MyNewPlace Blog

The new search term resolver has been at work for a few weeks now and so the other day we took a look at what searches people had been doing that we were still not handling.

Among the most frequent were searches for apartments for rent in ‘Hollywood', ‘Midtown‘, ‘Uptown‘, and ‘Orange County' so we used the flexibility of the new system to create new geographic entities and some aliases for common variants we found people were using. Now you can search on ‘Orange County', or even just ‘OC‘, find your new place in ‘Queens‘, or move into an Uptown apartment in New York.

We'll keep adding to the list so that you can find your new place any place.

Let us know of any geographic locations that you have had difficulty with in the comments section.

This morning we saw that our friends over at the HotPads Blog had posted an article about connecting with their company on LinkedIn, using a newly released feature. We were happy to see that MyNewPlace had also been selected as one of the 160,000 companies to be included on their new release.

LinkedIn, the popular social networking site that focuses on connecting business professionals, within and across industries, recently released a beta version of a new feature called Company Profiles. According to their blog post, which goes into some detail on the matter, each Company Profile is comprised of data that each LinkedIn member provides.

By showcasing the people that are working at each of these companies, it really helps to break the monolithic image that can sometimes be associated with corporations. There are actual people behind those mirrored skyscraper windows, which is comforting.

The information that LinkedIn is able to provide is unique because each company is represented by the attributes of its employees. LinkedIn is able to display interesting demographic information such as common universities, median age, what companies its employees have worked at before and after and common job titles.

Other features include recent hires, job listings, popular profiles as well as traditional information supplemented by BusinessWeek. Below is a screenshot of the MyNewPlace Company Profile as it is displayed to me:

I have found LinkedIn to be a great site, but usually only useful during a job search. It looks as though they are trying to increase multifunctionality on their site.

Has anyone had good experiences using LinkedIn to find or look for a job? Have you found other uses for the site? Has it become an online rolodex? Hit us back in the comments.

We've been in love with the type-ahead suggestion list feature on the Google toolbar for quite a while and have finally figured it was time to try adding it to the search box on MyNewPlace. Little did I realize what a major back end effort it would take to support something that looks so simple.

Last week we released the new search term resolution back end (and it's been great, the number of your search queries we are resolving has increased nicely and we have more tricks in the wings to make it even better) but it wasn't until Friday that we were hooked up to the type-ahead suggestion list.

Now that it is live, some lucky subset of new visitors (about 1 in 4) will experience the new type-ahead feature when entering search terms. We hope folks like it, and if they do, we'll go back and make it even snappier than our current prototype.

Let us know if it has improved your apartment search either by posting a comment or using our feedback form.

According to our analytics, visitors searching for apartments to rent at MyNewPlace have increasingly been using Internet Explorer 7.0 throughout the year and have finally overtaken the number of visitors using IE 6.0.

Apparently, this change happened in December and is logged not only on our site but other sources as well. This is probably due to holiday computer software and hardware purchases.

It is certainly refreshing to see that our users are as tech-savvy as we hope that we are. However, even if you haven't jumped on the IE 7.0 bandwagon, there is no reason to fear that you will lose functionality in your online apartment search.

All apartment searches, detailed listings, pictures, floorplans, maps and all of the data that comprises the rich tapestry of information about apartments in cities across the nation that MyNewPlace offers to renters is compatible with both versions of Internet Explorer as well as Firefox and Safari.

Which browser do people prefer? What are some of the factors that determine which browser you use?

We're pleased to announce that two MyNewPlacer's, VP of  Technology Ken Cluff and Data Integration Engineer Gabriele Cressman, have been recognized by the NMHC’s MITS Project for their contributions to developing apartment industry data exchange standards.

The MITS (Multifamily Information and Transactions Standard)  project ( http://www.mitsproject.org ) is an industry-wide effort by the apartment sector to develop common data standards and XML protocols to facilitate data and systems integration. The MITS standards are freely available as an industry resource.

We've been an active participant in the MITS project since our inception and employ the MITS standards for data exchange with many of our clients. In presenting the award the MITS committee specifically acknowledged Gabi's contributions to core components of the MITS standard and the custom extension mechanism.

“The exchange of apartment data via the MITS standard helps us provide the freshest, most up to date listings to the consumers visiting our site,” commented Ken. “The consumers are happy, the apartment owners are happy, and because we’re leveraging an XML data standard rather than doing custom integrations from scratch, even our technology team is happy.”