Code swarmy Monday

by irenet - April 20, 2009

This video is another way to watch our site evolve. In the code swarm graphic below each sphere represents a piece of the project, accompanied by the name of the person that was working on it and committed the changes. A couple of years become a couple of minutes.

If you’d like to learn more about our technology team and their work, check out 2E5E, the 11870.com tech blog. It’s in Spanish, but you can try a machine translation to get a sense of what’s going on. Though the code snippets and command lines should probably tip you off to what they’re writing about.

categories: just for fun, technical

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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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mmmm…. mashups

by irenet - March 19, 2009

This week we’re inaugurating a page with a use of 11870.com that we are very proud of: mashups. At 11870.com we’re committed to sharing content, a purpose that materializes in actions such as our agreement with Google Maps or our support of any developer who’s interested in using our API.

The growing number of projects using the API to create mashups (web applications that combine 11870.com with other data) has prompted us to create a special page for them on the site. The latest two, aquicerca.mobi and comil.us are iPhone apps, by the way.

Comil.us, created by Miquel Camps a.k.a gafeman, allows you to drag a place marker over a map to see what services (restaurants, hotels, bars, clothes shops…) are within a certain distance (300 m, 600m, 1 km) of this spot. A lighter version is available too! From it you can phone the business via Skype or even send a Twitter message with where you’re headed to. Another interesting thing about this mashup is that it’s been translated into quite a few languages.

Here’s a screenshot of what comil.us looks like from a computer.

The red place marker is the position you choose and the blue are restaurants in the area. Clicking on the blue place marks you’ll find details for the business in question.

categories: around the net, technical

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11870.com featured in Online Communities Handbook

by irenet - March 18, 2009

Published by New Riders, Online Communities Handbook, is a practical guide to creating and nurturing web-based communities. Amongst the very interesting real-world examples analyzed by authors Anna Buss and Nancy Strauss, there is a section devoted to 11870.com. The in-depth interview in this section touches on several aspects of our project.

The book is available through Amazon.com and, apart from providing a little insight into 11870.com, is a helpful reference if you’re interested in the field. Be sure to check out their website for more information on the book and its authors.

Nancy kindly dedicated a copy of the book to the 11870.com team:

categories: general, press

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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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Adding a service before anyone else

by irenet - February 5, 2009

Sometimes the services you’re looking for don’t appear on 11870.com… yet! But remember, you can add your favorite services to the directory easily. Whether it’s to share with friends, or to keep track of where you’ve been, it can be done very quickly. Here’s how:

• When you’re logged in, clicking on add a service anywhere will take you to a form page. Just fill out the name of the business and the city it’s in, select the country as well. Then click on save.

• We often have the basic contact and address for the business. So the next screen is a list of possible matches for the service. Click on the business or on add it, if the business you wanted isn’t listed.

• If the service was listed, the form on the next screen is already filled out for you.  Is everything correct? Make sure, because the only way you’ll be able to change this type of information later will be by getting in touch with us.

• Clicking on add here will take you to the usual form page, where you can add a review, pictures, videos, tags, categories, etc, to the listing. You don’t have to though, clicking on save is enough to add it to your page and officially discover the service.

Apart from the personal satisfaction and good karma that come from tipping other’s off to great places through 11870.com, every time someone sees the page for the service they’ll know you were the first to comment on it thanks to the orange ribbon icon.

If you’ve made any mistakes filling out objective data (address, website, etc) for a service, just let us know and we’ll change it for you.

categories: general, how to's

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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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