19th February 2008

Sell, sell, sell

Filed under: Articles & Blogs, Story — Anthony Eskinazi @ 7:13 pm

Sold

A few days ago we quietly added support for all our users who have a parking space or parking lot they wish to sell. Selling is a completely different kettle of fish from renting and our site works a bit differently in how we connect buyers to you.

Once an enquiry is made, we will pass it on to one of our real estate partners who will arrange all the relevant viewings and act as a mediator to allow the transaction go through as smoothly as possible.

ParkatmyHouse.com charges a 5% success fee which includes all the listing, marketing and real estate agent fees. Please note that this fee is only payable once the transaction has been completed, so as usual, if you don’t make money, we don’t make money.

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13th February 2008

ParkatmyHouse.com is now live in North America!

Filed under: Story, Website News — Anthony Eskinazi @ 3:00 pm

After launching in the UK just over a year ago, we are happy to announce that Americans and Canadians can now join the exclusive ParkatmyHouse.com club!

The ParkatmyHouse.com website detects what country you are visiting from, therefore there should be no need for you to change your default location. Should you want to browse through exciting parking spaces in other countries, you can easily do so by clicking on the relevant flag at the bottom of each page (see below):

Front Page

Have you got friends on the other side of Atlantic who could benefit from our service?
We would love you to tell them how great ParkatmyHouse.com is!

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12th February 2008

Postcode frustrations and a little help from Geonames

Filed under: Partnerships, Story, Useful Sites — Anthony Eskinazi @ 1:53 pm

As you all hopefully know by now, ParkatmyHouse is available in 7 different countries. We can hardly believe it either. Cultural differences aside, the differences in the way we write addresses and postal codes can be a frustrating problem when catering for multiple audiences.

US Zipcodes are easy to remember and recognise, especially 90210 (for Beverley Hills) - which we can check for by looking for 5 consecutive numbers.

UK Postcodes have a slightly more complex structure. A typical postcode will look something like this `SE1 4BN` but to check that a postcode has been entered correctly we have to use something ugly looking like `/^[A-Z][A-Z]?[0-9][A-Z0-9]?(?:\s*[0-9][ABDEFGHJLNPQRSTUWXYZ]{2})?$/i`

You can probably work out what the above jargon is doing if you look at it closely.

Canada have something just as ugly `/^[ABCEGHJKLMNPRSTVXY][0-9][A-Z](?:\s*[0-9][A-Z][0-9])?$/i`

Fortunately, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands have simple 4 digit postal code systems. Curiously though, Ireland is yet to adopt a post code system which begs the question `How do the postman know where to take the mail?`

In addition to checking the accuracy of an entered postcode we also need to know the exact coordinates of each postcode in these countries. A problem solved thanks to a fantastic service called Geonames who have provided us with nearly all the postal code data we could ask for.

The idea of the GeoNames project is to aggregate national and local data and combine it into one global open source project. Their main goal is to provide useful data and web services.

If you have a map based project or require any geographic data including population statistics, head over to www.geonames.org and take a look around.

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10th February 2008

Replacing a snail with a leapord

Filed under: Latest Parking News, Story — Anthony Eskinazi @ 4:57 pm

I haven’t done the proper research but I would like to think that a leopard is quite a fast animal. Admittedly they still lag behind cheetahs, but I can imagine they would hold their own against the rest of the animal kingdom.

“What is this guy on about?”

Well, last night we did quite a big algorithmic update behind the scenes which not only will provide better search results but also cause all our search results pages to show up much faster.

We have not reached cheetah status yet, but we have definitely moved on from snail status which I felt we had been at for the past few weeks. Hopefully you will notice a big improvement - if not, then please let us know and we will look in to getting you faster Internet Access ;-)

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More Parking Options around UK Airports

Filed under: Latest Parking News, Story — Anthony Eskinazi @ 3:34 am

Airport parking prices are extortionate and we like to think that ParkatmyHouse.com helps a little by providing cheaper private accommodation for your beloved vehicle while you bake in the sun at some exotic location far far away.

Sometimes however, parking a few miles away and then getting a lift or a taxi can seem like a hassle, especially once you have finished your holiday and all you want to do is jump in the car and get home.

We’ve been teamed up with a number of the main commercial airport parking lots and now, whenever you search near a major UK airport, we will give you the option to get a quote for a commercial and closer parking space.

For example, a search for heathrow airport will display all our private parking spots around Heathrow and in the right hand column, underneath the map, is a simple booking form and a list of some of the commercial car parks we offer for instant bookings.

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