freyfogle

My impression was the big dig succeeded spectacularly at its goal: it was a machine to pump massive amounts of federal funds into Boston. As a nice side effect they also built some roads/tunnels/etc.

Have you tried writelatex? They are rolling out features and partnerships like crazy. There's a solid free offering and a pro tier

Here's a referral link so you (and I) get more space for free: https://www.writelatex.com/signup?ref=64cf3f9ff138

BTW - lots of start-ups here in London trying to innovate around academia and research. Here's a post I recently wrote about the scene: http://freyfogle.tumblr.com/post/99273943690/thoughts-on-fut...

How can you be sure it was really Bielefeld?

In Germany there's Bielefeld, a major city that, depending on your opinion, does or doesn't actually exist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_Conspiracy

Then of course there's also the Republic of Null Island http://www.nullisland.com

How would that work? If I understand correctly the CPF number needs to match the passenger details. So someone else could buy the ticket for you, but then the ticket is in their name.

Labor is a tiny part of modern car assembly. Robots and machines are used everywhere. Avoiding/reducing currency risk is a major motivator - you want production costs to be in same currency as sales.

A similar start-up in Berlin/Prag: http://thedustcloud.com

If you're in London, Howard, the founder will be speaking at #geomob on 13th of Jan. http://lanyrd.com/2015/geomob/

Great point, here's a good recent post with some pictures of OSM data collection in Syria specifically https://www.mapbox.com/blog/openstreetmap-data-in-syria/

If you're in London there's a mapathon tonight https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/missing-maps-hot-september-ma...

and many more upcoming events

thanks, I've passed it on.

We generate leads for our partners, the same model as all search engines.

Ha! Unfortunately nothing about the real estate industry is real time.

We do the best we can and push our partners to do the same. Over the years it is getting better, but it is not close to what consumers want.

That said, speed is a much bigger issue in some markets (rentals in cities like Munich) and much less in others (buying a house out in a village).

We have contracts with and datafeeds from all of them. We've been in business since 2006, in Germany since 2008.

We work very closely with our partners to try to improve the data. It's not always easy. I gave a talk about this at csv,conf in Berlin in July, slides are here: http://www.slideshare.net/lokku/a-living-hell-lessons-learne...

Thanks for making me aware.

This gets asked for occasionally. The thing is though, there are not that many people who truly have no idea where they want to live. Most people have at least some idea based on where their friends already live, where they will be working, etc

Over the years I have seen numerous services that allowed people to search the way you describe. They all typically die out after a year or two, as all evidence suggests there just isn't enough volume of people searching the way you describe to sustain them.

So it's not something we'll focus on. Sorry, I know that's probably a frustrating answer for you.

Good luck with your hunt.

One of our biggest challenges is making the service known. The problem is real estate is a low frequency category. When you are searching, you care a lot, when you aren't you couldn't care less. As a result, even if we do a great job, once you find a place you gone.

We've been doing it for many years and have tried many things, but if anyone has further suggestions always happy to learn.

Glad you like it. If you're interested in any of the tech behind the scenes, please check out our dev blog: http://devblog.nestoria.com

It's really hard to build something simple, especially in more chaotic markets like India and Brazil.

re: Zoopla, they are one of our best partners. They are a great portal, we are a search engine. Complimentary tools for different tasks.

But surely they will just pass the fee to the tenant in the form of higher rent?

Thanks, you should tell EVERYONE you know.

In seriousness though, while we do try our best (not just in Germany, but eight other countries as well), the situation he describes is one that the internet doesn't do a good job of solving. Basically demand way outstrips supply in cities like Munich. As a result, if you have a good flat or house you want to rent out, really all you need to do is tell 5-10 people and via word of mouth you'll very quickly have more than enough high quality applicants. You really don't need online tools.

An interesting result is that we're now starting to see start-ups that reverse the model. In Köln/Düsseldorf there is https://salzundbrot.com (a Nestoria partner) who are free for owners/landlords, but charge applicants a small fee to make contact. Will be interesting to see if it catches on.

The reality though is there is just way more demand than supply. Normally that would be solved by price rises, but the rate of rent increases is reguated by law.

All that said, while I have sympathy with Munich renters, I now live in central London, where the problem is at another order of magnitude. As I always say "London isn't expensive, the rest of the world is cheap".

My sympathies, I lived in Munich 15 years ago and it was a nightmare to find a place even back then. I've heard it's only gotten worse.

We (Nestoria.de) aggregate listings of most of the players in real estate in Germany (IS24, immowelt, immonet, süddeutsche, others) and offer an API. We also offer an API of price trends (ie what the avg rent is in an area and if it's going up or down).

Enjoy: http://www.nestoria.co.uk/help/api-search-listings

that works great for a place that post is delivered to, but what about when you want to specify a different location. What3Words is the better solution.

a similar project: http://www.openbankproject.com

you may enjoy: http://geocoder.opencagedata.com

we aggregate OSM, Datascience tool kit, geonames, and more. All feedback welcome

Out of curiosity, have you tried OpenStreetMap? You get the same enjoyment of editing without the "random/poisonous moderation process", plus the data you contribute is open, rather than private property.

Good summary of the state of play, but I think you overlook one thing - there are now viable online WYSIWIG (at least partially) editors that hopefully can make it easier fr the novice to be nudged towards best practice (besides all the other benefits of SaaS) See https://www.writelatex.com

You may wish to check out Nestoria's API of property listings and house price trends http://www.nestoria.co.uk/help/api

Agree it is awesome (I had no part in coming up with the idea). Feel free to use us as a case study.

There's been a push in the perl community to start using gittip, and I think it's a great thing. So please do keep up the great work.

My company (Nestoria) just started a "module of the month". Each month the dev team picks someone whose code we use and via gittip we'll donate $1/week for a year to that person. That's not a fortune obviously, but our hope is that others - individuals and companies - follow our lead, and in many cases it will be obscure modules that don't otherwise get a lot of attention.

http://devblog.nestoria.com/post/86216883403/module-of-the-m...

your comments generated a lot of discussion for us here, thanks. Our conclusion: if you build an app (mobile, desktop, whatever) that becomes popular and depends on a third party service, in our case a geocoder, it generates real costs for the thidd party service. So there are three potential groups who can pay the cost

a. the third party service provider can just provide service for free. We can't, at least not indefinitely.

b. the end consumer can somehow be billed by the third party service. Feels complicated, especially as the use of the service may be deep in the internals and behind the scenes of the app. The consumer may well have no idea it is being used

c. the application developer can pay. Either directly or via billing the end consumer.

Option c. feels like the only sustainable one. Happy to hear your thoughts on it though.

I guess we just differ on philosophy. I think a diversity of approaches leads to more positive outcomes. Why limit ourselves to the structure and mental paths that are already there? In the same way that OSM has many editors, each with strengths and weaknesses, why should it have only one geocoder? That said, rest assured we have no plans to fork nominatim.

Regarding the name, we just did some brainstorming and a member of the team just came up with the name, nothing fancier than that. Our requirements were

- domain available - written the way it is spoken - shorter is better

in our old logo we used to use the "nest" image, but that only makes sense in some languages. Last year we went with a more modern look.