11870.com and Centrl

by irenet - July 3, 2009

This week we spoke with Murat Aktihanoglu, founder and CEO of New York based service Centrl. The reason: Centrl now includes 11870.com places and services as a layer.

With a couple of clicks (or taps) Centrl users can access 11870.com content through their phones. Murat explains how: “As you move around the world, the 11870.com layer always shows the nearest reviews from 11870.com. You can even do a keyword search. Centrl shows you a summary of the review on the map and if you click on Details,  you are taken to the 11870.com website”.
centrl-on-iphone

Apart from finding cool places recommended by 11870.com inhabitants, Centrl lets you login and message friends from social networks like Facebook, MySpace or Orkut without the need to create an account.  It works on iPhone, Android and Blackberry. As Murat puts it, Centrl is “a way to keep in touch with friends, save money with nearby coupons and discover new restaurants, bars, events, etc, through layers”.

categories: news

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tweets and eats

by irenet - June 30, 2009

A week ago we began a new experiment which we’re happy to see has caught on quickly: we’re tweeting restaurants. For the time being the Twitter accounts are only active for downtown Madrid, but more barrios and cities (Barcelona, for example) are coming soon.

The idea is that if you live, work or hang out in an area, you often find yourself undecided as for where to head for lunch. If you use Twitter and regularly check 11870.com before picking a restaurant, this tool is for you: follow the account for your district (or districts) and every weekday at 1:30 pm you’ll be notified of the eaterie du jour.

twitter page

So far, these are the active accounts (¡a comer! means time to eat!).

New districts and cities coming soon!

categories: features, just for fun

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Madrid Restaurant Week

by irenet - June 10, 2009

Next week 11870.com will be organizing the first ever Madrid Restaurant Week. A number of Madrid restaurants will be serving meals at half price to anyone dining from June 15th to June 18th. Alcoholic beverages and set menus are not included but 50% is a good cut in the final check.

To see the list of participating restaurants visit the Madrid Restaurant Week site. You’ll find over 50 restaurants of a variety of cooking styles and price ranges in locations all over the city. From the site you can access reviews, pictures and videos of these restaurants, send a map or message your cellphone with the address and phone number of where you’d like to dine.

Restaurant Week began in New York 16 years ago and has become an important in major cities over the world, from Montreal to Brussels to San Francisco. Ever since we heard of the event we wanted to have one in Madrid and after months of hard work, here it is!

Most of the documentation is in Spanish, but don’t let that keep you from checking out the pocket-guide/catalog PDF. If you’re in Madrid these days, you don’t want to miss this.

Oh, and you can follow the event on twitter, facebook and flickr, too!

categories: events, news

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Visiting Castilla La Mancha

by irenet - May 29, 2009

The Castilla La Mancha Tourism Promotion Institute has decided to integrate its content into 11870.com. It’s the first time that an institution in Spain’s public administration makes content available through a platform such as ours, and we’re not only honored but especially happy for our users.

The Turismo Castilla La Mancha profile on 11870.com boasts 2779 services with 9330 pictures in over 500 cities and small towns. You’ll find spas, wineries, museums, restaurants, parks, monuments, camping sites, sports and adventure tourism and many other tourist attractions, with all the useful information you need to plan a trip to this region.

map2

This initiative literally brings dozens of new municipalities from the provinces of Guadalajara, Toledo, Cuenca, Ciudad Real, Albacete to a digital map. Now that they’re here to find, ¡it’s up to you to discover them!

categories: new!

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11870.com in Metaki

by irenet - May 27, 2009

A new addition to our mashups page this week comes all the way from Chile.  Metaki is social networking,  microblogging and geolocalization in one.

pantallazo-metaki2

Users can share about their location, their activity, see what their friends are up to… and find services in their area. That’s where 11870.com info comes in handy. :-) Thanks to Metaki’s use of our API, the service can perform location-based searches and find out what 11870.com users have to say about nearby parks, cafés, restaurants, shops…

categories: around the net

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Thanks to the Indispensables

by irenet - May 22, 2009

11550 downloads and 1 month later we’d like to take a minute to thank everyone who lavished attention on the release of Los Imprescincibles de 11870.com. The enthusiasm shown by both media (Spanish PC World or El Economista), bloggers (Online Communities Handbook, pensando en mis cosas, ozutto, geekol), business owners (Dudúa, La Tipo) and especially 11870.com inhabitants. Those who received part of the limited print edition have proudly posted pictures of their guides (ronsel, durbon, manel). All the great buzz and feedback is a great encouragement to us, and motivates us to think of more and better ways to keep finding cool outlets for the valuable information people are sharing on 11870.com.

Now we’re just going to sit back for a second, breathe and wish everyone a nice weekend!

categories: just for fun, press

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About the legal statement

by irenet - May 14, 2009

For the purpose of clarity, we’ve performed some minor tweaks on 11870.com’s legal statement. In order to specifically address the issue of who owns the information you post on 11870.com, we’ve added this paragraph:

“11870.com guarantees to the User that it has legitimate and exclusive proprietorship or full authority to dispose of the contents that are made available through the website”.

This means that when someone adds a review, picture or video to 11870.com they are granting us the rights to distribute the content under the conditions stated in the document. Still that person remains the exclusive owner of these contents and is free to use their reviews, pictures and media as they see fit.

We’ve also included a small change relative to the way 11870.com can distribute this information, by specifying the possibility of printed matter as a form of reproduction and distribution. Like we did with Los Imprescindibles (read blog entry or download the guide).

We hope these minor changes  will make the agreement easier to read and interpret. Of course if you have any further questions, you’re more than welcome to forward them to us.

categories: general

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11870.com welcomes Vocento as new shareholder

by irenet - May 8, 2009

Today is a very important day for us. 11870.com has admitted Vocento into its group of shareholders, they participate in 33 percent. The remaining 67 percent still belongs to the same investors and the team that took part in the creation of this project. Gómez-Acebo & Pombo, have provided us with legal counsel during the whole process.

All the publicly available information regarding this operation can be found in the following press release:

From a businesses point of view, having this new shareholder on board consolidates us as a robust and stable project. It allows us to provide the project with enough funds so as to reach the moment in which our income exceeds our expenses. Having BBK and Vocento as significant shareholders brings us a measure of security and stability in these uncertain times.

For our users and visitors, this transaction will be beneficial:

  • We’ll develop the projects we had in mind in a lot less time; we’ll also be able to make 11870.com content available to more people than ever before.
  • We’ll reach new users whose experience will show us places and services in areas where we weren’t well known up to now.
  • Our estimates services will also be more accessible thanks to the influence of Vocento’s regional and national media.

There are two points that we would like to emphasize, these matters are important to us:

  • Content will still belong to the user that uploaded it: everything a user has saved to 11870.com will continue on his or her 11870.com profile and remain their property. The only difference now is that more people will be able to see it.
  • We’re still the same people: the team that has been in charge of the company from the get-go stays on board, there will be no changes or additions but those brought about by the growth and improvement of 11870.com. We’re the same group of people, with the philosophy, style and essence that many of our users and visitors are familiar with.

We’re all pleased and motivated by the new stage we enter today. We look forward to proving our words with actions and presenting you with new developments that we are very excited about. Our dream is to offer users and visitors one of the best websites possible.

categories: general, news

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Some things you don’t want to miss

by irenet - April 23, 2009

… like a celebration. We are celebrating our recent 2nd anniversary and the fact that we’ve  reached 100.000 reviews.

Today  –which happens to be Sant Jordi (St. George) in Catalonia, where the gift of a book is traditional on this day– we have a gift for all our users: Los Imprescindibles de 11870.com. The book is a guide of ‘indispensable’ or ‘essential’ places to visit in Madrid and Barcelona, as well as quick lists of what 11870.com inhabitants in Seville, Bilbao, Saragossa and Valencia have saved the most.

It’s basically a book full of cool places you shouldn’t miss, according to the people on 11870.com. The guide is in Spanish, but even if you don’t speak much of the language, you should have a look at it. We’ve kept it simple, and easy to browse. Plus, we believe that the people who wrote it know their stuff. ;-)

The contents are just the tip of the iceberg of what people are sharing on 11870.com, with extracts from 639 reviews and 580 pictures of 321 services, submitted by 436 users, plus maps, addresses, phone numbers…. Selecting 639 out of 100.000 reviews was a tough job, but it was worth it! We are very happy with the results and hope you all are too.

* Download Los Imprescindibles de 11870.com

* See some more pictures of the book

categories: events, general, how to's, new!, press

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adding an 11870.com service to your own website

by irenet - April 22, 2009

Here’s a small feature we’ve recently added to business listings on 11870.com. Anyone can add an 11870.com business profile to their website quite easily.

Rather than link to a profile page like this one

kramerbooks

You can insert this into your page:

include

As you can see, this window includes objective 11870.com data (phone number, address…), a map of the service’s location and an idea of what 11870.com users have to say about it (links, number of reviews, pictures, etc).

All you need to do is click on add this to your site.

add this to your site

Then copy the code and paste it into your site.

popup

categories: features, new!

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