Firstly let me apologise to all the Clint Eastwood fans who are reading this post thinking I was going to share some secret plots or start rumours about potential sequels. For those that are die hard Clint Eastwood fans please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good,_the_Bad_and_the_Ugly for all there is to know about this great film and the great man himself.

Dealing with strangers can as the title suggests end in one of three ways:

1. The Good - Everything goes swimmingly well and you can’t wait to see each other again in the future.
2. The Bad - Road closures, delayed payments and minor earthquakes can all lead to frustrating experiences.
3. The Ugly - Scratches, bumps, fisticuffs and crying babies can all lead to one of those days in which you wonder why you got out of bed.

Since the very beginning, ParkatmyHouse.com has had a feedback system in place so you can tell the rest of the ParkatmyHouse community what your experience was like with each individual or comapny you have had a booking with.

Until now, no matter what feedback you received (positive, neutral or negative), there was no way to bat your own corner and explain why a problem may have occurred.

Not anymore!

When you are looking through your feedback (by clicking on the `Feedback Received` link in your account navigation menu), you will see a small reply button . Simply click on it to respond to any feedback previously given to you.

More improvements are on the way!

Your ultra-busy ParkatmyHouse.com Team

We have been listening to your comments and have implemented the following improvements:

1. Printable booking confirmations are now e-mailed to renters once a booking has been confirmed.
2. Parking space owners will now receive an e-mail detailing all the bookings due to start on the following day.
3. When completing a booking, you can now specify number of spaces to be rented.
4. We have added a new left hand side navigation menu for registered users - all the information and links you could possibly need are now much easier to find. Checking your messages, previous bookings and even signing up to free text message alerts are now only one click away.
5. The bottom navigation menu has been expanded to include all the major sections of the website.

As always, we would love to know what you think about these improvements and how we could make things even better. Please contact us with any new suggestions.

Happy Parking!
The ParkatmyHouse.com Team

Google is a mystery to most and a saviour to others. Thankfully, all of us at ParkatmyHouse know quite a bit about getting our listings as high up the rankings as possible.

As you can imagine, everyone wants to be top… including us! We therefore spend hours and hours every week tweaking the site a little bit to make it more Google (and Yahoo, MSN etc.) friendly.

Although we are working hard, we could also do with some help.

If you or any of your close friends or family own websites or blogs, a quick mention of ParkatmyHouse.com, a link to our site and a link directly to your parking space listing or search results page will really help move your listing up the search engine ladder and help increase awareness of our funky (and very useful) service.

As an added bonus, if we really like what you’ve written, we will link to your masterpiece from the articles section of our site.

If you have any questions about linking to us, writing about us or any other aspect of our service then please contact us.

Your search engine friendly ParkatmyHouse.com Team

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!

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

In general, reliability is the ability of a person or system to perform and maintain its functions in routine circumstances, as well as hostile or unexpected circumstances.

As you hopefully know from reading our previous post we have recently added a new feature called `reliability ratings`.

We really recommend you check a user’s rating before contacting them as the rating we give them is usually a good indication on how likely they are to read and then action your inquiry.

Instead of showing a user’s feedback rating next to their username, we will now be showing each user’s reliability rating. The scale is from 0% to 100% with 100% indicating that this user is extremely reliable at responding to his/her messages.

You can still view a user’s feedback by clicking on their username to view their ParkatmyHouse.com feedback profile.

Is there anyone out there who hasn’t heard of Facebook?

Well the clever billionaires over in Silicon Valley have launched a number of new features over the past few months and best of all… they are all free! All types of businesses can now create a dedicated `fan page`, an application to create a Facebook version of their own website or some new clever advertising methods to drive targeted traffic back to their site.

So we didn’t miss the boat, we have created a small ParkatmyHouse.com application (http://apps.facebook.com/parking/) which allows you to search through all of our parking spaces direct from Facebook.

If you do have a play with it, we’d really like to know what features you would like to see added to the application.

Do you like our cute logo? Do you want to show your public support for what we are trying to do? I’m sure the answer was at least yes to the logo question and therefore we have set up a special Facebook page where you can become a ‘Fan of ParkatmyHouse.com‘.

Please write us messages, send us love and generally let us know how we are doing!

Before I actually tell you about this new feature I did some research in to where the phrase `one fell swoop` originated from. For years I thought the correct pronunciation was `In one foul swoop` and to this day always pronounce it in this way.

According to the `Phrase Finder`
Shakespeare either coined the phrase, or gave it circulation, in Macbeth, 1605:

MACDUFF: [on hearing that his family and servants have all been killed]

All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?

I guess the way most of us are using it is a clear example of a malapropism – `a ludicrous misuse of a word, especially by confusion with one of similar sound`, which again is something I am regularly guilty of doing.

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Now that the English lesson is over I thought I’d write a small post on how we will automatically suggest other parking spaces that may be of interest to you after you make that initial enquiry. It is quite self explanatory and an example is shown below. However, if you do need any help with this feature or want to suggest ways we can improve it or any other feature on our site please let us know.

After months of blood, sweat and tears, the new version of ParkatmyHouse.com is finally here! We have tweaked almost every page and have also added a number of new features, which we hope will make your parking life a little bit easier:

Reliability Ratings – Have you ever tried getting in touch with a parking space owner but never heard back from them? If so, then this new feature is for you. The reliability rating indicates the likelihood of you getting a quick response from an owner. Ratings are calculated automatically and take into account the number of unread messages in an owner’s ParkatmyHouse.com inbox, the date of an owner’s last login, the number of days it takes an owner to reply to a message, etc.

An owner’s reliability rating is displayed in the ‘Parking Space Owner Information’ box at the top of each page that shows the details of a parking space (see below):

Booking a Parking Space – We got rid off the annoying monthly declaration forms and replaced them with what we hope is an intuitive booking process.

Once you’ve agreed to rent or let out a parking space, simply click on the ‘Complete booking’ button on the message center page. This will create a booking confirmation with all the agreed transaction details.

Much easier than the previous declaration nonsense, wouldn’t you agree?

New My Account Page – We have also completely revamped the ‘My Account’ page by reducing the clutter, removing the confusing menus and making all the functionality accessible with just one click!

All the main functionality is now accessible from four main tabs – Messages, Bookings, Invoices and Parking Spaces.

• Messages – This tab displays your messages from other users. To read or reply to a message simply click on the message itself. To send a message, click on the `Contact Owner` button on the page that shows details of the parking space.
• Bookings – This tab displays your confirmed booking reservations. A parking space can be booked by clicking on the ‘Confirm Booking’ button during a message exchange with a parking space owner.
• Invoices – This tab displays the invoices that have been issued by ParkatmyHouse.com to parking space owners.
• Parking Spaces - This tab displays your parking spaces (if any).

The rest of the site functionality is still available from the links displayed below the main tabs.

We have tweaked almost every other page as well, so please let us know how we are doing!

We are excited to bring you two new features that should further simplify your parking experience with ParkatmyHouse.com.

The first feature is the completely revamped search results page that includes the map with all the parking spaces and local amenities all on one page, making it easy to find the right parking space for you. Do a quick search and let us know what you think!

The second feature is the Enhanced listings that should help you rent out your parking space faster (and helps us cover our costs :-). Enhanced listings allow you to change the way your parking space appears in the search results. Here is the standard listing that we all know and love

You can draw attention to your parking space on the search results page by making it Bold

or Highlighted

You can even make your parking space both Bold and Highlighted to really make it stand out from the rest

The final enhancement is Featured and it makes your parking space appear above all the other search results that are not featured. This guarantees that parkers will always see your space first!

Notice how the Featured parking space is listed above all the other results.

The enhanced listings can be enabled using the Enhancements tab when adding or editing your parking space listing.

The cost for Bold, Highlighted and Features enhancements are £1.50, £2.50 and £4.95 per month respectively and you can cancel them at any time.

Happy parking!