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We offer the Nestoria property search experience in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain, and the UK.

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Nestoria sponsors GeoNames

Hello Nestogeographers!

We are very excited to announce our sponsorship of GeoNames - a database containing over 10 million place names freely available under Creative Commons attribution license (cc-by).

GeoNames uses its global network of local experts (aka GeoNames Ambassadors) to identify relevant sources of geographic information. Once compiled, GeoNames data is subjected to a wiki-based review process. This allows users to edit, correct and add new entities to the GeoNames repository, which today receives over 11 million web service requests per day.

Why are we sponsoring GeoNames?

As Nestoria is expanding to new countries we are increasingly appreciating the value of global, open-source repositories of geo data accessible through web services.

In fact, we have long since been supporting as well as using such data sources (e.g. OpenStreetMap or Mapstraction) to build compelling mapping of property and related information.

Please let us know how you like our integration of maps and properties. We're always interested in feedback, whether it is praise or constructive criticism.

Filed under  //  sponsoring   technical  
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Posted by Vuk Trifkovic 
 

New OSM Maps on Nestoria with Cloudmade

Dear Nestorfuns,

Our true fans will know the "geo fun" feature that allows you to use our property search with OSM Maps.

Viral_panel

I am happy to report that we have updated this feature with brand new, customized maps curtesy of Cloudmade. Cloudmade allows you to create your own designs for OSM maps and integrate them on your website via their API.

Check out Spitalfields, London:

(download)

 


We are very pleased with the result, big thank you to the people at Cloudmade!

We hope you'll have fun playing with this new feature. Have a nice bank holiday weekend!

 

 

 

 

Filed under  //  fun   new features   openstreetmap   technical  
Comments (2)
Posted by nomsa 
 

New features from MS Live maps

Fellow Nestors!

We're continually scanning the darkest reaches of the internet to find new technologies that might make finding a home easier. This of course means keeping a keen eye on innovation in the online mapping sector, and speaking with thought leaders.

This week we were very pleased to see that Microsoft significantly upgraded their Visual Earth product. Amongst the improvements, you can now easily dump data onto an MS Live map via GeoRSS or KML. Put simply, if you like you can browse properties to buy or rent from Nestoria on MS Live.

Here's a screenshot of an example where we've taken the GeoRSS feed of properties for sale in Dover and very easily layered it onto an MS Live map:

Media_httpstaticnesto_kcdre

As before, we have no plans to switch away from Google maps, but it's great to see that Microsoft (and Yahoo! with their recent maps upgrade) aren't conceding this space, that they continue to innovate and improve their offering. Here's a more detailed overview of all the new features and fixes

Interesting times my friends. While we continue to see the expected innovation from nimble start ups (a group in which we too hope to fall), and the open source community (good things keep happening over at OpenStreetMap - see this recent comparison of open source versus traditionally gathered map data), but we're also seeing a continual stream of advanced features from the big internet firms.

Just to recap some of the things we here at Nestoria have been impressed with in just the last few months:Where will this all lead? Impossible to say, but it is clear that internet users everywhere are the winners.

Filed under  //  technical  
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Posted by Nestoria UK 
 

Beta testers needed

Fellow Nestorvanians,

As you know, we're constantly testing improvements to Nestoria. Typically this takes the form of showing different users slightly different implementations of the site. Sometimes however we need to make larger changes or completely new features. In the coming weeks we will be rolling out a few such improvements that we think will make finding your dream home even simpler.

To test these bigger changes we'd like to first expose them to only a tiny group of friends and volunteers who can give us some initial feedback before we expose them to a much larger audience. If you're interested in being in this group of beta testers please let us know via our feedback form. Please only volunteer if you can spare a few minutes to give new features a test drive. Many thanks. The first test will begin later this week.

Filed under  //  new features   technical  
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Posted by Nestoria UK 
 

Density of homes for sale across the UK

Nestoria Fans!

As you know from recent posts, lately we've been thinking a lot about the mountain of data the Nestoria search engine generates. We've had a bit of feedback that bar charts and pie graphs might not be the most interesting way to represent geographic data (Steve, we hear you - maps are cool).

We hope to unveil some interesting ways to look at and draw conclusions for the data in due time. Nevertheless, here's a bit of a teaser we whipped up today by overlaying our database of half a million homes for sale on a plot of the UK:

Media_httpstaticnesto_ikhgd

At a glance we can see our database corresponds very nicely with UK population density.

In England properties in Central London clearly has the highest density, but we also have excellent coverage throughout the south east and in all major cities like (properties in) Birmingham, (properties in) Liverpool, (properties in) Leeds, (properties) in Newcastle, and (properties in) Portsmouth

In Northern Ireland (properties in) Belfast is easily visible. In Wales, major cities like (properties in) Cardiff and (properties in) Swansea stand out against the relative spareness of the center.

We can clearly see the nice density in major Scottish cities like (properties in) Glasgow, (properites in) Edinburgh, and (properties in) Dundee, contrasting with the blissful isolation of (properties in) the Highlands

Maps are fun.

Filed under  //  fun   technical  
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Posted by Nestoria UK 
 

Our Google Maps feature wishlist

A few months ago we were delighted when Google used Nestoria as the Google Maps API case study. It was a real honour for our little team, especially in the context of how many interesting uses of Google Maps there are (for those that don't already know of Google Maps Mania, I recommend subscribing. It's a great blog that regularly features new projects around the world using Google Maps).

Since then we've been getting a lot of questions about Google Maps and how we use them on Nestoria. It's hard to believe that only two and a half years ago Google maps, and the intense innovation it spawned in online cartography, didn't exist. Amazing how far we've come. Still, one of the most common questions we get is "what new features would you like to see from Google maps"? In the hopes that someone out there at Google or in the online geography world is reading this, we've posted them.

  1. Make the maps load faster. We work hard to make Nestoria as fast as possible. Unfortunately, the rendering of our results pages always waits on the rendering of the map. That's a downer. We know what we're asking is hard. If it were easy everyone would do it.

    This is far and away our most desired 'feature'. We don't care what sorts of caching black magic deals with the devil you have to make, do it.

  2. Make maps work in Facebook. Okay, technically this is as much a Facebook request as a Google request, but you're all there in Silicon Valley. Work it out. Find a way. Let's all get along and be friends. We want to add maps to the Nestoria Facebook apps.

  3. Integrate Google analytics into Google Maps. We're data junkies and are big fans of Google Analytics as a way to validate our own bespoke metrics systems. It would be cool to have that type of reporting for maps as well. How are people using the map on our sites? Let us see, please.
Don't get us wrong, we love all the zooming features, the overlays, the polygons that are continually being added. All great stuff. We love that parts of the map code are now opensourced. But these three features are the ones we want most.

One final note, we want to recognize that Google aren't the only people innovating. Great stuff recently from the teams at Yahoo!, MSN, multimap, and OpenStreetMap, and we watch them all closely. Very cool that they've all risen to the challenge laid down by Google. Internet users everywhere are the better off for it.

What's your mapping wish list?

Filed under  //  technical  
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Posted by Nestoria UK 
 

The challenge of ambiguity

Fellow Nestorese,

as is our habit we often like to give you a peek behind the curtain of a vertical search engine and show you some of the challenges we face. Today I thought I'd explain the difficulty of ambiguity.

We humans have fallen into the lazy habit of using the same word to mean many things, including place names. A shockingly high number of places in the UK share the same name. For locals this is typically no problem, because it's clear which place is being referred to, but it can make the lives of a property search engine developer struggling night and day to help you find homes to buy and rent as easily as possible very difficult. For example, if you just search for a properties for sale in Rushton how do we know which of the three Rushtons in the UK you mean?

Media_httpstaticnesto_cgsgn

But of course there are some placenames, that, though they exist in multiple locations around the country, have a clear winner. For example, properties for sale in Waterloo. In a flurry of post Napoleonic war celebration, many areas were named after the historic battle ground. There are five Waterloos around the UK, but when most people say they want to rent a flat near Waterloo, they mean near the south London train station. In those cases we take you, our dear flat searching friend, directly to what we believe is the dominant result, but also give you the option to change your search to the more obscure locations:

Media_httpstaticnesto_iqfbz

Differentiating between the locations which are truly 'ambiguous' and those like Waterloo where there is a clear winner is the challenge. These are the subtle tweaks that lead to a product that 'just works'. Please let us know if you've found any locations you think we're not quite getting right.

One final note, this problem is in no way isolated to the English language. In fact the UK isn't bad - I'll leave it to our spanish blog to rant about how many San Sebastians there are in Spain.

Filed under  //  technical  
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Posted by Nestoria UK 
 

YAPC You There

#!/usr/bin/nestoredes,

use WebService::Nestoria::Search;

{
Just about everything that makes Nestoria go is built using the Perl programming language and related tools. Perl is a flexible and widely-used alternative to more "enterprise" platforms like Java and .NET and has a larger and better-organized collection of free libraries available than Ruby or Python. We find that it scratches our technical itches very nicely.

To stay current, most of the Nestoria Tech Team will be attending YAPC::Europe 2007 in Vienna at the end of August - the biggest yearly Perl event in Europe. We look forward to seeing a lot of friends from the London Perl Mongers and meeting other Perl users from across the continent. Larry Wall himself will be in attendance and will undoubtedly give a talk about what we can expect from Perl 6 - the as-yet-unready-for-prime-time next version of the language. If anybody wants to talk about the challenges building and scaling a vertical search engine built on Perl, Apache, MySQL, and Linux, do look us up.
}

Filed under  //  events   technical  
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Posted by Nestoria UK 
 

How YSlow sees Nestoria - 94/100

Nestorinians,

We're always hard at work on making it as quick and easy as possible to find a home to buy or let. Usability is a tricky concept. What one person likes, another dislikes. There is one thing everyone seems to agree on though: they want the internet, and especially search engines, to be as fast as possible.

As such we're continually on the lookout for ways to speed up Nestoria. We were pleased to read about the recent release of YSlow, a tool from Yahoo! for measuring performance flaws. The tool is great in it's simplicity, and also pleasing in that there's a wealth of documentation that actually explains the logic behind the recommendations.

Unfortunately, YSlow won't help us make Nestoria much faster because we're already hitting a score of 94 out of 100 on our homepage.

Media_httpstaticnesto_djbvo

The areas we could improve would be to use a CDN or 'content delivery network' like Akamai, but sadly that's not really an option (or even needed) for a lean and mean start up like Nestoria.

Nevertheless, rest assured, dear Nestoria user, that we're always doing our best to make the site as fast as possible. We've got a few more tricks planned for the coming weeks, which should hopefully ensure your search for your next home will be served up as quickly as possible.

BTW, as one of several Yahoo! alumni in the Nestoria team, it's very cool to see yet another bit of coolness (see our coverage of Y! Pipes and the Nestoria Yahoo! Hack Day) from the kids in Sunnyvale. Keep it up.

Filed under  //  technical  
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Posted by Nestoria UK 
 

When a picture isn't worth 1000 words

Here at Nestoria, we like to provide our users with quality information, in order to enable them to search for their dream house quickly and efficiently.This means providing snippets of key information, and of course, lovely thumbnail (small) images of the properties in question. However, some sites provide us with images that sadly turn out to be far from lovely, and have little relevance for someone searching for a home to buy or rent.

Take for example these gems:
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Media_httplimgnestori_bvemn
Media_httplimgnestori_azfkh
Media_httplimgnestori_uneva

But we don't mean to single these few out, there are actually quite a few bad apples. Here's a little quilt of 'image not available' images. And these are just a tiny, tiny percentage of the 'bad images' we come across.

Media_httpstaticnesto_rhmfa

We've developed algorithms to weed out these less useful images, and promote those listings that do have relevant photographs.

This is just one way in which we aim to make the life of the property searcher easier. If you ever come across an unsavory image in our listings, please get in touch and we'll make sure it doesn't show up again.

How do we detect these sub-par images? One word: magic.

Enjoy your picture-filled property searching.

Filed under  //  new features   technical  
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Posted by Nestoria UK