Mash-up 102 – Virtual Earth Pushpins

After last month’s Mash-up 101 – Virtual Earth and RedFin’s recent switch to Virtual Earth, it’s time for another mash-up class. Last time, we created a simple aerial Virtual Earth map (centered above the Seattle Space Needle).

This time, we will create a simple road map (that is bigger and centered above the continental US) which has pushpins for the Seahawks road to SuperBowl XLI. So first of all, we need to change our map view, like so.

function loadmap()
{
var vemap = new VEMap(’VEMap’);
var vepoint = new VELatLong(40, -100);
vemap.LoadMap(vepoint, 4, ‘r’);
}

You’ll notice that the vepoint object has a different latitude & longitude this time. I just picked some random point above the middle of the US that looked good. The point in question is a few miles north of Norton, Kansas (which is located halfway between the middle of the US and the middle of nowhere). I also called vemap.LoadMap method with different parameters this time. The first parameter is the center point of the map (but you already figured that out). The second parameter is the zoom level. Valid values are from 1-19. A 1 will zoom out to the entire earth, while a value of 19 will zoom in to house/street level. Since we just want the continental US, we’ll use a zoom level of 4. The last parameter is the map type. ‘a’ is an aerial map, ‘r’ is a road map, and ‘h’ is a hybrid map. You can also use ‘o’ for oblique (aka bird’s eye view), if you are zoomed in near street level.

Now, we need to add a simple pushpin for the location of the SuperBowl XLI. To create a simple pushpin, we need to add the following code to our loadmap function like so…

var veMiami = new VELatLong(25.9577745, -80.2391839);
var veMiamiPin = new VEPushpin(‘SuperBowl’, veMiami);
vemap.AddPushpin(veMiamiPin);

In the above code fragment, the veMiami object contains the location of Dolphins Stadium in Miami (nothing new there). The second & third lines are the interesting ones. In the second line, the VEPushpin object takes a least 2 parameters. The first parameter is a unique ID and the second parameter is the location of the pushpin (Dolphins Stadium in this case). Now that we’ve created our pushpin, we need to add it to our map via the AddPushpin call.

You should now see a red thumbtack on a map (unless you are using Firefox 2). Unfortunately, there’s a minor bug in current version of the VE map control that causes it to use the wrong drawing code on Firefox 2. Fortunately, there’s an easy fix described on Via Virtual Earth. (Which is a site I highly recommend you visit if your serious about Virtual Earth development). Anyway, assuming you’ve gotten your thumb tack to show up, it’s time for a complex pushpin. This time we’re going to put a Seahawk logo at Qwest Field with an HTML popup balloon. Time for more code…

var veSeattle = new VELatLong(47.5950437, -122.3327744);
var veSeattleDetails = “<img xsrc=’thumbnail.jpg’><br>In a game for the ages, <a xhref=’http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/recap?gid=20070106026′>Seattle beats Dallas</a> on fumbled snap by Tony Romo for a 19 yd field goal and a game saving tackle by big play Babs.”;
var veSeattlePin = new VEPushpin(‘Seahawks’, veSeattle, ‘http://espn.go.com/i/teamlogos/nfl/sml/trans/sea.gif’, ‘Seattle 21, Dallas 20’, veSeattleDetails);
vemap.AddPushpin(veSeattlePin);

In the first line, we create a VELatLong object for the location of Qwest Field. The second line, contains the HTML that we want to appear in our pushpin’s pop-up balloon (the above picture of Tony Romo and a brief description of the play of the game). The third line creates the pushpin, except this time we have more parameters. The third parameter is the url to the icon of the pushpin (aka the seahawks logo). The fourth parameter is the title of our pop-up balloon, and the last parameter is the HTML for the details section of our balloon. Finally, we add the pin to the map. Assuming it all works you should see something like this…

[photopress:mashup2.gif,full,centered]

Otherwise, goto http://www.annaluther.com/mashup2.html to see what a working version of this example looks like (Firefox work-arounds and all). See ya next time.

Mash-up 101 – Virtual Earth

After reading Dustin’s Blog Posts on a Map?, RedFin’s big coding contest, and the lack of “more interesting things” to blog about (Sorry, I can only whine about the MLS before I start repeating myself), I’ve decided to show folks how to create a simple Real Estate mash-up. I want to upgrade Zearch to the latest Virtual Earth technology (I’m still using version 2, but the current version is version 4) during the Christmas break, so I figured I might as well share the knowledge I’ll be gaining from that experience.

Mash-up 101: Virtual Earth

Prequisites: Basic Computer Literacy, HTML 101

Hello class, welcome to Mash-up 101. In today’s session we will learn how create web page that contains a Virtual Earth map control. It’s easier than you might think!

First you need to fire up your favorite text editor (Professionally, I usually use SlickEdit 11 or Visual Studio 2005, but I’ll use the world famous Notepad text editor for today’s class). Then and create an empty web page and save it to your desktop.

<html>
<head>
<title>Mash-up 101: Virtual Earth</title>
</head>
<body>
This is my first <b>Virtual Earth</b> mash-up.
</body>
</html>

HTML (which stands for hypertext markup language). HTML is the language used for creating web pages (it what you see, when you click View Source in your favorite web browser). All those funny <html>, <head>,<title>, <body>, and <b> things you typed in are HTML tags. When a web browser loads a web page, it reads the tags to determine how a web page should appear and behave. If the following is over your head, you should to take HTML 101 before you read any further.

OK, now that we have a simple page, we need to create our map control. First we need add a <div> tag that will be the container for our map when we are finished and we need to add a <script> tag which will download the map control’s code onto the page. Next we need to add an event handler to the <body> tag so the browser will call our code and create the <script> block that contains it.

<html>
<head>
<title>Mash-up 101: Virtual Earth</title>
<script src="http://dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/v4/mapcontrol.js" ></script>
</head>
<body onload="loadmap()">
<script>
function loadmap()
{
alert("Are you ready for some mash-ups?");
}
</script>
<div id="VEMap" style="position: relative; border: solid 1px black; width: 600; height: 400"></div>
This is my first <b>Virtual Earth</b> mash-up.
</body>
</html>

Now, you have a boring page with an empty rectangle that pops up an alert! Big deal you say? Well, hang on sports fans, here comes the cool part. Pay attention now.

We now need to change our loapmap function so it will create a map of our choosing. The following Javascript code will create an aerial map around the Space Needle.

var vemap = new VEMap(‘VEMap’);
var vepoint = new VELatLong(47.62, -122.349);
vemap.LoadMap(vepoint, 17, ‘a’);

The first line of code creates a Virtual Earth map control. The second line of code defines a latitude & longitude (in this case, a couple yards south of the Space Needle). The last line of code tells the map control to create a map view that is an aerial map, a 100 yards or so above the Space Needle. Put it all together, and you’re code should look something like this…

<html>
<head>
<title>Mash-up 101: Virtual Earth</title>
<script src="http://dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/v4/mapcontrol.js" ></script>
</head>
<body onload="loadmap()">
<script>
function loadmap()
{
var vemap = new VEMap('VEMap');
var vepoint = new VELatLong(47.62, -122.349);
vemap.LoadMap(vepoint, 17, 'a');
}
</script>
<div id="VEMap" style="position: relative; border: solid 1px black; width: 600; height: 400"></div>
This is my first <b>Virtual Earth</b> mash-up.
</body>
</html>

Word of warning, WordPress is a lousy HTML code editor. It changes and breaks things after you save them. (Or at least Dustin’s deployment of it on RCG does). Anyway, if you have trouble getting things to work make sure you replace all the forward, backward quotation marks with the standard quotation marks or apostrophies. Otherwise, goto http://www.annaluther.com/mashup.html to see what a working version of this example looks like.

Assuming there’s a demand for another class, future classes will cover the joys of pushpins, how to create a Google Maps mash-up or other more advanced topics.

Faster than fast, Quicker than quick, Ka-chow!

While spending quality time w/ the Cars addict in my family (the 3 year old who says “I wanna see the race car movie Daddy”) got me thinking about something that moves faster than Lightning McQueen, the relentless march of high technology.

A couple weeks ago, Real Central VA, had a link to an interesting NAR Center for REALTOR Technology survey on what agents/brokers plan to spend on technology.

Some of the more interesting findings were

  • 95% of agents use digital cameras
  • 90% of them use cell phones
  • 77% of them use PCs
  • 71% have web business sites
  • 60% of agents have IDX search features on their web site
  • Sites with IDX listings generate more leads than sites without listings.
  • 30% of agents spent more than $2000 on technology in 2005
  • Less than 15% of those participating in lead generation programs are satisfied with the results.
  • 67% of agents want their broker to expand their technology offerings.
  • 84% of agents want the MLS to expand the technology and service offered.
  • Most internet leads come from broker web sites or agent web sites
  • Realtor.com was the 3rd largest source of internet leads
  • The Internet is the third most important source of leads (after referrals and repeat business), it is surprising that the majority of agents spent less than $500 to build or maintain their website, and that a super majority of brokers (67%) spent less than $1,000.

The net take away for me was that agents and brokers have an appetite for technology second only to MindCamp attendees, and yet the vast majority of them probably spend more money at Starbucks in given year than they do on their web sites! Given the importance of internet leads, the effectiveness of broker / agent web sites in capturing them, the disappointing effectiveness of lead generation problems, and appetite for more technology it seems to me that the industry on a whole is seriously under investing in technology. There are exceptions of course, but it seems that real estate tech spending is going to have to trend up. Otherwise the tech leaders around here, both inside & outside the industry (RedFin, John L Scott, CB Bain, Zillow, Trulia, etc) will increasingly make real estate professionals look like real estate amateurs.

So where are your tech dollars going in the next year? How much do you plan on spending? How will technology change how and where you use your marketing budgets? More Zillow, Craigslist, and Google ads, and less paper-based ones?

Zestimates & Seasons Change

[photopress:weather.jpg,thumb,alignright]Well, I’ve been busy putting the finishing touches on Real Property Associates and Preferred Real Estate (registration required and in beta) websites. I’m looking forward to taking some time off from consulting/coding and combining the best aspects of both sites in my next iteration of RCG’s Zearch. (so many cool ideas to implement, so little time). Anyway, if your RSS feeds start to break or things start to appear in Spanish, it’s all my fault. At any rate, if I implement something interesting, I’ll blog about it.

Anyway, it’s been an eventful month while I’ve been too busy to blog. Here’s the month’s highlights for me.

Zillow makes the big time
You know you’ve made it when somebody complains to the government about you or otherwise starts a legal action against you. Greg on the BloodhoundBlog and Joel on the Future of Real Estate Marketing has all the gory details and the play by play action on the NCRC complaint to the FTC regarding Zillow. Frankly, I prefer it when Zestimates are too low. It’s keeps downward pressure on the county assessor’s desire to collect all the property taxes he thinks he’s entitled to. I only want a high Zestimate when I sell the house, when I’m living in it (which the typical case), I want it to be low! Hopefully this will blow over like a winter storm. Besides, nobody complains when the local weather report is 10% off (which has a bigger day to day impact on me than an inaccurate zestimate does). Speaking of which, has anybody else started building their ark yet?

I’ll never trust an integrated NIC again
This past month, marked the 3rd time in the past 2 years that a machine with an integrated NIC (that’s just fancy way of saying the machine’s motherboard that has a built-in network adapter) died or otherwise corrupted Window’s network stack on me. When it happens on a personal machine, it’s very annoying and when it happens on a server with paying customers it’s much worse. Maybe having FIOS at home or running a server is much harder on a NIC, than a cable/DSL is. Whatever the cause, I’m tired of dealing with poorly debugged network cards & drivers. From now on, I’m paying the extra $20-$40 bucks for a stand-alone Intel or 3com network card and I’m only trusting NICs that MS includes drivers for on the Windows CD. (For what’s its worth, it’s seems Linux folks are having similar issues w/ nVidia chip set NICs too, so I know it’s not a case of Windows sucking since every Intel or 3Com NIC I used in the past 6 years hasn’t given me a single minute of grief). Oh well, I just had to vent since that mishap cost me a day of my life, I won’t get back.

Changing of the leaves and the tile servers
John L Scott’s PR folks informed me that their site now has Bird’s Eye images for Portland, OR. The more interesting thing is that MS appears to have updated a lot of their aerial imagery on Virtual Earth recently. If you visit a site that uses the newer Virtual Earth control (such as local.live.com), you notice that Seattle’s images appear to be have been updated with photography from a fall evening (with better resolution) while the Eastside’s images still appear to be photographed during a summer afternoon.

Perhaps future versions of Microsoft’s & Google’s map offerings will have night/day and seasonal maps/aerial photography? Either way, it’s interesting to see the changing of the map tile servers coincide the changing of the leaves. (regardless if it was intentional or accidental). Speaking of the mapping wars, it’s going to get a lot more interesting tomorrow since MS is releasing a new Virtual Earth control tomorrow.

Zillow 2.0 is out – Westlake Village start your photocopiers

The folks at Zillow have just released an update to their web site (which first launched in February earlier this year). You can find out more details from the Zillow Blog.

The Cool:
One of the coolest features are scrollable heat-maps (frankly, I thought they’d do this, because it’s been on my Zearch 2.0 To-Do List for the past 4 months). So when you zoom around the map view, check “show heat map” check box, zoom out to the city level or higher, and see Zestimate/sq ft color coded all pretty like on the map. This is slick.

[photopress:Zillow.gif,full,centered]

Another thing they’ve done is add is what they call MyZillow. The feature allows users to keep track of their favorite homes from one central location. You can create your own estimate (and make it public), add facts about your home to supplement the public record and compare it to right next to the Zestimate.

The Lame:
The map page now has 3 banner ads it (2 of which were animated). Although, I understand Zillow’s business model is based on the ads, I think they would be better served by having fewer ads. Even realtor.com only has 2 banner ads on it’s major pages. I hope the next release doesn’t have pop-unders and “hit the monkey for a free iPod” ads.

The Deep Thought:
What will happen if disgruntled reators (or hackers) start entering bogus supplemental data into their MyZillow? Will it effect Zestimates negatively?
Anyway, congrats to the Zillow guys for pushing the envelope a little further. It’ll be very interesting to see what version 3.0 holds and see how far Zillow can push that deCarta DDS box that they have sitting in their data-center.

Live from Virtual Earth! Any questions?

I’m going to have lunch w/ member(s) of the Microsoft Virtual Earth team tomorrow. They just released a new version of their mapping control & local search service this week (highlights include more Birdseye images, polygon support, and MapCruncher layers). Since Dustin’s recent conversation w/ Yahoo went over well, I figured I’d extend the same courtesy and see if my fellow bloggers had any interesting questions they wanted to ask.

FYI – Due to NDA’s, I suspect they’ll be unable to answer the really interesting questions. However, don’t let that stop you from asking the question or giving a product suggestion. Since I’m talking to the program manager and/or software engineers that blog, I suspect they’ll appreciate the feedback, even if they can’t be completely forthcoming in their responses.

PS – Is anybody else waiting for them to combine the Vexel technology they recently accquired, Photosynth, Flight Simulator X, w/ Birds Eye images and give Google Earth a battle worthy of a level in Halo 3? Should be a ton of fun watching Master Chief battle the Covenant armies of Mt. View during the next year.

Sharing the spam – Is Zillow going to China?

[photopress:spam.jpg,full,alignright]I got an interesting piece of investor spam yesterday. This one was so interesting, I figured I share it and give somebody a good laugh or chuckle. Apparently they are talking up a company in China that has “pilfered every costly lesson learned by Rich Barton and pals… plus every breakthrough technology Microsoft gladly spent $100 million to develop their own business with optimized Rich Barton’s billion-dollar baby.”

I had lunch with some of the folks from Zillow today. Even though they know Rich Barton better than I do, they didn’t even know about this opprotunity! They also said, they wanted in on the action… 🙂

Anyway, here’s my spam for your reading enjoyment…

Rich Barton Spam

And if you figure out what exactly they’re talking about, let me know. 😉

"I am Tiger Woods"

tiger-woodsWhen I was at Inman, I believe it was Dottie Herman (although I realize that Altos Research attributes the quote to Burke Smith) who said “Technology won’t replace agents, agents with technology will replace agents“. Regardless of the source, it’s a great quote! That remark struck a chord with me. Except there’s one small problem… There’s not enough “real” technology vendors out there! Let me explain further…

OK, at one end of the Real Estate 2.0 spectrum, you have Zillow, Move, & Trulia. They use cool technology to sell advertising in the Real Estate market. Nothing wrong with that. Being a ‘softie alumni perhaps I’m a bit too set in my ways to fully appreciated the size of the opportunity these fine companies are going after. After all, MS only has a 10% share of the $500 billion/year enterprise IT market. But Google, probably only has a 1% share of the $3 TRILLION/year advertising market. Maybe those numbers are off, but it feels like a good Zestimate to me. Clearly there’s a lot money to made from the death of print media and these guys are at grave yard with their shovels ready. More power to them I say.

At the other end of the Real Estate 2.0 spectrum, you have HouseValues, HomeGain & others. They try to use technology to lure in and sell leads. It’s not my cup of tea, and some people don’t like them, but there’s nothing wrong with that business model either.

But where are the companies that use technology to just sell technology? When I look at the MLS search offerings of my future competitors like Birdview, Wolfnet, Superlative, Logical Dog, and literally a cast of thousands etc, I just cry and smile. The maps are non-existent or very Web 1.0-ish. RSS or KML? What’s that? Foreign langauge support? Is English considered a foreign language yet? Data Visualization? You gotta be joking. Page speed? Maybe if you measure performance with a calendar. And I haven’t even talked about half of the things I want to see or invent in a world class MLS search tool.

Granted, my game still needs a lot more work as well. Zearch is English only still, there’s more to data visualization than pretty Zillow charts, I really have no idea of how bad I scale yet (better than reply.com I hope, otherwise I know I’ll never hear the end of it), and I only support the NWMLS right now, but on the whole I’m feeling pretty optimistic about my chances on the pro tour.

Picture this scenario, here I am, John Q Homebuyer, getting my Zillow fix, Moving around the web, and being Trulia impressed with all this Real Estate 2.0 stuff, and then I click on your ad. I goto your web site, I wanna search for homes (because frankly that’s why people visit your site, unless you’re a famous blogger) and do you know what happens next? It’s reminds me of the guy going for a test drive in the new Volkswagen radio ads.

“This broker’s web site has 3 speeds, and this one is disappoinment. Web site, honk if you suck *honk* Take me to a RealTech or Caffeinated web site”

FYI – I’m leaving out RedFin because there are an exception to this generalization. They are a broker that has developed great technology in house and they are keeping it all to themselves (punks ;)). So most other brokers can’t really compete with them technologically speaking unless they partner with a technology vendor (like RealTech or myself).

I mean, we have all these “consumer portal” companies doing interesting work, empowering consumers, and then when I visit the broker’s or agent’s web site for the full story, it’s a total and complete let down. There’s over 1 million agents in the this country, and probably only a 1000 agents that have web sites worth visiting (I suspect half of which are regular Rain City Guide readers), and hardly anyone with compelling MLS search tools. It feels like all the good software engineers involved with this industry want to sell it an ad or a lead, instead of a killer web site. Maybe the industry needed a few well funded and very talented start-ups to smack it around to finally wake up and smell the software? (sniff, aaaahh, Firefox fresh scent, yummy)

Clearly there’s a big opportunity for developing a good MLS search tool for this industry. Maybe not Zillow, Microsoft or Google sized, but it’s big enough to make me interested in going for it. I’m pretty excited at the thought of all the possibilities, personally.

This is why I cry and smile. I cry because I feel my clients pain. They just want a cool web site to capture leads so they can get off the advertising & lead buying treadmill, and finding a good one is just about impossible. I cry because I feel the home buyers pain. This stuff should be so much better than it is. Many brokers have the money and are willing to do something about it, but it just looks like the current set of vendors serving them are developing products like it’s web circa 1999. I smile, because I’m in a position to do something about this. I feel like a Tiger. Here’s how I break things down on the links…

Jack Nicklaus is still winning most of the major tournaments these days, but he’s the one whose records I wish to break. RealTech has done some real nice work w/ John L Scott, CB Bain (did you guys do CatalistHomes? It looks like your work, but I don’t see your brand anywhere?). He has a few years of a head start over me, and is probably in process of making his other clients very happy. I hope that Zearch will eventually be as well regarded as the work you’ve done.

But after Jack, I can’t see anybody else out on the course improving their game. Maybe they are all down at the club house sipping some buds? Maybe they think the mine field of MLS downloading rules and methods will keep their market shares safe from technology disruptors (and to be honest, they are partly right – I wouldn’t be crazy enough to take this on if I wasn’t so convinced that I could build a much better set of web tools than most of the vendors I’ve discovered). Maybe they’ve never read Andy Grove’s “Only the Paranoid Survive“? But if this industry embraces RETS (or better yet, screw the SOAP and let me get dirty w/ the MLS’s SQL Servers), I suspect a few names on the MLS/IDX web site industry leaderboard will change.

But how can any vendor support all 900+ MLSes in this country! This is a monster challenge, even for a Tiger. We’re talking a 600 yard, Par 3 sized challenge here folks. Sorry, but even Tiger’s Nike golf equipment can’t par that hole. I’ll suspect I’ll just refine my game on the local links until I get really good. (If Dustin would only give me the connection string to Realtor.com’s SQL cluster it would all be so much easier. ;)) Oh well, if I gotta play the game one hole at a time, that’s the way I gotta play. Just keep making pars, make a birdie here or there, no bogeys, and watch the other players fall apart like a Sunday afternoon during a major. I dunno, but it’s starting to feel like the 2nd round of the 2000 US Open at Pebble Beach to me.

I’m working out, I’m going to a swing coach, I’m sinking my putts, I’m killing balls on the driving range, and more imortantly, I’m feeling a little faster, stronger, & smarter with each passing week. So all you other players, better step up your game. Tiger’s turning pro soon. Maybe not this year, maybe not next, but soon. And when he does, the game of real estate will not be the same.

Except for Jack, I wouldn’t worry about him too much. We’ve all seen the green jackets in his closet. 🙂

I know Ubertor’s got game, but I consider them more of a Michael Jordon type player. Great stuff, but he plays a different sport than we do. So Mr. Agent & Ms. Broker, are there any good MLS/IDX vendors out there whose game impresses you? (Other than Jack’s & Tiger’s of course?)

RPA Zearch – Now with Turbo Zillow!

OK, I admit it. I got early access to the Zillow API. 🙂 And it’s pretty interesting stuff, it provides Zestimate values, comparable properties, Zestimates charts, and Zindex charts. Anyway, everybody knows I’ve done Zestimates before, but the charts are a new wrinkle I haven’t had the opprotunity to explore yet.

As some of you know, I’ve been working with Gordon & Jay of Real Property Associates (old site) to develop their new site (beta). Although the site is about a month away from going live, I thought I’d let the world know so they beta test my favorite new Zearch feature which I call “Turbo Zillow”.

So if you run a search for Eastside communities, below the map (sorry about the lack of pushpins folks – the server is having a bad geo-coding day), you’ll notice the new Zillow control. The control will populate with every city & zip code that was in your search results. (PS – Will the agent who entered a 00000 zip code into the MLS for MLS# 25147354, please fix it, don’t get me started). It will then let you plot a Zindex chart based off location, dollar/percent appreciation, and 1/5/10 year durations. So the control, looks like something like this…

 [photopress:TurboZillow.gif,full,centered]

This is really cool, because getting a new chart, is as simple and changing the drop downs to what your interested in, and the watching the chart change. Comparing city & zip codes median price histories has never been this easy on Zillow. The details page of a listing will also have a Zillow control that will show the chart of the listing, the zip, the city, the state, and the USA in the same way. Currently. the details version of the control appears to have a bug with getting the USA chart if Zillow can’t find the Zestimate. So if you see something that is way off. it could be my bug, or it could be Zillow’s bad Zestimate. Either way, I think charts & data visualization are the next big thing for MLS searches after everybody gets the AJAX maps out of their system.

On the Zillow site, to get this information, I have to click here for Bellevue, click back, click here for Redmond, and then back, and then click here for Kirkland. Why do they make getting Zindex charts so hard? I have to scroll to the bottom page, for everything and then click? Why can’t you do some Web 2.0 map magic instead of a sea of links (or just put the links it at the top of the page)?

OK, enough mini-flaming, I have to give credit were credit is due and I thank the crew at Zillow for having the guts to release an API to the public and having the courage to let me put it through it’s paces. Perhaps my experiments will inspire them to greater things, more APIs and a better UI for the Zindex pages? Until then, I’m using “Turbo Zillow” for my ZIndex fix.

Visit http://www.rpare.com/search.aspx, do your thing, have fun the fast lane my friends!