Archive for August, 2006

Back to (searching for property near) school

Published by Ahmed on August 31, 2006 in New Features and search. Comments

In our quest to make Nestoria useful and accessible to more and more people, we are constantly adding terms which people can search by – areas that will be recognised if you type them into our search box.

Recently, we added the names & locations of London’s many universities to our database.

That means you can now search for ‘properties to rent near Imperial‘, ‘properties to rent near UCL‘, or ‘properties to rent near LBS / properties to rent near London Business School‘ – the list is quite comprehensive.

We’re sure that many people will find this useful, especially with the new university year fast approaching.

Go and try a search now

Property list in use on london-se1.co.uk

Published by Ed on August 29, 2006 in about us, tools and web 2.0. Comments

It’s always nice to see that people do read the blog and use the tools we provide.

The property section of london-se1.co.uk, a website of Bankside Press, includes a Nestoria property list in a prominent location.

This is great for us and great for users of the London-se1 website.

So here’s a big:

Thank you!

To the webmaster at london-se1.co.uk

If you have any more examples of Nestoria tools being used, just drop us a line or comment on this post – we’d be happy to mention it!

Use us, again (in the BT Development Challenge)

Published by Ahmed on August 23, 2006 in API. Comments

Are you a developer? Do you like to mess around with APIs? Do you want ??2500?

If so, you may well be interested in the BT Development Challenge.

The development challenge is a competition, based around an imaginary user – Simon. Simon is moving to London and has lots of wants, likes and needs that he would like to be able to satisfy with an online application. The challenge to the developer is to produce this online application, using APIs from all over the net to provide information.

The Nestoria API is the best way to integrate UK property information into your mashup – it’s easy.

Try it now!

We look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Do not adjust your set

Published by Ahmed on August 16, 2006 in New Features and search. Comments

If you happen to have recently been searching on Nestoria for property in south London – say properties in Wimbledon, you may have noticed that if you click on “Show stations on map” under the Tube heading, that two versions of the famous tube roundel appear.

One is green and one is red.

What you may or may not know is that the green version represents Tram stops in London.

That’s right – Nestoria now shows you where tram stops in your search area are.

We hope that this makes it that little bit easier to see whether that beautiful house is within easy reach of any form of Light Rail Transit (DLR + South London Trams), Tube or Rapid Transit (Train stations).

Go and have a peek, on

properties in Wimblendom

, for instance!

Nestoria *heart* webmasters

Published by Ed on August 14, 2006 in tools. Comments

We don’t care if webmasters is ’so’ web 1.0, we like the term – and we love webmasters.

That’s why we’ve now consolidated all the tools that Nestoria makes available to webmasters! Tools such as the search boxes and ‘Nestoria Property Lists’ mentioned further down this blog are all now detailed on the “Webmasters” link – accessible from the bottom of any main Nestoria page.

We really are happy to provide any help to webmasters wishing to integrate our tools on their sites – so just drop us a line if there’s anything we can do or if you have any questions we can answer.

If you own/administer a blog or a website, why not go and have a look now?

Food, water, shelter

Published by Ed on August 11, 2006 in New Features. Comments

In the property industry it’s easy to become obsessed with three things: location, location, location. So much so that we sometimes forget about the other essentials in life. Which is why we were delighted earlier this week when several loyal users brought our attention to the fact that food and drink are an essential part of life by asking us to add supermarkets to the local content section of our search results page.

Well dear users, your wish is our command. Starting today you can now see which supermarkets are near your desired home. Just click on the “Shops” tab below the map and enjoy the cornucopia of consumption opportunities that the modern supermarket allows.

Enjoy, and have a good weekend

Property listings to go

Published by Ed on August 10, 2006 in New Features, tools and web 2.0. Comments

We’re steadily adding more and more tools for you to use with Nestoria, from search boxes for your pages, to Yahoo! widgets…

Now, may we introduce: Live property listings for your website!

By copying a simple piece of code, and pasting it into your webpage (instructions here), you can get a list of 5 properties in your chosen search area, right there on your site.

These will update as our listings update, and we’ve even given you the option to fully customise the list to the needs of your website. You can choose:

- The width of the list

- The colour of the text and of the borders

- The font and size of the text

- Whether or not to display images of the properties in the list and so on.

Here’s an example property list, complete with pictures:

Property list

Of course, if you choose not to use pictures, the dimensions of the list become much smaller (see another sample implementation here). Why not give the list a go?

It’s extremely easy to get the right code for your page – just do a normal nestoria search, and you’ll see this link in the top right of the page:

Link to get results on your page

Click on ‘results on your site’ and you’ll be taken to a page where you can get the code for the specific search you just made – to put those results on your site.

If you currently link to us using a text link, this might be an ideal way to give your visitors some great content!

If you’re one of the first to use our property list, give us a shout and we may feature you in a blog post :)

Making the top 20 web 2.0 list, thanks to blog coverage

Published by Ahmed on August 8, 2006 in about us and web 2.0. Comments

Today, Nestoria made the top 20 list of web 2.0 applications according to Read/Write web and new media consultancy futurescape.

This is an achievement we’re incredibly proud of, especially since we only launched 7 weeks ago!! However, we don’t think that this would have come about without the great coverage from all the bloggers that have written about us!

This isn’t a teary-eyed oscar speech, but a note of sincere thanks to the following influential bloggers:

- theratandmouse.co.uk, a great blog focusing on the London property market

- londonist.com, site covering all that’s funky, cool and new in Lodnon – interesting and informative!

- GoogleMapsMania, blog ‘tracking the websites, mashups and tools being influenced by Google Maps’

- Real Estate Newsblog, covering all that’s interesting in the uk and worldwide property arena

Thanks again everyone! Now… back to work ;)

Train(station)spotting

Published by Ed on August 7, 2006 in Uncategorized. Comments

For a while now, you’ve been able to search for properties close to tube stations – simply by searching for the name of the tube station. e.g. properties in Oxford Circus Tube

As of today, it is also possible to search by DLR station like (e.g. properties in Prince Regent), or mainline station (e.g. properties in Liverpool Street Station).

We believe that this is an incredibly important feature – public transport is very much at the centre of London life and so, a key factor in deciding where to locate.

Tell us your names

Published by Ed on August 3, 2006 in search. Comments

We want to make sure that when you perform a search on Nestoria, you get what you want.

However, there are many colloquial names for areas in London, which may not be recognised currently if you search.

For example, High Street Kensington is often referred to as ‘High St. Ken’, South Kensington as ‘South Ken’, Kensington and Chelsea as ‘K&C’.

We’re sure you know lots more than us, so if you can think of any similar examples off the top of your head, then please send them to us here.

You can call me Ahmed (The Hammer) Badr – Resident of Hammersmith