Trulia Real Estate
I have been a big fan of Zillow since a grad school friend mentioned it to me, and liked their Zestimate™ feature and summarizing of purchases. But for the past few weeks I have been using Trulia to follow the housing deflation around the NYC area. They just added some nice features:
- As you can see in the image above, they added heatmaps showing popular hoods.
- They also added Neighborhood + City Guides that highlight the popularity, number of listings, as well as the asking prices of the area.
- Recently Sold Homes have been added to the maps.
So I was a bit surprised to see parts of Denver as more overpriced and hot than parts of Jersey, I was thinking it had cooled more back home, but it doesn’t look like that yet.
You can check out a video demo of the new features or the Truliablog.
Google Reader Updates
Google Reader just went through a huge upgrade tonight, that was much needed.
It is now much easier to browse by subscription and get an idea of what is new. The new Expanded View does a much better job stacking posts onto one page, instead of the old way that required loaded a page for each post. It does seem to have some odd behavior that a post will only be marked as read if you click on the post, as well as scroll down past the post, but does not do this consistently. So it doesn’t do a great job of marking a post as read.
A great update overall though.
Crowdsourcing
I have been hearing more and more about Current TV, usually involving Al Gore. But I also came across it in BusinessWeek where they mentioned some Crowdsourcing being done on Current. L’Oreal basically just got a user to create a video commercial for them and gave them $1,000, instead of the usual $168,000 through an agency. Those are some hard numbers to argue with, and I have seen plenty of high quality video done by amatures, even some Hollywood quality movies.
ps - it’s too bad I had to hack around to find the embed code since their supplied button didn’t work in IE or FF, Current need to improve their QA.
Phone Number for Life with GrandCentral
GrandCentral, an attempt to provide one phone number, to manage numerous phone numbers. Especially handy if you travel a lot, calls can be routed to whichever location you happen to be at. Certain people can also be directly routed, or sent straight to voicemail (or blocked as spam).
It also has a handy feature, akin to Answering Machines where you can pick up while someone is leaving a message.
GigaOm wrote about the launch:
You, can upload your address book, and set rules that can help manage your incoming call flow. For instance, if you are working in the office, all incoming calls from your mother in law can be forwarded to well, a voicemail box. Similarly you can assign “people” who can reach you anytime, regardless of your location. (Your kid’s school teacher would be a good option.)
The service is free for 100 minutes of calling per month, or pay $15 per month for unlimited.
The Social Bookmarking Face Off
The social bookmarking market is in a steady state with two dominant players - del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. The rest of the pack, including Yahoo MyWeb, appears to be substantially behind. Will they catch up?
Hoboken Sushi - Uptown Sushi House & Teak
Looks like more sushi is coming to Hoboken. Teak looks to open later this month, and is looking very Manhattan loungy (check out more photos at Hoboken411). My favorite place, Sushi House, is opening an uptown location where the Jefferson used to be. I’m hoping they have a Best Customer event when they open.
Teak Hoboken
16 Hudson Place
Hoboken, NJ 07030
Sushi House Hoboken Uptown
1319 Washington St
Hoboken, NJ 07030
Personalized Google Tabs
Google just added a nice features to its Personalized Google Page, tabs. So that matches very well to Netvibes, except for some nice modules (I personally like the Meebo one).
But I am very happy that Google added this since it means I can reduce the length of my Personalized page, as well as put like-content together. Thanks to SEO Roundtable for the first read.
Live Music Social Search
Fred Wilson on his A VC blog introduced me to Tourb.us. The site is all about making it easy to find live shows, and it does a good job from what I have seen. It linked directly to my Last.fm account and pulled all my bands I listen to… quick and easy. I also added a band manually with ease and made some edits to band info already on the site. You can create feeds based on searches, bands, location, etc., and get updates via email or SMS. Bands can also ‘claim’ themselves via email. It has some great potential and it will be interesting to see if it picks up critical mass.
Looks like the revenue model will be related to ticket sales, but nothing as of yet.
Google NYC
According to the Village Voice, Google: The New Port Authority, Google will be moving into NYC very soon. Birds eye view from Gmaps.
111 Eighth Avenue, designed by Lusby Simpson and completed in 1932 to house the Port Authority of New York, is one of the largest buildings in the city, an architectural marvel, and a landmark. Looming like a 15-story locomotive over Chelsea, the mammoth red-brick structure occupies an entire city block between Eighth and Ninth avenues and 15th and 16th streets—a footprint larger than two football fields.
This came from SEO Roundtable and Webmasterworld.
Street Wars
Street Wars have returned to NYC, and will occur on Sept 25th - Oct 16th, 2006. It’s water gun fun for adults and the NYC rounds have more women then men.
From the StreetWars website:
At the start of the game you will receive a manila envelope containing the following:
* A picture of your intended target(s)
* The home address of your intended target(s)
* The work address of your intended target(s)
* The name of your intended target(s)
* Contact information of your intended target(s)Upon receipt of these items, your (or your team’s) mission is to find and kill (by way of water gun, water balloon or super soaker) your target(s).
You can hunt your target down any way you see fit; you can pose as a delivery person and jack them when they open the door, disguise yourself and take them out on the street, etc.
If you are successful in your assassination attempt, the person you killed will give you their envelope and the person they were supposed to kill becomes your new target. This continues until you work yourself through all the players and retrieve the envelope with your (or your team’s) picture(s) and name(s). Then you win. Cash…but first live in fear.
You can sign up online.
