Google Street View is a service linked to Google Maps and Google Earth that provides users with panoramic, photographic detail at street level. Areas in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Pretoria, Johannesburg and Durban were mapped out by stitching together millions of photographs taken by the Google Street View Trikes (vehicles), enabling users to view panoramic images of local streets in vivid detail, as if they were standing on the very street they were viewing. Users visiting www.remax.co.za can now see the ‘Street View’ of specific properties listed on the site.

A huge value-add to property consumers, this opens the doors to many ancillary benefits which are soon to be exploited, but most significantly, buyers are afforded an improved perspective on the properties in question, and sellers are better able to recoup the intrinsic value of appealing neighbourhoods, attractive houses and proximity to amenities such as educational institutions, shopping areas and police stations. Adrian Goslett, CEO of RE/MAX of Southern Africa says, “Each year an increased number of South Africans are searching online for property, so the implementation of Google Street View to our service is the natural progression.”

The benefits of Google Street View to clients are vast as they will no longer need to page through newspapers or drive around on Sundays, painstakingly searching for show houses.

Prior to the launch of Google Street View in South Africa, Google SA approached White Wall Web and RE/MAX as potential integration partners for Street View as a result of their long standing relationship building and innovating web-based technologies for the property industry. Google Street View subsequently became the ‘cherry on top’ for the newly launched www.remax.co.za website, which features address level map data as well.

Executive Director at White Wall Web, Noel Ross-Gillespie, states, “The incorporation of Google Street View into the RE/MAX of Southern Africa website is a big step in the right technological direction. While South Africa might be behind the rest of the developed world in some aspects, we’re also in a unique position in which we can take the best-of-breed technologies and fast-track our growth. We are pleased to have been able to assist RE/MAX in bringing the very latest technology to the forefront of the Real Estate industry.”

See it to believe it – visit the RE/MAX site and experience it first hand, or take a look at some of these randomly selected samples below:

http://remax.co.za/300148190/

http://remax.co.za/300176836/

http://remax.co.za/300207313/

http://remax.co.za/300229443/

http://remax.co.za/300267310/

Without a doubt, the most noteworthy improvement to the site is the inclusion of address level data, which locates the listed properties on an actual map. This makes RE/MAX of Southern Africa the first agency within the South African Real Estate industry to provide this value-added technology. Previously, users could only view properties at a provincial level, which didn’t provide the user with sufficient knowledge of the area in which the property was situated. But with the newly implemented technology, users can see the exact street level address of the property for sale. Not only does this assist the user in accessing the property on sale, but it also allows them to view other available properties in the surrounding areas with greater ease.

Other significant enhancements include:

Improved usability and interface design

At first glance, you’ll notice that the new website interface features cleaner design aesthetics and improved search functionality (with new categorised search functions). This was done to improve the usability experience, cutting user search times down to the bare minimum.

Cleaner code

Another improvement is the reduced dependence on JavaScript, which ensures more pages will be indexed, leading to improved SEO, and ultimately, greater accessibility via search engines, as search engines significantly favour pages with faster loading times.

Social media integration

New additions include the incorporation of the RE/MAX social networking channels, such as Facebook, twitter, the RE/MAX YouTube brand channel, and blogs for both the CEO and Chairman of RE/MAX.

A few more features are also in the pipleline, some of which will be BIG news in the online property industry.

Take a look at the site at www.remax.co.za and let us know what you think.

HTML was initially designed to be a language for semantically describing a scientific document, but its general design and adaptation has enabled it to be used to describe a number of other types of documents. HTML5 is a specification for how the web’s core language, HTML, should be formatted and utilised to deliver text, images, multimedia, Web apps, search forms, everything else you see in your browser, and addresses many issues of the previous versions’ specs. The aim is to reduce the need for proprietary plug-in-based rich internet application (RIA) technologies such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Apache Pivot and Sun JavaFX.

A foremost difference between HTML5 and HTML4 is error handling. New browser vendors have experienced problems when they enter the market, as they must test malformed documents in various browsers (and as with most new tech, IE is always the biggest problem-child), and reverse-engineer their error handling. If this is not done, then many pages will not display correctly. HTML5 is aimed to codify this error handling, with the result being that browser developers can standardize, and reduce the time and money required to display things consistently.

Another difference – or more appropriately phrased as “another goal” – is for HTML5 to develop the ability of the browser to be an application platform via HTML, CSS and Javascript. Useful new features include: local storage (JS-accessible browser, built in SQL database, for storing information beyond cookies’ capabilities), new input types (for the browser to expose easier user interface), and browser-supported form validation, which will make things simpler for developers, and faster for users. A more in-depth look into all the differences between HTML5 and HTML4 can be found here.

So what are the disadvantages of HTML5?

This would be the lack of acceptance of micro-formats across multiple browsers. HTML5 uses new tags that add new ‘semantic richness’ to a web document, but doesn’t fully utilise micro-formats (class attributes, etc) which results in backwards compatibility being non-existent.

As with most new technology in its integration stage, HTML5 is not supported by a number of browsers. But with that said, different developers have different needs. We found a very useful site which gives you interactive compatibility tables for features in HTML5 and other upcoming Web technologies.

We think HTML5 is a great new technology, and could replace the need for Flash. Realistically speaking, the number of people who browse on mobile devices far exceeds the number of people who browse on desktop PCs. As mobile devices cannot support Flash, one should look at the development of technology in adaptation of those who use the technology. Steve Jobs’ recent attack on Adobe is an indication that industry experts are leaning more towards technology such as HTML5, rather than Flash. “New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”

Some useful links for HTML5:

• HTML5 Gallery
• HTML5 Showcase & Resources
• HTML5 – A vocabulary & associated APIs for HTML and XHTML
• HTML5 Validator
• HTML5 Specification tracker
• HTML5 FAQs
• Click here for some very cool HTML5 experiments
• W3C official specifications for HTML5
• HTML5 & CSS3 Readiness chart

That said, the underlying technology is doing an excellent job. Nay. A Very Excellent Job.

New (at least with this ease) was the ability to drag your navigation route to insert any number of waypoints – producing an instant recalculation of directions, turn-by-turn instructions and time/distance figures. Try it here. Oh. And perhaps alter the destination completely. No sweat. Processing. Done. Not only fantastic from a usability point-of-view, but demonstrating some pretty incredible behaviour ‘under-the-hood’.

A key-point during the presentation was the assertion that almost 70% of all searches return a geographical component – either an address or a proximity to an address – naturally prompting the thought that searches ought to natively focus on the location of results. To this end, Google’s Point-of-Interest (POI) search is clearly very powerful, and certainly one of the sharper arrows in their quiver: By locating businesses (via a layer) on their maps, they can aggregate everything known about these entities – their cloud-knowledge consisting of reviews, photos, recommendations etc – and present them all as a “more info” page. Not a big deal for Corporates perhaps, but a tremendous opportunity for vendors in hospitality, travel, activity and interest sectors, especially given the huge online research which now takes place before one travels. And not only will this cloud-knowledge grow with time, but this new potential for discovery provides a beautiful incentive for people to start adding their businesses to this layer, spending all their precious time making sure the salient information – operating hours, costs, services etc – is properly input to guarantee the correct display. Definitely in the businesses’ best interest. Yes. Indeed. If your business is not on the map, be sure to pop on over to the Local Business Center to increase your chance of winning. Presumably you’ve already registered to still be reading?

OK, so a few more comments. Considering the focus of the event was – as I understood – a more technical presentation, I felt that it could have capitalised far better on various methods of interacting/integrating with the mapping engine – via the API for example. Furthermore, very little spin was placed on the Android 2.0 incarnation which has caused more than a few GPS-vendors’ shares to “retreat” with its cloud-connected, turn-by-turn voice navigation. Click here for awkward-but-impressive video. Reading between the lines, it’s fairly apparent where Android is headed – premium access to the wealth of features Google sprouts from its Labs.

It’s also fairly obvious that layers are a big part of the Maps story. Already Transit layers exist, showing connections and promising timetables.  Photo layers, Real-Estate layers, personalised “My Layers” and all manner of anecdotal mash-ups – all kindly supplied by you: The greater Google Employee.

So. My take-home at the end of the presentation was simply a “wow-gosh”. Not really about the barn-like venue, draped with sheets and lit with the 4 bright colours of world domination. Not really about the maps. Not even about their fancy javascript and mind-boggling aggregation algorithms. Simply a recognition that in this age of Crowdsourcing, Google are still miles ahead of anyone else in terms of incentivising people to share their time and effort. And I’m not just talking about registering businesses. I’m thinking about the effort we go through

• making sure our blogs index correctly – Google has more access to information and opinion
• doing the grunt work of facial classification in Picasa – how long until they’ve got a face/person search?
• defining the conversion goals of all your sites – allowing further site-rankings on success?
• populating their planet with 3D buildings – courtesy of SketchUp
• fixing the cartography for fun – Map Maker to the rescue
• providing a gazillion mails and documents a day to advertise against – all for the merry price of nil

The list is long. The incentives are spot-on. The enabling technology is spot-on. So just how many other industries will be beaten into submission because Google is spot-on?

This week saw the release of Google Chrome, Google’s new feature-rich browser based on WebKit and Firefox components. It has been met with a mixed response and has also raised some interesting thoughts/issues/discussions…

See for example the outcry about the extreme licensing “liberties” that Google is taking in their terms and conditions for Chrome (incidentally the same terms and conditions for Google Docs)

Basically, whatever content you put through the browser, they own it.

Also see the “abandon Firefox” article. The guys who are trying chrome will be predominantly Firefox users (IE users are slower to change/experiment). So the “we are taking on Microsoft” sentiment does not really roll in this case. Interesting to see how Firefox responds.

I am not that excited about it for web:

• It uses the same WebKit based renderer as Safari (and an inferior version at that, read)
• It doesn’t have some vital features that other browsers have (e.g. ad blockers) in order to serve Google’s other business objective (e.g. “making money through ads”)
• It doesn’t (yet) work with a number of Google’s own products: techcrunch

• • They do admit that they are “far from done”

Firefox has the head start on the web browser market when competing with Microsoft and Chrome will have to do much to beat them now.

An interesting aside, people are also raising concerns that these browsers with richer capabilities may cause a “split in internets”: information week

The most exciting prospect around Chrome seems to be the mobile version. Chrome is mostly likely to become the de facto standard on Android and thus mobile browser

Of course, it is a Google product and so I am sure it will ultimately be successful

Let’s see how it pans out…

I’ve decided to share some of my views on what I think are the pertinent issues this year, and the goals to achieve to that end. Thus, my top personal ‘Web Development Resolutions’ for this year are:

1. See the Year of the Web Standards?

With Microsoft finally being pressured into releasing a standards-compliant Internet Explorer, subsequently revealing that IE8 has passed the Acid2 test in an internal debug build, and hinting at a release sometime in mid-2008, we can finally glimpse the possibility of bringing web standards (at least in terms of CSS/XHTML) to the masses. Additionally, Firefox 3‘s ability to pass Acid2 natively (better late than never!) as well as Opera’s Kestrel builds with exhaustive CSS3 support (on desktop, the Wii and mobile phones), means we’ve never been able to reach as many platforms or people with the same features before. I believe this to be a ‘watershed’ year, where we’ll either see the myriad of Web Standards take off, or if they prove to be fundamentally flawed (they’re already proving difficult to implement), this may well be the beginning of complete dominance from other proprietrary solutions like Flash. There’s an emerging school of thought that standards are discouraging quick progression through lack of competition. I strongly disagree, as if one looks at the greatest problem plaguing the web, incompatibility, a look back into the past reveals that rampant browser competition in the late 90′s (IE Netscape days) resulted in far too many different proprietrary solutions for the same thing – something that still haunts us today.

2. Bridge the divide between the Client and Server Model

Although we’ve seen various frameworks like Ruby On Rails make our lives easier when dealing with user interfaces (especially AJAX), we’re still dealing with several different representations of the same data – on the page HTML, in the DOM, in the application code, in the database. Wouldn’t it be great if the client-side UI object was the same as the server-side one? Why do we need four or more languages and data models to work on the same platform? In my opinion, anyone who can conclusively create a single solution (which I believe is achievable), will elevate web development to the undisputed champion of cross-platform, accessible and efficient software design. I’ll race you there…

3. Go Mobile

Well, by now everyone is quite familiar with that prodigy of effective marketing, the iPhone. I’m sure most of you have considered the possiblity of making your applications work on it’s cut-down Webkit browser. However, consider the number of users you could reach if you could tap into the several hundred million cellphones worldwide with an internet connection. Recently I made the rather serendipitous discovery that Opera Mini 4 – which runs on any decent J2ME phone – was able to [mostly] run our AJAX-intensive WTimer application, which we hadn’t put a single second of mobile development time into. Surely, uncovering the workings of this browser will enable us to bring rich applications to not only the iPhone, but to the millions of normal mobile users out there.

4. Put old browsers to rest

Anyone else tired of dealing with IE6′s (or worse) compatiblity issues? As I aluded to briefly in our Heroes 2007 Conference, I’ve proposed a possible plan to tackle this knife in the side of web development:

• Educate and Upgrade – Politely nag people using old browsers to upgrade to new ones. The trick is to work out a method that doesn’t detract from the value of the site itself. Perhaps via a notice, which links to a tailored, step-by-step guide on how and why to upgrade. If we can roll this out on a large scale, then hopefully we can knock down the figure of 40%+ IE6 users, and spend more time doing real coding.
• Fix – There are a number of great scripts like Dean Edward’s IE7.js that can upgrade and fix a limited number of browser defects. Improving on these and chucking in some resetting CSS for example, could ease the pain of dealing with these browsers in the mean time.
• Embed – With layout engines like WebKit introducing experimental features like offline databases, we may just be better off in some situations with tying applications into an embedded desktop application (eg. Fluid) and forcing clients to download and use them, virtually eliminating the problem altogether.

Perhaps with a plan like this, we can start developing websites and applications that break through the limitations of browsers that are nearly 10 years old. In conclusion, I’m very excited about the possibilities for the direction of web development technologies this year, but also feel that a lot of juggling of the elements and ideas will need to be done to master it. We must persue every avenue to come up with solutions that help us move forward…

“The only real failure in life is the failure to try.” — Unknown

How do you feel about these issues? Any comments you have will be appreciated. All the best to everyone for a fantastic 2008!

“Just the other day, I found out that South Africans can now get PayPal accounts and link them to a local credit card. When you buy something, the amount is deducted from your credit card and the system even tells you much it will be in rands.

The only major snag with PayPal, for us South Africans, is that you currently cannot withdraw the funds from your account into a local bank account.” Full article: http://www.ioltechnology.co.za/article_page.php?iArticleId=4128440

For receiving the funds into a business, you still can not deposit into a South African bank acount, but this can be solved through offshore options.

In the last two weeks my development team has made a few new discoveries in the area .Net ORM tools. The new additions are Sub Sonic (free) and Entity Spaces (paid – $80).

We are in the process of evaluating and prototyping both of these tools for a enterprise sized web-application that we are about to start building. The team discovered these after struggling to implement the much talked about NHibernate ORM framework.

Both Sub Sonic and Entity Spaces are extremely easy to implement. You are not required to construct XML mapping files required to map classes to the database. These classes are auto generated by the tools themselves. Once this process has finished you are two lines of code away from populating data into your Views. Another great advantage of these tools is that they both support scaffolding.

We will keep you updated with developments of our hunt to find the ORM best suited to our upcoming development. We will also post some more technical articles with example code once we have further prototyped and researched the tools. What has been your experience with implementing .Net ORM’s?

Read more about some of the pro’s and con’s of Sub Sonic and Entity Spaces on Kevin Southworth’s blog.

First up, I have to mention that my first experience in the programming world was with C# .NET. I thought that I would never move to another language never mind leaving the .NET framework.I started working at WhiteWallWeb and the oddity language PHP4. Coming from a completely object oriented approach to the scripting PHP4 pattern really shocked my system – “How clever must you be working with 4000 lines of “if’s” and “else’s” with the occasional “switch case”?” When PHP5 arrived I was back in my comfort zone. We’ve even built our own framework – Muffin. Working with PHP’s unique multiple array structure with the JSON library and the Prototype JavaScript library made me think I was invincible.
Then Ruby on Rails came along…
Having no clue what rails was about – my colleagues and I worked days on winning Rails. Some days it felt like a losing battle, but look at us now – The Ruby Boys.

I have been looking at the ASP.NET AJAX because my .NET colleagues are boasting about it – so I thought I should have a look. My first impression was that it seems to be as simple as Ruby on Rails – for the basic things anyway. Further investigation made me conclude that Ruby on rails is the Mohammed Ali of AJAX development. The best way I could emphasize this statement is by a bout between ASP.NET AJAX and Ruby on Rails Fight Night style.

Tonight’s main event will be the lightweight Ruby on Rails (RoR) VS the heavy weight ASP.NET AJAX

In the blue corner

ASP.NET AJAX

As with all .NET languages, Microsoft Visual Studio provides, according to me, the best IDE interface by far. Drag and Drop what you need on a canvas (web panels), make some minor adjustments and your off. But what if the prebuilt controller fails to meet your client’s requirements? Now that where the all-nighter coffee binges come in. With the weight of .NET’s countless objects, functions and controllers it can take any .NET developer some time to find the exact solutions – to be fair the MSDN is fantastic. If a custom job is needed, the weak MVC framework can easily be decimated by a tired or inexperienced developer. After all the work has been done – you can be assured that your application is built in a prestige language, but don’t ask me to update the code. We can expect fast big punches from this formidable heavy weight.

In the red corner

RoR

Ruby on rails is an enforced MVC framework that handles everything from the database structure and directory structure to the list items in the HTML. The Ruby JavaScript (RJS) is where the real magic lies – with calls to two ruby functions and couple of options inside a hash you can easily generate draggable items with selective properties such as to where they are allowed to be dropped or not. On Drop a specified URL (resource map) will be called and its output will be returned – with the option to update any HTML element on page – keep in mind that this could return more RJS and further the actions. With its Ruby on Rails’ programming language Ruby, its fancy footwork will dazzle .NET’s scripting language and precompiled Framework.

Round 1: Multiple droppables and draggables

Task at hand. Two divs – one is a fruit, the other a vegetable, Two containers – A pot and a basket. The pot should accept vegetables and the basket should only accept fruit.

FIGHT

ASP.NET AJAX makes the first move

I googled comprehensively (about 15 minutes) for a solution. I couldn’t find an easy one anywhere. The best I came up with was this custom extender http://msmvps.com/blogs/omar/archive/2007/03/22/asp-net-ajax-extender-for-multi-column-widget-drag-drop.aspx
Thanks to Omar for his post..NET looks at his trainer (Omar) on the side of the ring with dismay. With after a couple of changes he got halfway through his punch.

RoR blocks and counters it

Setup your draggable items

<div id=”Carrot” class=”vegtable”>Carrot</div>
<%= draggable_element :Carrot %>
<div id=”Apple” class=”fruit”>Apple</div> <%= draggable_element :Apple%>

Setup your droppable containers

<div id=”Pot” class=”container”>Pot</div>
<%= drop_receiving_element “Pot”, :hoverclass => “hover”, :accept => :vegtable %>
<div id=”Basket” class=”container “>Basket</div>
<%= drop_receiving_element “Basket”, :hoverclass => “hover”, :accept => :Fuit %>

RoR made an opening haymaker – The purity of the MVC structure and the help of his two trainers namely Prototype and Scriptaculous made the blow relentless. With all the extra weight of the .NET framework ASP.NET AJAX could not move out of the way. ASP.NET AJAX looks drowsy after the first round.

Judges scores after Round 1

1- 0 to Ruby

Next round: Repopulate cascading select boxes.

• Drupal – for smaller more simple web portal roll outs
• Plone – for larger enterprize type solutions.

Plone falls down on being complex in terms of technology roll out (running on the Zope platform developed in Python).

Drupal falls down on being less easy to use (end user) once installed and (arguably) less scalable for huge enterprise type requirements. Mambo seems to be a close contender, but Drupal just does some things better.

Typo3 is hugely popular (especially in Germany and other parts of Europe) but I have installed and tried it twice. It is overly complex in my opinion.

Next step is to install some of the better ones and try them out against predefined criteria. This will take a while, but I will keep you posted when our research is done.

Check out a good reading list below to make up your own mind…

Please comment if you have any thoughts on the subject.

Recommended Reading List:

• http://www.mambers.com/showthread-t_41560.html
• http://www.nicklewis.org/mambo-vs-drupal
• http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=21410
• http://drupal.org/node/34041
• http://plone.org/
• http://forum.mamboserver.com/showthread.php?t=54981
• http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2004/09/23/plone_features.html?page=2
• http://lists.evolt.org/archive/Week-of-Mon-20060403/181414.html
• http://drupal.org/node/13733
• http://www.zopezen.org/Members/andy/news_item.2004-12-03.4938262015
• http://www.alexandrasamuel.com/telecentre-platform/
• http://berehulyak.com/blog/plone/drupal-over-Plone-syndication
• http://drupal.org/node/9533
• http://opensourcecms.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1