we’ll be announcing more good news for the developer community. Hopefully in time for next Thursday’s London Perl Mongers meeting, which we are sponsoring. We’ll see you there.
the ashtray on your porsche is full, so you cruise on over to the dealership on Berkeley Square in the (properties in) West End to pick up a new one, and, just as you’re about to leave, they tell you that from the 19th February you’re going to have to pay the London Congestion Charge even for driving in dear old (properties in) Chelsea.
The horror!
It’s to prevent exactly this sort of frustration that we’ve now added a London Congestion Charge extension zone marker to all properties in the extension zone.
Life can be so cruel sometimes. Good luck to all of you.
… which is why yesterday we added user photos from photo sharing website Flickr to our search result pages. You can find the pictures in the “Photos” tab below the map.
Now you don’t have to wonder what (propertys to let in) Notting Hill looks like (check out the Carnival pictures). Or perhaps you prefer the nature of (properties in) Kew? or maybe you’re living life in the concrete jungle and graffiti of (properties to rent in) Shoreditch?
Whatever your preference give it a try and let us know what you think.
Big thanks to the folks at Flickr for their great API that makes things like this so easy to do.
If you currently live in London (or are looking to move here), it is more than likely that your life seems to (or soon will) revolve around, pass through and gravitate towards tube stations and tube trains. The capital’s tube tunnels and lines are it’s arteries - transporting workers, tourists, birds all over this great city.
To make it that little bit easier to see where that wonderful property you’ve found lies in relation to the underground, we’ve added the tube lines to the map!
This means that when you zoom in close enough, you can see just where the tube runs! You can drag the map to follow the lines to inter-connecting stations - all the way to work.
We hope you find the lines useful. We took the initiative to add a feature that we hadn’t seen elsewhere, but remember, the public gets what the public wants… so as always, we’d be grateful for any feedback offered.
One of the interesting things about working with online maps is that there are still problems which do not have a well established solution. One example is how to deal with several pins being in the same place on the map.
This happens quite often for us - usually when there are a couple of flats in the same building or when a new development comes on the market.
In our first version of the maps we just let the pins sit on top of each other (left image). The only way that you could tell that there was wore than one property was the darker shadow. Obviously this was not good enough. It was too subtle and you couldn’t tell exactly how many properties there were at that point.
We improved it by staggering the overlapping pins (middle image). This clearly showed that there were several properties and made them easy to count. However the letters were hidden on all the pins behind the first one and they were difficult to click on. Another issue was that when you zoomed the map in and out the pins in the group moved relative to each other - which was unnerving.
Finally we tried leaning the pins out from each other (right image). This works really well as the letters are visible, the pins easy to click on and they all point to the correct place on the map. Also it looks much more natural than the other attempts making it clear and obvious what the pins mean.
Looking at other mapping sites on the web there are many other approaches that are being tried but for now there is no clear winner. Any suggestions or ideas you have for how we could improve are very welcome, we don’t pretend to have the prefect solution just yet.
I think that the lack of ‘accepted wisdom’ is resulting in some real creativity, which is why online mapping is a really dynamic area at the moment. Long may it last.
Published by Ed on June 23, 2006
in tools.
Sometimes on a hot summer Friday afternoon with the pub only a few (painfully long) hours away, even the most trivial task can seem a bit much.
Say for example the chore of typing a URL into your browser and then entering your query into a search box.
Well, for all you Firefox users out there we now offer a bit of help. Today we released the Nestoria Firefox search plugin, to help make searching for UK property that tiny bit easier. Give it a try. Life can be pretty tough sometimes, so why not do whatever you can to make it less stressful.
For all the Internet Explorer users out there, keep your spirits up and hope for the best - or consider switching to Firefox.
Hello again Nestoria fans! (not to be confused with Nestorians of course - we’re still trying to figure out the right term for our users - suggestions welcome).
I’m delighted to announce our sponsorship of Mapstraction. Mapstraction is a volunteer effort to create a javascript library that makes it easy to use different online mapping services.
Why does Nestoria sponsor Mapstraction? The past year internet users have benefited from an unprecedented level of innovation in online mapping. We’re interested in providing Nestoria users with the best possible user experience. Right now we think that means using Google maps. But in the future that might well mean using maps from someone else, perhaps even the open source mapping service being developed by OpenStreetMap. Mapstraction will give us the greatest flexibility to always provide you, the user, with a compelling mapping service.
Please let us know how you like our integration of maps and properties. We’re always interested in feedback, be it praise or constructive criticism. We already have a few new map related features in the works that we’ll be revealing in the coming weeks.
A vertical search engine (such as Nestoria) focuses intensely on one small niche of the market place - in this case, the property market.
Our exceptional focus on property is what differentiates us from search engines such as google. We go deeper into the products to bring you back exactly what you want, in a clear and immediate way!
We’re a bit like that well staffed speciality food/technology/wine store that you love - we get you things you simply can’t find or would spend too much time looking for at the supermarket.
We’ve not been very technical here, but if you’re interested in learning more about vertical search, here are some links you may find useful:
Welcome to Nestoria - probably the last property search engine you’ll ever need*
This blog will aim to keep you updated on everything that’s happening with the company and our services.
But what exactly do we aim to provide?
We aim to provide you with the most relevant property listings, contained within an incredibly easy to use, feature packed interface!
The site is developed and advanced by a small group of developers and business people, who were all fed up with trawling through thousands of property listings to find their perfect home/flat/hole.
We hope that we will succeed in our aims and save you such an experience!
* Comment and let us know how we’re doing with this
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