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.

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

• comer en Sol
• comer en Malasaña
• comer en Ópera
• comer en Cortes
• comer en Chueca
• comer en Lavapiés

New districts and cities coming soon!

categories: features, just for fun

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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

You can insert this into your page:

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.

Then copy the code and paste it into your site.

categories: features, new!

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Heavy rotation

by irenet - March 6, 2009

We’ve added some features to your media uploading. Previously we’ve mentioned how you can embed videos from 11870.com to your website, add youtube and vimeo videos to your places here or keep track of your favorite pictures and videos by other users on the site. Here’s one for the photographers out there, who mightn’t have noticed a couple of quick tweaks they can perform on pictures at 11870.com

After opening the dialog by clicking on add pictures, and uploading the images, you’ll see something like this:

The arrows to the left of the thumbnails allow you to rotate the pictures or change the order your media appears in.

You can come back to this form screen anytime by choosing to edit your entry or review of a service. But you can also rotate your pictures elsewhere…

On your homepage, choose your pictures and videos tab to see all your uploaded media. Click on any one to see it in all its splendor. Underneath you’ll find these two links. You can download your original picture and rotate it too.

Here it is before…

… and after

categories: features

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Recommendations

by irenet - January 29, 2009

Users and visitors to 11870.com now have a new way of discovering places and services, a personalized recommendation system. This is possible thanks to a collaboration agreement between 11870.com and Strands, a US-based company pioneering recommendation technologies.

With this system 11870.com can offer suggestions of places and services based on what users are commenting on or looking at.

For starters, even visitors who are not logged in can see what others interested in the same place have been looking at. Simply scroll down when you’re at the page for a service, for example Caracas Arepa Bar.

When a user is logged in, and browsing through services in a particular city (e.g. Marrakech) or neighbourhood (e.g. Gothic quarter of Barcelona), they’ll also find recommendations available.

Logged in users will also have this choice when browsing at services within a category, like Mexican restaurants.

And most important of all, any 11870.com user will find individual personalized recommendations on their homepage at any time.

The more activity you have as a user (saving services, tagging, creating categories, etc.) and the more you tell it what interests you and what doesn’t, the smarter and more accurate the system can be. In time, it can become a useful tool for planning or making choices.

We’re very pleased with this new feature, and hope that our users an visitors will be so as well. Though we’re aware that it can be improved. We’d love to know what you think about it: write to us or participate in the forum discussions regarding this feature.

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Our friends at Strands have also mentioned this collaboration on their blog.

categories: features, new!

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Such great hights

by irenet - January 26, 2009

Some time ago we mentioned Google StreetView integration on 11870.com maps, it’s a feature that can often come in handy. Still, there are other ways to look at a location that might suit your needs or curiosity better, depending on the occasion.

Satellite views can be informative, but sometimes appear a little too abstract.

The place we’re looking at here, Top of the Rock, is at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. With street view we can check out the entrance to the building:

And the bird’s eye view feature gives us a whole new perspective.

The route to these visual aids is simple: at the page for any service, click on enlarge map or on the map itself. Then you’ll see, not only a bigger map, but a few extra options to help you find your way around. Try the different views out yourself, at the map page for the London Eye, for example.

For another way to view services on a map, read about 11870.com places on Google Earth in the help section.

categories: features

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If you’re feeling chatty

by irenet - January 16, 2009

If you’d ever wanted to give another user kudos for their excellent photography skills or comment on something you saw in a video here, now you can.

This option has been available for a couple of days and is our first new addition in 2009. Here’s a quick run-through of how it works.

As long as you’re logged in you can comment or mark any user’s pictures or videos. As you can see above, we’ve kept the previous options: other media and photo data to the right of the picture, the possibility of e-mailing it to a friend or flagging the picture as inappropriate are underneath it…

Now look at the top of the picture:

This picture has one comment and has been marked as a favorite by one user. To read the comment, just click on the link or scroll down. There you’ll see previous comments and a box to participate in the conversation.

On the bottom left hand corner is the link to mark this media item as a favorite.

If you choose to mark it as a favorite you’ll be able to easily access the picture from your own pictures and videos section. Read more about your media on 11870.com in the help section.

Want to comment on the comments feature? Visit our forum or send us a message.

categories: features, new!

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archipelagos

by irenet - December 12, 2008

They say no man (or woman) is an island… but we know plenty of people inhabit them. Users in Spain‘s Canary and Balearic islands had pointed out that our geographic structure (country > province > locality)  did not suit the reality of their situation, since a province in these areas can span several islands. So, in order to make geographical browsing on 11870.com more useful for them, we’ve given each island in the archipelagos the same status as a province here.

Now you can explore each island individually, and the pull down menus to the left of the region will offer only municipalities located on the island you’re looking at. You can also follow activity for your island(s) of choice: Tenerife, Ibiza, Gran Canaria, Majorca… just click on the star!

Above, from the page for Ibiza: pull down menus help you narrow down or expand the area you’re looking at.

categories: features

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More video, anyone?

by irenet - December 9, 2008

We’ve recently incorporated the option of adding videos from Vimeo and YouTube to the page for a service on 11870.com.

Above,  ie School of Architecture added a video of Laban Centre from YouTube.

To add a video you need to be at the page where you edit the details for a saved place. Scroll down to add pictures and videos. Click on add videos from vimeo or youtube, then just paste the address for the video into dialog box that comes up.

You can read more about pictures and videos on 11870.com here.

categories: features

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Streetwise

by irenet - October 29, 2008

As of yesterday, Google Street View is available for several areas of Spain. This is great news for 11870.com users browsing cities like Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia or Seville. But the good news doesn’t end here: Street View is available on 11870.com for a number of locations in the US (from New York to New Orleans), Australia, Japan and France. And it’s all integrated into 11870.com.

The feature is easy to access when exploring the map to a location more thoroughly. All you need to do is click on the “enlarge map” link underneath the map for any service on 11870.com. This latest addition, together with other recent new features like the display of pictures in the area or bird’s eye view, makes it easier than ever to find the service you’re looking for.

Above, the Street View image displayed for Paradise Macau in Tokyo.

And speaking of two-way streets… Let us remind you that thanks to an agreement we signed last year, 11870.com reviews and media are featured in Google Maps search results worldwide.

categories: features

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Choice: Best of 2008 in Madrid

by irenet - August 25, 2008

We took the hint. Some places just stand out for whatever reason. And there are five hundred places in Madrid that now stand out in particular thanks to recommendations by locals and visitors on 11870.com.  We thought these businesses would like to share this recognition with their customers,  so we sent each of the 500 a sticker like the one you see below.

This is the front of the restaurant Integral Artemisa, for a full list of the places go to Best of 2008 in Madrid.

If you’re walking through Madrid and happen to spot one of these stickers,  you might like to add a picture of it to our Flickr pool.

About the sticker

Note the gray area in the bottom part of the sticker, it includes the name of the service and the address of its 11870.com page. What’s that black and white square to the left? It’s a datamatrix code, this bar code can be scanned with a cell phone to access the 11870.com page with information related to the service in question. A site tracking the use of datamatrix featured our initiative, they’re an interesting source if you’d like to find out a little more about 2d codes.

categories: features

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