Archive for March, 2007

Nestoria and FridayCities team up

Published by Ed on March 28, 2007 in partnerships. 2 Comments

Recently a friend pointed me to yet another social networking site. My initial reaction was the same as yours: who cares? But this site, Fridaycities actually seems a bit different - it’s good.

By focusing on creating compelling conversations, the gang over at Fridaycities seem to have succeeded where other sites have always let me down (there really are only so many times you can get excited by standard social network comment fare like “U ROCK!!!!!”). This site really seems to have its finger on the pulse of London.

From a usability standpoint Fridaycities have done some great things with tags, making them work in a way that feels intuitive rather than just some web2.0 checkbox they bolted on to the site to seem trendy. One great example is the integration Fridaycities launched with us, Nestoria, today.

Whenever someone tags a location (done simply by appending “place:” to the beginning of a tag) that tag can then be used to launch a search for property to buy or rent on Nestoria. Check it out this screen shot from my profile page:

tags screenshot

and, once you click:

tags screenshot

What we like most about this is that it’s a very non-intrusive. It’s just a cool little Easter egg, there if you want it, but not forced on you. It’s that exact mindset and approach to their product that made it seem natural to do something with the team at Fridaycities. It’s the same approach to product development that we take here at Nestoria, for example with the schools, pubs, hospitals, and all the other local data we offer on every result page: present a lot of information in a way that people can easily use it if they want, but don’t force it on them.

We hope you like it as much as we do. Join the conversation over at Fridaycities. Feel free to add me to your buddy list, I’m ‘EastEndEd‘. Feel free to let me know what you think about this partnership, or about Nestoria in general.

PS - to any webmasters or product managers or internet entrepreneurs out there interested in enhancing your site’s user experience by integrating Nestoria’s property search tools please check out our tools for webmasters.

PSS - To all you rapid Nestoria feature groupies, expect some cool tag magic from us soon. You know we’re not going to let Fridaycities be the only ones with the coolness.

PSSS - Nestoria fans U ROCK!! for reading this far.

Sharing is good, especially for data quality

Published by Ed on March 26, 2007 in New Features and search. 0 Comments

Last week we launched a minor tweak to our algorithms which we think should improve the quality of the user experience fairly significantly. Flatshares are now sorted into their own category (like property to buy and rent) and are no longer included in the main index. Here’s an example of flatshares in Docklands

screenshot

Searching for flatshares and flats to rent or let really are different experiences. This change removes the flatshares from the main index which should lead to a cleaner search experience for everyone. If you want flatshares, they’re there for the clicking, but by default you no longer get them clogging up your rental search.

This change was prompted by some of the feedback we’ve had both from users directly and on blogs. Many thanks for everyone who takes the time to comment and help us get better. Don’t let your opinion go unknown, let us know what you think.

So there you have it, another small step closer to the perfect property search experience.

Google Maps support for GeoRSS

Published by Ed on March 23, 2007 in API, Google Maps, tools and web 2.0. 2 Comments

It seems the pace of innovation in the online geo community is showing no signs of slowing down. Yesterday O’Reilly Radar posted that Google Maps now supports GeoRSS.

For those who don’t recall, GeoRSS is a very simple way to add location information to data feeds. Here at Nestoria we’ve supplied users with GeoRSS formatted property feeds since last summer.

So what does all this mean for you, the Nestoria user? Well, no by pasting a Nestoria RSS URL into Google maps you can see the RSS feed on a map. Have a look:

screenshot

Of course, you might say “Ed, if I wanted to see flats to buy on a map, I’d just use Nestoria directly.” I agree that the native Nestoria implementation is a better user experience:

screenshot

Nevertheless, this is still important because it’s a good example of data exchange formats making the merging of different data sets dead simple. More and more, it’s getting easier and easier for the pieces of the internet to talk with each other, and this is just one more example. And like any good discussion, you never know where the conversation will take us. This sort of serendipitous innovation exactly why we invest time and energy in the Nestoria API

As a long time lurker on the GeoRSS mailing lists I can tell you that defining data formats is hard work. Big thanks to all the people out there working hard to get the ‘pesky details’ of the internet to work.

Nestoria API - version 1.04 live

Published by Ed on March 21, 2007 in API. 2 Comments

As promised last week we’ve just pushed out version 1.04 of our property search API.

This version was basically some minor bug fixes and adding support for searching for flatshares (which are now no longer in the main index). As always you can find the full details on the change log at the bottom of our API technical details page.

Nestoria API - version 1.03 and PHP library

Published by Ed on March 15, 2007 in API. 2 Comments

We’ve just released version 1.03 of the Nestoria API which has some minor bug fixes. There is no change to the request or response interface.

Ian Warner of Triangle Solutions has created a great PHP library for accessing the Nestoria API. If you use PHP I highly recommend you take a look. I’m sure he welcomes all contributions.

Finally, thanks to great feedback from a member of the community we are aware of a bug when searching using the centre_point parameter. This will be fixed in v1.04 which should go live by the middle of next week. We apologise for the inconvenience.

As always, please keep the feedback coming.

They all look the same to me …

Published by Ed on March 14, 2007 in New Features, search and technical. 5 Comments

As you know, dear loyal Nestoria blog readers, we’re always working to make it as quick and easy as possible for you to find exactly the house or flat of your dreams. Often though we only have very limited information to work with. For example, if you search for a ‘property in Manchester‘, a city where we currently have over 400 properties, it’s hard for us to know exactly which property we should put at the top of the results.

Using the magic that is Nestoria Rank we of course do our best to get high quality property descriptions to the top, but we’re under no illusions that we always get it right.

Which is why today we launched a new feature we call “more like this”. Next to each property description you will now see a link entitled “Similar Properties” - with a single click you can now re-sort the properties to order them by similarity to a home you are interested in. So if we didn’t find your dream home, but we did find something close to your dream home, you can now quickly drill down to relevant properties.

We think this is an important step on the path towards making property search even easier and faster.

For those readers that like to follow our technical progress, it may interest you to know we’re launching this feature using “split testing”. We know that we really have no clue how people want to search for property. We need to learn from our users. Half of all users are seeing one implementation, another half are seeing a slightly different design.

Here are the two implementations:

Version 1:

screenshot

Version 2:

screenshot

Give it a try, and as always please let us know what you think.

Yet another co-branded property search

Published by Ed on March 7, 2007 in search and tools. 1 Comment

Check it out, the gang over at HouseReview, a cool new UK property wiki site, have added a Nestoria co-branded property search.

Nestoria co-branded property search screenshot

Give it a try. Like what you see? Why not get you own free co-branded property search for your website?

DropIn Map update

Published by Ed on March 6, 2007 in tools. 0 Comments

A few months ago we launched the Nestoria Dropin Map as a simple way for webmasters to add property maps to their websites.

The response has been great. Several people have taken the time to give us valuable feedback about how we could add even more functionality to the service.

By popular demand, you can now:

  • set the height and width of the map to be whatever you like
  • turn on local content pins by default. So for example, if it’s relevant for your users you could have train station pins on by default.

It’s all documented over here.

Here’s a great example of the dropin maps in action over at Surreyjobs.info a site for public sector jobs in Surrey:

Nestoria dropin map screenshot

Have more ideas about how we can make dropin maps more useful? Don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Nestoria Interview - Steve Coast - OpenStreetMap Founder

Published by Ed on March 4, 2007 in interviews. 9 Comments

This month we were lucky enough to get some time with Steve Coast, founder and head of OpenStreetMap. Started in 2004, OpenStreetMap is revolutionizing online cartography with its volunteer driven, open source approach. In a nutshell, it’s wikipedia for geographic data. Diligent Nestoria fans will of course recall our experiment last October in which we used OpenStreetMap data for our Isle of Wight maps. The best way to stay up to date on OSM matters is the OpenGeoData blog.

Steve, thanks for taking time to chat with us.

1. What was the inspiration behind OpenStreetMap, and how is it going?

OpenStreetMap (OSM) started very simply - I just wanted a map. I had a USB GPS and a laptop but all the solutions for placing yourself on a map were either expensive or infringed copyright. It seemed a fairly simple idea to wander around with a GPS and build my own map - little did I know how far it would go!

OSM continues to grow at a fantastic rate, we’ve had two ‘mapping parties’ (where we invite present and new OSMers along to map an area exhaustively) this year already - one in London and one in Bristol. Many more are planned both here and abroad.

2. Given the explosion of innovation we’ve seen in online cartography the last few years, what are your predictions for online geography in 2007?

Oh dear, predictions! Things are moving so fast it’s pretty hard to say. I think mobile geo will continue to be on the back burner due to shear cost of data and lock-in. At some point the bubble has to burst with map advertising which will cause a bit of a shake out - though Google is going to give 90 days warning for their API users. Whether that happens this year is another question!

3. Tell us a little about the challenges of managing a user driven project like OSM? What are some lessons that might be applicable to other web2.0 “start ups”?

The key I think is to find the base that people from different backgrounds with different opinions can work from. In OSMs case this base could be considered the data format and API. The way we tag data is totally open which gives real freedom to people who want to tag some very obscure things. At the same time there is a community process for narrowing down a set of key tags (’map features’).

Organising community events such as mapping parties has had a big boost. If you can get the community agreement then the rest will, mostly, follow so long as you listen. The caveat is that some things never get that agreement.

4. What are your thoughts on the developments in the property search sector in the last year?

Well it has to be mapping and maps have led Nestoria. I’m by no means an expert on property search but it does seem that the ‘older’ providers are moving over to more a more map-centric ideal as we go on.

5. What are the challenges you think a vertical search engine for property like Nestoria faces?

It’s going to be Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft eventually adding property to their maps. They’re going to try and aggregate everything they can get their hands on - just like I would. The challenge is to differentiate and brand the experience of trying to find a new home - and it’s not like there aren’t many ways to do that!

Thanks Steve, a lot of food for thought. Best of luck in the quest to create free maps.

past Nestoria interviews: Joel Burslem, Ed Parsons, Ben Brandt

Nestoria API - version 1.02

Published by Ed on March 2, 2007 in API. 1 Comment

Just a quick note, by popular demand we’ve now modified the API to include keywords for each listing. As always the change log is on the API technical details page.

Big thanks to everyone for the feedback, please keep it coming.

Would be really cool to see someone experimenting with Nestoria API (or GeoRSS feeds) and Yahoo! Pipes ….

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