Tag Archive for 'tools'

Going viral

Published by Ed on October 1, 2008 in New Features and tools. 1 Comment

Fellow Nestorphiles!

One of the biggest challenges we face in offering a compelling property search experience is that on the one hand users like Nestoria for the simple, fast, clean experience, on the other hand, property is inherently a complicated topic with lots of little details. We’ve discussed some of our approaches at addressing this in the past.

This challenge applies not only to the presentation of the properties and the filers for sorting them, but also to the tools around finding a new home. As we become an increasingly digital society people want their data in more and more formats. For example maybe you want your property search results via geoRSS, or KML or GPX. Or maybe you want to email a Nestoria page to someone you’re house-hunting with. We offer all of these formats and options, but want to find a way to make them available to users who want them without cluttering the experience for everyone else. Likewise some users (but probably only a small percentage) may want to see the OpenStreetMap version of Nestoria

So for some time we’ve been mulling what to do. Yesterday we launched our new “viral/tools panel” on the property search results page. As you can see on this screenshot of property for sale in Sheffield, on the upper right side of search result pages users can now click on the panel to display a host of options for sending results to your friends or bookmarking or alternate formats.

Property for sale in Sheffield

After the click:

Property for sale in Sheffield

Big thanks to the folks behind the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) library for make this sort of interface tweakery so easy. As always, please let us know what you think. Meanwhile we’ll stay focused on keeping it simple.

Nestoria tools in the wild

Published by Ed on April 8, 2008 in tools. 0 Comments

Greetings Nestorwegians!

Today we thought we’d feature some sites out there across ‘the internets’ using the Nestoria webmaster tools. For those that don’t know we offer a full array of widgets, property lists, dropin maps, co-branding tools, an even a full API to allow webmesters to offer their users relevant property information.

Here’s an example of our easy to set up co-branded property search in action on regional site this is Hartlepool.

nestoria cobranded search on thisishartlepool.co.uk

Moving on to a slightly more glamourous region (no offense intended to our much loved Hartlepudlian readers), we also recently came across our API being used on About Mayfair, a site about London’s poshest district (no offense intended to our occasionally beloved Chelsea readers).

So whether your site’s readers are hunting for a multi-million pound mansion on the edge of Hyde Park or a more affordable cottage by the sea we’ve got the tools to help you offer a compelling property search experience.

As always, we’re grateful for any feedback about our tools, especially our most recently launched historic house price widget.

Embeddable House Price Charts

Published by Ed on March 18, 2008 in New Features and tools. 8 Comments

Hail Nestorcrats!

In these chaotic times of stock market ups and downs (good thing my contract stipulates that I be paid in gold bullion), it’s only natural that people are focused on the price of their most valuable asset: their home. A few weeks ago we asked you for feedback regarding the best way to display house price trends over time. Many thanks to those of you who came forward with your helpful suggestions.

Today we’re pleased to announce the newest version of our house price widget is now live. Using the recently released Google Charts API (thanks Google!) we’re able to

nestoria house prices widget

Adding the widget to your website or blog is literally as simple as cut and paste. Do a search on Nestoria for any area in the UK and at the bottom of the page there will be a link to ‘House Prices Widget’. Click on that link and you’ll be shown a page where you can get the chunk of code to cut and paste onto your website. Full details can be found on the house price widget page in our webmaster tools

Indeed, the first examples of the new widget have already been spotted ‘in the wild’. Here’s a screenshot from Lavenderhill.co.uk, a site, as the name suggests, about the Lavender Hill area of South London:

nestoria house price widget on Lavender Hill site

Of course, if you are traditionalist, you’ll be very pleased to know that we continue to support the original house price widget format, as seen here:

nestoria house prices widget

and for those who disagree with our design decisions, you of course have full access to the raw data itself via our API.

We are considering rolling out other widget designs in the future, so please do keep sending us your feedback. Likewise, we’re happy to feature other examples of the widget in the wild. Let us know.

Best of luck to all of you in these uncertain times (hint: buy gold!).