Earthware Blog

Earthware have now made live their latest web development project, an online estate agency website for residential property in Buckinghamshire, DreamSpot.

The journey began back in April 2008 when the two Neil’s first met. Neil Osmond, Earthware’s Operations Director and Neil Wood Managing Director of DreamSpot wanted to discuss how Earthware could help with the development and launch of this new online estate agency. The first step was for Earthware to build schematics for the site. Upon receipt of this Neil Wood became sure his dream of a website that made buying and selling property in Buckinghamshire really easy was possible and asked Earthware to submit a formal proposal for the entire site development and launch. The result of this is now available for all to see at DreamSpot.co.uk and Neil Wood is very happy with the process as much as he is with the result.

“I just want to put in record how easy and enjoyable it has been working with all of you; I have always felt that the project was under control and at no stage was my confidence in your abilities to deliver unfounded! With all the other parts of setting up this business causing various amounts of stress it was so nice to know the major component, the website, was in capable hands.” Neil Wood, Managing Director, DreamSpot.

The site, which is split into two main sections, a buyer area and a seller area, aims to bring tomorrow’s estate agency services to the market today. Through being an online estate agent, DreamSpot are able to keep their overheads down, a saving which they pass on to their clients. But being online does not mean there is no-one to talk to or that you cannot control what is happening; not only can buyers ask the seller or the DreamSpot team a question using the websites messaging system they can book a viewing directly with the seller and the DreamSpot team are always at the end of a phone too.

In addition to developing the DreamSpot site, we have also implemented our residential property mapping, EarthwareProperty, allowing users to search for and see their next property in its actual location with road, aerial and Bird’s Eye imagery. Covering the Amersham, Beaconsfield, Chesham, High Wycombe, Chiltern and West Wycombe regions of Buckinghamshire, DreamSpot.co.uk provides information about what it is like to live in these areas of the county, as well as all providing financial and legal services for buyers and sellers and Home Information Packs (HIPs).

Contact DreamSpot to discover more about buying and selling property in Buckinghamshire or read the DreamSpot blog or if you are looking for web development services please contact us.

Although it seemed that both exhibitor numbers and attendees were down at Agency Expo this year, there was a lot of enthusiasm for those that stopped by at the Microsoft / Multimap stand.

Multimap have recently released a new “embedded” mapping option for users with less than 50,000 transactions per year.  If you want any further information I would recommend contacting Multimap directly via their website www.multimap.com.  We also witnessed many attendees still being “wow”ed by Bird’s Eye imagery which is available through either Multimap or Microsoft Virtual Earth.

We had a really good time explaining how you can get the best of the Virtual Earth platform especially using Earthware’s residential and commercial property mapping products.  We have been delighted to partner with Microsoft and Multimap to give every Estate Agent in the UK (irrespective of size) the opportunity to integrate Virtual Earth into their website and create a highly visual experience for their customers.

Enough of the sales pitch though.  What we also really enjoyed showing was where mapping is really going.  We were delighted to show Earthware’s big first in getting StreetView for 1,000 km of London streets launched before Google.  Please see our other blog article for more details or just click on the following links to have a look for yourself at Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge or even an attack from a giant spider.

We were also delighted to show off what was possible using the new photosynth product released from Microsoft labs.  This can be integrated with mapping to enhance the visual experience for users/customers.  I even had a play myself and so click here (or see the insert below) to see the stand in photosynth.  You might also want to have a look at how Microsoft’s Tim Warr has integrated photosynth into a mapping environment in his blog article.

Neil

It’s an exciting day here at Earthware, after months of development on the latest version of our Earthware Property real estate mapping solution it’s now live on the commercial property portal Novaloca.com  with brilliant street level views of central London from our partners Seety.

To try out street level views for yourself, try the links below to some famous London landmarks:

• Piccadilly Circus
• Buckingham Palace
• Tower Bridge

Earthware Property already includes the best aerial and birdseye imagery available by using Microsoft Virtual Earth as its mapping provider, now with Seety’s street side views Earthware Property offers a world leading mapping solutions to estate agents and property web sites.

We are proud to be partnering with Seety on this project who are an amazing company taking consumer level electronics and proprietary software and producing street level views all over the world. Not only are Seety innovators in the street level view market but they have beaten the biggest player in the market, Google, to making one of Europe’s major cities publicly available.

The area currently available covers central London as shown below:

If you want to find our more about using Earthware Property for your own web site or about licensing and commissioning street level views of your city please contact us.

Earthware’s aim has always been to “use the latest mapping technology to create compelling visual experiences to bring our clients’ products and services to life”. Therefore you can imagine our excitement when we saw the latest development in mapping being released: panoramic street level imagery. What better way to make a map compelling and to bring something to life than being able to see a location on your PC as though you are actually standing there and taking a walk around?!

Seety were the first to bring street level panoramic views to the UK having driven over 1000km of the streets in central London and taken over 170,000 photographs. Now to realise our commitment to using the latest mapping technology, Earthware have joined forces with them. Street Level View as we are calling it will be implemented into our existing EarthwareProperty maps in the coming days to become the first implementation of this latest mapping technology in the UK. Our Operations Director, Neil Osmond says of this development;

“At Earthware, we are delighted to be involved in somewhat of a coup in partnering with Seety to bring Street Level View to the UK before anyone else.  We are sure that people will really enjoy experiencing travelling round the streets of London through their PC.”

Having had a long standing relationship with commercial property finder NovaLoca, (Earthware built the NovaLoca site which also became the first implementation of EarthwareProperty) it seemed natural that NovaLoca also be the launch place for the first implementation of Street Level View imagery in the UK. Key to NovaLoca’s success has been their use of technology to differentiate them against similar offerings in its goal to make marketing commercial property easier for agents and finding commercial property easier for occupiers. Therefore it is not surprising that they were keen to be on board too. With Street Level View site users looking for commercial property in London will be able to ‘stand’ in front of a chosen property (see the facia not just the roof!), look at the one next door and even take a ‘walk’ to the nearest tube station or shop.

A note for the security and privacy conscious among you; Seety have carefully processed every image and blurred out all car registration plates and people’s faces to ensure their identity is not shown.

Keep an eye on the Earthware blog; we will be announcing the release of Street Level View in EarthwareProperty here first and if you would like any more information please contact us on 0845 6429880 or email us at info@earthware.co.uk.

Earthware were delighted to be invited to join the Microsoft / Multimap team for the upcoming Agency Expo event.  Microsoft were very keen to involve a partner organisation to explain to potential clients what the full range of possibilities are for their mapping products to drive business opportunities and conversions

Neil Osmond and Lauren Eden from Earthware will both be available over the 14th and 15th October to answer questions and demonstrate the possibilities for mapping.  If you would like to meet with one of us, or any member of the Microsoft / Multimap team, please either contact us beforehand to set up an appointment or drop by the stand.

Attendance of the Agency Expo event is free and you can register at http://www.agencyexpo.co.uk/.