Datafree Corporation » Mapping

Launch of Datafree MLS Search

jjunkin — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:36:16 +0000

DataFree is announcing the beta version of our MLS real estate searching engine. Our current versions display listings in the San Francisco California Bay Area. Our source is MLSListings (formally REIL).

Check out our search at http://search.lindston.com.

This MLS search was designed to be fast and easy. The idea was to make it easy for users to search without harassing them like many sites do (i.e. forcing users to login or provide email). This MLS search site utilizes the latest in Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX and Googlemaps.

New Map Tech Reduces costs

jjunkin — Sat, 26 May 2007 08:02:06 +0000

Google Maps was the first mapping service to provide the ‘new generation’ of AJAX based draggable maps. For many uses, the service is free, even for corporations. This can provide a substantial savings in subscription costs for locating services. As long as your maps are freely available to the public and you don’t charge for the service, google maps are free. Worried about future advertising? Google also has enterprise subscriptions if you find you need them later. This is really a win-win solution.

Microsoft mappoint was in place before Google Maps, but was blown out of the water by Google’s superior product. Now they are scrambling to catch up and they have for the most part. The new Maps.Live service works a lot like google maps and has some new features like 3-d mapping that Google does not.

A prior employer I worked at paid $30,000 – $40,000 a year for Microsofts Mappoint service. But this has all changed recently. Both Microsoft abd Google have free licensing even for commercial users. There are limits to the amount of traffic and the possibility of advertising exists, but the free terms will suit many commercial purposes right now. You can thank Google for Microsoft giving away the service they used to charge an arm and a leg for. Is your company paying an arm and a leg for old style mapping? Why?

Launch of EstimatePropertyValues.com

admin — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 19:26:33 +0000

Datafree announces the launch of our new partner website http://www.EstimatePropertyValues.com
This website allows consumers to quickly explore estimated property valuations and other property details. Datafree has teamed up with http://zillow.com to provide free nationwide home estimate values. The system is designed around Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX, Google Maps, Zillow and Yahoo’s YUI interface library.
When a property address is input, the system automatically displays information in a convienient pop-up window. At the same time, the system will display 10 other properties that compare. Each property includes details such as square footage and lot size as well as Zestimate values from http://zillow.com. The system also provides charts of regional property values in the area.

This service is designed to be integrated into external websites for Real Estate professionals. User include Real Estate agents and Mortgage brokers. By integrating this technology into their sites Real Estate professionals can provide a valuable tool for web users to expore market valuations. This functionality will increase site traffic and provide quality real estate leads that are both buyers and sellers.

Geocoding for free

jjunkin — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 07:51:40 +0000

Geocoding is the process of taking a location (like and address or city) and determining the latitude and longitude coordinates so that it can be displayed on a map or used for other purposes. Only a few years ago, itÃ‚Â required an expensive service or a large custom database to provide this functionality. Today, we can build geocoders that are free and faster than ever.Our geocoder utilizes the Google or YahooÃ‚Â geocoding service, which is free. But we also combine each geocoder with a built in cache to avoid the latency of doing the lookups from these remote services. Our caching system utilizes both good and bad cache lookup tables to determine if the input value has been retrieved before within a required amount of time. If soÃ‚Â , the cached value is returned. Otherwise, a new lookup is performed and the result is then stored in the cache.

What this means is that geocoding is now a free service (once developed and installed) and you no longer need to subscribe to an expensive service to gain the functionality. A further benefit is that these services take in a single string of input, so the user can type whatever they want. The input may be a complete address, city, state zip, airport or other location. This is easier for the User than being required to type an address, move to the city field and enter a city,Ã‚Â then move to the state field and select a state.