BYTEPLAY

2M Listings in US

Artemi Krymski — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:12:33 +0000

In the last 4 months we’ve doubled our US coverage to 2M listings, and are on track to overtake Realtor.com by the year’s end. We sincerely apologize for any late replies to brokers and agents who contact us daily, we’ll be crawling your sites very soon - promise

Google & BytePlay Sitting in a Tree

Artemi Krymski — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:32:06 +0000

Recently Google announced that they too started crawling through HTML forms. Here at BytePlay we’ve been doing that since the web dinosaur age. We love them for telling the world how much the Invisible Web matters. Our belief has always been that the most exciting stuff on the Web is invisible. Like real estate for example. Let’s hope Google aggregates it all and we can go home for some tea and cucumber sandwiches.

DotHomes Hits the Streets

Artemi Krymski — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:19:45 +0000

We’re about to hit the streets with our new feature code-named YASVI (”Yet Another Street View Implementation”). That’s because we’ve just added Google’s Street View to our US listings. Now along with videos, maps and aerial views, users can walk the streets of their next home before they even move in. Or decide where they’ll walk their dog. Or check out the neighbours. Or judge them by their cars. Or marvel at how amazing our site is. Whatever you do, don’t forget to check out that “Street” button and leave your comments here.

No More Grass

Artemi Krymski — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:03:31 +0000

I got tired of our logo. We now have a new, classic web 0.9a logo and an awesome redesign. The important thing is that I like it. Whilst at it, I’ve made a few tweaks to the search box and buttons, hopefully for the better. Do let us know what you think in the comments.

DotHomes on RealtyTimes

Artemi Krymski — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:32:09 +0000

RealtyTimes reports on DotHomes today:

Is there room for yet another real estate listings website? You bet, if it’s packing a search engine as powerful as Google’s.

We’ve embedded the video of the news coverage below:
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For US listing brokers

Douglas de Jager — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:30:46 +0000

Dear friends,

Thank you for your kind words following our US launch:
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Best Descriptions in the Universe

Artemi Krymski — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:34:15 +0000

Having launched DotHomes in US, we couldn’t resist running a few searches for entertainment purposes. We present our scientific findings below. If you have any others to share with us, please get in touch.
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Bubbles!

Douglas de Jager — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 15:31:06 +0000

The following are just a little bit of fun - aggregating some price tracker data over a GoogleMap.

Enjoy!

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Old school

Douglas de Jager — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 02:48:13 +0000

Dear friends,

It’s 03h07 on Monday morning, Art’s base speaker is bouncing, the office is bubbling, and we’re about to set off some fireworks.

Our beloved search engine is about to escape from beta. And, to mark the occasion, we’re setting light to Web2.0 naming schemas.

Friends, today we’re launching

The talented Mr Krymski

Douglas de Jager — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:27:49 +0000

Following my wizardly business partner’s recent nomination in Business Week for Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 (apparently one or two grey hairs preclude nomination), the grinning Mr Krymski last week found himself nominated for Best New Idea at Esquire’s annual Man at the Top Awards. He was in rather prestigious company: the other three nominees being Mark Price (Waitrose), Philip Green (Fashion Academy) and Simon Woodroffe (Yotel).
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Feeling Wealthy

Artemi Krymski — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 23:59:44 +0000

Now that we’ve completed our funding round, we thought we’d put the money to good use: buy ourselves the most expensive flat in London. We tried searching a few portals, but everything was, well, too cheap really. Then someone suggested extate.com. With just one click we found the most expensive properties in london, chose the top one, phoned the agent, scheduled a viewing, consulted the board, and changed our minds. Business at the speed of thought!

So, if you’re feeling wealthy, or just curious, check out extate.com before this 70M house in Surrey goes. And, while you’re at it, click on the property’s green video link (second listing).

Blah Blah

Artemi Krymski — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 15:00:05 +0000

One of our favourite test cases - extate search for “blah” picked up a lovely property today from Alexanders estate agents:

I know, you have propably heard it all before from Estate Agents … ‘delightful seaside cottage’… ‘lots of original features’ …. ‘oozing period character’… blah blah….. BUT, if you are looking for a geniunely delightful terraced cottage in a small coastal resort, we have just such a property. [ … ] So what do you think………is this just another helping of estate agent waffle……….?

View the original here. In other news, Paris Hilton’s home did not appraise for the sale price of $4.2 million, possibly triggering a crash in the property market on Thursday.

Silent Shebang

Artemi Krymski — Fri, 11 May 2007 14:56:57 +0000

Did you miss us? We’ve been working hard, and blogging little. We know that’s not what you’d expect from an Internet business, but we’re weird. Lots of little changes and features have gone into this new release (codenamed “Silent Shebang”) (more…)

Web Search versus Portal Search

Douglas de Jager — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 17:21:42 +0000

Until now, Web-search technologies have had a rather trivial impact on property search. Property search has remained the preserve of portal infrastructures—most notably RightMove in the UK. This is because Web search, if it is to be really useful within the context of property search, requires “deep crawling” and “high-level–entity parsing”. Furthermore, it requires this to happen for each unique estate-agency Website. (more…)

The Heat is On

Artemi Krymski — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:21:24 +0000

The summer is just around the corner, so we figured it would be nice to know which areas get hot or not. (more…)

Mapping 2.0

Artemi Krymski — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 21:27:24 +0000

We’ve finally decided to put some thought into our mapping interface and here is what we came up with. (more…)

A Trip to South Africa

Artemi Krymski — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 18:31:04 +0000

Who knew that when Douglas de Jager left to visit his hometown in South Africa, he’d come back with suitcases full of property details from leading estate agents? We sure did, so we put them all up on our brand new South African property site. (more…)

Video Killed the Newspaper Star

Artemi Krymski — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 12:34:52 +0000

The second best alternative to physically viewing a property in person is to watch a video of it. Watch these and dare to disagree. Video is still the most impressive form of advertising. That’s why we decided to give property owners and agents the ability to post videos of their properties on extate. (more…)

The Search Matrix

Artemi Krymski — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 20:10:13 +0000

The primary purpose of a search engine is to direct users to data relevant to their query. This is done by returning a set of pointers to data - “links” along with a preview (small subset) of the data. (more…)

What’s a blog?

Artemi Krymski — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:27:25 +0000

So, we’ve made a blog. Hold your applause. It only took us six months to figure out how to install wordpress. And then another three to decide on what to write. Lots of people have been telling us to get a blog for years, but we were too afraid to admit - we didn’t know what it was. So our excuse was that we’re simply too busy to blog, we’ve got a product to build. So now that we’ve made one, please don’t tell anyone about it.