New map tool for real estate listings

Posted on 07/08/2008 by admin

While the Microsoft database Utility rebuilds, AGAIN!, my entourage database (and yes, I know I’ll have to delete the file and have it recreated from the Exchange server, but I’m always optimistics with computers) I decided to finally find some time to write something on this now seldom updated blog (and my feeds stats are here to prove this).

After a couple of weeks of implementation and tuning (where we learned that messy Javascript code performs better then the state-of-the-art) we finally released to the public the beta version of the Gabetti map search (a demo video lays on my Flickr page) for real estate listings (those of Gabetti obviously – at the moment).

Nothing so new (apart from the fact that – as far as I know – the ONLY other similar tool in Italy is MAIOM – which we tried back in 2006 to explore the potential of geomapping tools potential for the real estate market): satellite view, small geocoded houses, balloons with overview of the house, AJAX, panning, etc.But I really find useful, and haven’t find in any other site apart Coldwell Banker’s (which works only in Firefox, on my Mac), is the usage of Point Of Interests (POI): we started from the hypothesis that price, square meters, number of rooms are important DETAILS not something you use when deciding to buy or not to buy (I find VERY interesting the usage of POI tha has been done in Walkscore) When I bought my home I had two main objectives: i. find it in a pleasant neighborhood and ii. near to all the services that make life more comfortable (supermarkets, cinemas, restaurants, kinder-gardens, etc.) and a satellite view enhanced with POIs makes this task extremely straightforward.We’re still in BETA and are plenty with enhancements to code and deliver (better user experience, better feedback, capability to search for streets and not only for cities, price/sqm filtering capabilities just to cite a few) but are really curious in evaluate how will the tool perform on our web users and how will our RE agents perceive it.

Myrsine Island now open

Posted on 27/03/2008 by admin

In the nearly couple of month since my last post a lot of tasks of my professional life have reached their place in the cosmical karma.

One of these is the release of the Myrsine Island on Second Life: a perfect replica made by Electric Sheep Company of a residence Gabetti is building on the Island of Sardinia (and that will be ready in 2010).
You can take a look at the product site or take the whole tour at the buildings in Second Life. The choice is yours.

This is a complete new experiment in SL for the Gabetti Group: we’re starting using the metavers not for metaverse’s sake but for RL business stuff; Myrsine island will be used by the Group agencies devoted to its commercialization as a tool to showcase the apartments to potential clients and – at the same time – it’s going to be a tool for foreigners to take a visit to the apartments, before buying, before leaving their countries.

On the island you’ll find a Manfrotto (who’s one of the top tripod producers all over the world) where you can get for free a machinima-o-maker hud to create videos in SL; machinema making has never been so easy! (see a video made with the machinima HUD on YouTube)

Just a bit of info for the moment. And I still owe Leeander a post about his latest innovation disruptive project: Open Spime.

Ever changing

Posted on 03/02/2008 by admin

True. Yes, you’re right (and – almost obviously) I’m wrong. But I have at least a couple of reasons to explain you why I haven’t blogged in a month; at a second look I’d say it’s just one reason: I love a constant change feeling to fulfill my life.

Point one. Professional life: officially speaking I’ll take a new role as manager at Gabetti with a brand new team reporting to me and a whole new task to supervise the whole servers+security+network side of our infrastructure.
If you know me or read this blog since some time you might know that my carrier/experience path (programmer turned web designer turned project manager turned interaction specialist turned researcher turned again project manager) has in the years just lightly touched the “hardware” side of the thing, so it’s going to be exciting finding a way to manage all this new knowledge that will flow into my mind in the forthcoming weeks.

Point two. Personal life: even if in our original path our current home would have been “current” for at least something like 10 years this summer (5 years in our counting) we bought a new and bigger one in the Brianza area near Milan. We’re currently restructuring it from the ground up but you might take a look at how it’s going to appear once ready (caveat: our architect designed the home, but the Floorplanner version and its mistakes are completely mine.

Thesis: I’ll try to post as frequently as I can, but need to suspend my pact with you. For a while at least.