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.

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):

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!

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.

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

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.

There is nothing more frustrating than sending a message to a user and have them get back to you 2 weeks later saying that they didn’t get your e-mail or `Sorry, but your e-mail was mistakenly put in my spam folder`.

This is particularly frustrating when you need the space as soon as possible, maybe even on the same day.

Something we have had in the pipeline for a while has been a text message alert service which, after registering your mobile phone number with us, will allow you to receive up to three text message alerts per day for all new messages and bookings.

Registering your number is extremely simple even for those less technogically inclined - simply visit http://www.parkatmyhouse.com/user/alerts/text-message/ and add and verify your number. Then select whether you want to receive messages for initial enquiries, all messages, booking confirmations or all three!

As ParkatmyHouse.com has grown over the last year or so, so has the number of enquiries sent and received by our users every day. Some of our parking space owners receive in excess of 100 enquiries per month and as you can imagine, keeping track of who you have replied to and which messages no longer need your attention could become quite a tricky process.

Hopefully the improvements we made yesterday to the message centre will sort out some of these issues.

In your inbox you will now see a few links above your messages.

Mark as Unread | Mark as Read | Archive | Unarchive | Select all | Unselect All

They are pretty self explanatory and using the checkboxes along the left hand side (see image below), you can choose to mark messages as read or unread and now you can even send them to your archive folder!

Any feedback about this new feature would be greatly appreciated.

It has just been over a month now since we trialled our service in North America and we appreciate all the constructive feedback we have received from our international users. We have implemented many of the changes, some of which should be visible as of today.

Every week or so we receive an e-mail from a different corner of the globe asking if and when we can open our service to their country and it therefore gives me great pleasure to announce that today sees the launch of ParkatmyHouse in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

We are very excited to hear from any of our international users about their experiences using ParkatmyHouse.com

I am pleased to announce that ParkatmyHouse.com was awarded 2nd place in Yahoo’s Innovative Sites of 2007. I want to personally congratulate MoveMe (www.moveme.com) who beat us to the top spot. If you haven’t already checked out MoveMe’s website and you are considering moving house soon it is definitely worth a look.

and before I forget… Happy New Year from the entire ParkatmyHouse.com team.

Great news! We have just been nominated as one of Yahoo!’s finds of the year for 2007. We have been nominated within the innovative category and are also up for the People’s Choice Award which is where you can really help us. We need your votes.

If you need a little more convincing on why you should vote then think about all the extra traffic and awareness ParkatmyHouse.com will receive if we win and all those extra people who will be looking to rent or rent out a parking space in your area.

Yahoo! are due to announce the results of the competition on 8th January.

Click here to vote.

Thanks again for supporting us.

Anthony Eskinazi