Author Archive for Ed

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.

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 Interview – Josh Devins – Nokia

Published by Ed on January 14, 2010 in interviews. Comments

Fellow Nestorphiles,

I’m very pleased that today we kick off the 2010 Nestoria interview series by speaking with Josh Devins, Software Architect in Nokia’s Map and Explore group, part of the team that is responsible for Ovi Maps. For those of you new to the blog, about once a month we try to put a few questions to a thought leader in the online geography or real estate space. Given the huge growth in mobile internet usage in the last year I’m particularly pleased that our first interview of the year is with someone from one of the biggest players in the “location” space.

Josh joined Nokia Berlin in 2008 from Vancouver, Canada where he worked at a number of internet companies. He holds a BSc in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. Nokia in Berlin is focused primarily on location-based services.

Josh, great that we get the chance to speak with you about the innovation happening at Nokia.

1. Over the last few years, Nokia has moved aggressively into the mapping space, acquiring Navteq, launching Ovi Maps, and basically redefining itself from the traditional role of handset manufacturer. Tell us a bit about the transition.

About two years ago, Nokia set about creating the Services unit, providing value-added services to consumers. Making the move from being the leading handset maker to a service provider is, of course, a big transition, however Nokia is a company that thrives on reinventing itself. Once upon a time, Nokia even made rubber boots, so it knows a thing or two about transition. The acquisition of Navteq and the push into mapping have been reactions to the role that mobile devices are starting to have in people’s day-to-day lives. More and more, the device is becoming a gateway to a much broader world and we are pushing hard to be at the forefront of where the virtual world meets the physical world. Mapping and location in general are really the the ultimate realizations of a person in their world. It’s about bringing devices, mobility, and relationships back into peoples’ physical world.

2. We recently saw you speak at UK’s first Scale Camp. You mentioned that one of the hardest parts of building Ovi Maps is not technical but rather the internal transition to a new way of working. Can you explain?

While there are definitely a lot of technical issues that are very non-trivial, one of the things that people notice about our group is that it is very atypical from what most people see as a device manufacturer. We try to run a very Agile shop with Scrum teams, a very flat hierarchy and openness with the rest of Nokia as well as the developer community as a whole. Being one of the newest “server side” groups in Nokia, we approach the situation by attempting to lead by example. Traditionally the device manufacturing process requires a high level of very strict control, process, planning, investment and foresight. On the services side, we need to live to the same exacting quality standards, but also live in the world of Internet-pace, frequent releases and delivery of functionality. This type of shift is something that happens organically from the inside out. However being who we are, we also have very urgent need to scale teams and functionality up and out fast. These sometimes opposing forces prove to be a huge challenge just to orchestrate and to find the right balance.

3. A few months ago Nokia acquired fellow London-based and geography focused start-up Dopplr, and some members of the team are now joining the Ovi Maps project. Can you give us any details?

What I can tell you is that we are really excited to have this talented team joining us! I’ve been working with some of them daily for the past couple of months and they’re full of great ideas. Acquiring small companies like this with resourceful, inventive and outgoing people brings a very valuable, fresh look into what we do. We are obviously trying to leverage those talents as best we can. Luring them to Berlin was pretty easy too!

4. One thing we often mention here on the blog, yet are still continually amazed by, is the phenomenal pace of innovation in online cartography. Between Google Maps, Bing, Cloudmade, OpenStreetMap, and now Ovi more and more is being offered to users and developers. What do you think we’ll see in the coming years?

I think we’re just hitting the tip of the iceberg and there’s two things that I see as leading the way forward.

First, there is such a phenomenal amount of information out there that nobody has really figured out what to do with. From addresses, POI data, journey and routes to social context and community commentary. Some products take the grab-bag approach and throw everything at the user and let them figure it out. The acquisition of Navteq really shot us into the information race, allowing us to work very closely with a company that has people on the ground to verify POIs and provide very accurate data. When it comes to cartography and mapping on the device, simplicity and accuracy are paramount. If we can nail services that provide the consumer with the most accurate information then we become the go-to source on the device. With open APIs for devices and services we believe we can build and propagate the most usable location information anywhere and build a location-centric ecosystem around that.

Second part I believe is discovery. We have pretty clear traditional ways to find places in the world — addresses, geo-coordinates, regions, etc. — but people need more. Whether it be “find me interesting new places that I might like” or location based games, we need to find a way to bring the fun and adventure back into place discovery. Services like Dopplr are really pushing people to get out there, share their lives and explore the world to discover new places. We’re doing our best to continue and build on these ideas and give people something that is both valuable and fun.

Thanks Josh – great to see another big player innovating in the online cartography game. To learn more follow Josh on twitter @joshdevins.

past Nestoria interviews: Stoycho Vlaykov, Mark Keating, and Jason Trost

A few notes about searching for property on the other side of the world

Published by Ed on January 8, 2010 in New Features and about us. Comments

Fellow Nestorpodians,

In last week’s 2009 review I mentioned that I’d be writing a bit about our international achievements in 2009. And indeed I shall, but first we have a more pressing overseas matter to address.

As regular readers know, a few months ago we posted about our search for an expert on all things Australian. After much interviewing – we all know there are tons of Aussies in London, but post a job ad over on Gumtree for an Australian with internet experience and you really get a sense of the scale. Seriously we were very flattered by how many of you got in touch – I’m delighted to announce we found our man. Or woman actually. The last few weeks our little team of intrepid vertical searchers has been joined by one Kat – long time internet veteran and more importantly continual source of bizarre life stories (Did you ever work as a princess at Tokyo Disneyland? Didn’t think so) that have enriched the team to no end. She hasn’t taken long to settle in and put the old e-pen to the paper. The Nestoria Australia blog went live a few weeks ago. Best of all, it seems by and large to be understandable to English speakers! So I invite you to subscribe straight away to get the scoop on all things property search related from the southern hemisphere (well Australia at least). As a service to Northern Hemisphere readers the content will actually be printed right side up, rather than upside down.

Just like here in the UK, we’ll be running an interview series with thought leaders from the online and real estate industries, the first of which went live before Christmas where Kat caught up with digital geo enthusiast Julian Doherty, one of the creators of the delightfully named govhack project It’s Buggered, Mate.

Where else can you find content like that? Please join me in welcoming Kat to the team, and enjoy the new blog.

BTW – I know some of you may now be saying to yourself “Well Ed, that’s great. I like a good blog as much as the next person, and this Kat sounds cool, but when can I actually use Nestoria to search for property in Australia?”. Well, to take your little mental game a step further, were we actually having that conversation I would answer “Soon”.

Nestoria UK 2009 – The year in review

Published by Ed on January 1, 2010 in about us. Comments

Fellow Nestoris

As we noted last week 2009 was turbulent year for the property industry. So this year, the year we celebrated out third birthday, it’s perhaps particularly important to reflect on the progress made over the year.

We kicked off the year by partnering with AOL, and from there we went to work with NWN Media, Zoopla!, INEA, Gumtree, PropertyPal, Country Life, CityLets and PropertyNews. Our thanks go out to all of our new partners from 2009 (and even more thanks to those who believed in us earlier).

We attended, sponsored and spoke at many great events. We also took some time out from helping others find new homes to actually moving to a new home ourselves (come visit!).

In terms of our actual website, 2009 wasn’t a year of great change. Of course we’re continually testing and fine tuning and considering new approaches. For example we launched our “Where can you live service”. On the whole though, incremental tweaks are the nitty gritty reality of life at a search engine. It’s a game of small but continual improvements in relevancy. Nevertheless, we hope to have some more obviously visible changes in the coming days. Meanwhile we did of course keep on rolling out improvements to our API.

happynewyear

So there we have it. That was 2009 for us here in the UK. I’ll do a post about 2009 in other markets in the near future.

In closing let me once again thank all of the Nestoria team members and of course you, our users, for a great 2009! We’re looking forward to an even better 2010.

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