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.

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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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

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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11870.com app for Facebook

by irenet - April 14, 2009

We now have an application for Facebook! It’s a basic version to start with, but it’s work in progress to keep improving on in the next few months. Right now this is what you can do:

First of all you can link your Facebook profile to your 11870.com page, that way what you save to your 11870.com page will automatically be published on Facebook as well. So you’re non-11870.com contacts will be able to see what you’re saving too.

Second, you can look up and share any service you’ve saved to 11870.com via posting it to your wall. It’s a great tool to let your friends know where you’re getting together for dinner, going for coffee or shopping, or what other services you’re considering or using.

Also, by linking your Facebook and 11870.com, you’ll be able to see who you know on both networks. From your Facebook homepage you’ll be able to filter by 11870.com and see what your friends have posted lately.

So now that you know about it, why not try it out?

• Go to the 11870.com application for Facebook.
• Read our help section on using the Facebook app.

We’d love hear from you on the app, if you find it useful, what features you’d like it to have… just write us an e-mail.

categories: around the net, new!

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11870.com and GeoMe

by irenet - April 1, 2009

GeoMe is a location based social network and mobile phone application that allows users to leave messages ‘on the map’. As Ric Ferraro, Managing Director of the company puts it: “the basic idea is to allow a community to leave virtual post-it’s in several places of the city through their mobile phones”.

Besides its essential use as a way for friends to communicate, GeoMe also displays a series of services (bars, hotels, restaurants, shops…) near a user’s location at any given time. And this is where 11870.com comes in, thanks to our API, our site is an important source of the information provided to GeoMe‘s community.

Apart from seeing a each service on the map, users can read an 11870.com review of it. “We liked the quality of the information of 11870.com, and the type of reviews by this community fit our model very well”, says Ferraro about choosing 11870.com as a source.

The company has recently released an optimized version of their application for Ericsson phones, but in the near future will work with other platforms. What else is up? “We’re experimenting with new concepts, even integrating location-based games, to constantly be offering something new to our community”.

We’d like to take this opportunity to welcome GeoMe and wish them the best of luck!

categories: new!

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11870.com and Internet Explorer 8

by irenet - March 30, 2009

If you’re using or plan to use the recently released version of Internet Explorer, here are a couple of instances where IE 8′s new features and 11870.com work together nicely.

Web Slice

We’ve developed a Web Slice that will allow you to keep up with new places and services added to your city or favorite geographical area. To get this, you simply need to visit the area’s page and filter the list of locations by new. IE 8 will display this icon if there is content to add. Clicking on it you’ll add a new web slice to your navigator that will tell you when new places and services are added to Valencia, Chicago or India.

You may also choose a particular category within an area: shoe stores in Madrid, nightlife in Milan and so on. Remember you need to be filtering services by new.

* Get the Web Slice for 11870.com

Accelerator

Another novelty is the accelerator. You can use this when you’re at another site and you want to search for something you see there on 11870.com. Forget cut and paste! Just select the text you want to search for.

In this example we were reading a blog that mentioned a hotel, and I wanted to find it on 11870.com. Selecting the name, clicking on All accelerators and Search with 11870.com took me to a page with these search results.

* Get the accelerator for 11870.com

Search

And last, but not least nor limited to IE users – it’s available for Firefox too- is an 11870.com search in your browser. You can add it anytime you’re visiting 11870.com or install it here.

Now you have it, enjoy!

categories: how to's, new!

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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.

–

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

categories: features, new!

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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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nobody wants to be just a beta

by irenet - December 18, 2008

After a year and ten months live, 11870.com has grown. We no longer feel beta.

What best reflects this feeling is the new start page that we’re premiering today. We could say our users built it. Everything you see there: the types of services available, the cities, pictures, video, latest activity, etc… is what the users consider relevant. Also – and because it’s something we never take our eyes off of– it’s the result of analyzing statistics, reading (e-mails, twitter, blogs) and regularly meeting with users to look at what they need and what the best way to do it is.

The start page isn’t the only thing that’s changed. Lately we’ve been incorporating many things worth mentioning, here’s a brief summary of them:

• content categorization: through clustering, we’ve obtained a classification in the form of categories that reflects the heterogeneity of 11870.com contents. To name a few, we’ve emphasized hotels, rural housing, restaurants, leisure and culture, bookstores, painters, general reforms, movers, plumbers… We’ve also improved the search experience and access to this information, including many types of facets whenever possible.

• new browsing by cities: “the best services in your area”. Exploring an area has a lot more logic and sense to it. We’ve put contents first. When you access a city, Barcelona for instance, the first things you’ll see are the most important places and services for users. We’ve also added new filters, visualizations, maps, etc.. Right now, there are nearly 4000 cities in 105 countries with listed content.

• new restaurant menus: We’ve added thousands of restaurant menus, so that you can see the prices, dishes and meals options of many restaurants in Madrid, Barcelona and Seville without leaving the house.
• new services and third party integration: Now you can reserve a table at many restaurants, book a room in thousands of hotels, or scan the best in rural housing thanks to agreements with El Tenedor, Booking and Top Rural. We have other agreements on the way, which we’ll announce in due time.

We hope these changes are to your liking. And we’d love to know what you think about them.

And last, we’ve created something that has been requested many times: a forum. We hope it will become a meeting point for all of those that use and visit the site and want to discuss and share ideas regarding different aspects of 11870.com.

categories: new!

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