News

All new! Now, when you go to PadMapper, mess around, leave to do other stuff, and then come back, PadMapper will be where you left it (with a few caveats, see below). This was probably the most requested feature for a long time, so I finally put the time in to implement it. Hopefully you like it, if not, please let me know.

Now for the caveats.

The first caveat is that there might be new markers and old ones might have dropped off. This happens, the map is always changing. Zoom in, or narrow down with the filters, and you’ll probably be able to find any dissapeared ones, unless it’s really old, in which case someone’s probably grabbed it anyway and it’s best to move on before you get too attached…

Caveat #2 is that if you quit your browser, PadMapper won’t persist, and you’ll have to start over again. I should probably extend the cookie life… Also, if you clear your cookies, your PadMapper progress will be wiped off the face of the internet. Then again, this is handy if you want to wipe your PadMapper progress off the face of the internet so you can get a fresh start…

Caveat #3 is that I didn’t make workplace distance filtering persistent. It would have been a disproportionate amount of work to make it work well, and I’m considering removing it anyway (or at least moving it to something like an “advanced filters” tab.)

I know that’s a lot of caveats, but hopefully the non-caveated parts make up for it. Everything else should work the way you expect it to, so if not, or if you encounter bugs, etc. please email padmapper@gmail.com. Thanks everyone!

PadMapper can now claim to get content from thousands of sources, thanks to indexing of Oodle’s syndicated content. To go along with this, there’s a new filter to filter out listings of these various sites, if that’s what you wish. You may also notice now that there’s a “Source:” label on the preview bubble, to let you know which website clicking on the link would send you to.

Currently this is a bit of a test, so PadMapper will not be providing all of Oodle’s listings yet. Be patient, if it goes well, it’ll be expanded.

On the other hand, if Oodle listings make the experience worse for you, please let me know (padmapper@gmail.com).

I hope you like the addition!

The venerable old circle button sliders with pop-up value bubbles that PadMapper started with were just retired, giving way to new ones with a few advantages.

1. Should be more IE friendly (the old range ones were hard to grab in IE7 to the point of being impossible to use, from what I’ve heard)
2. Easier to figure out current settings without having to move them. The readout of their current settings is in two places – once under the title and again on the slider handles themselves. The value under the title helps in the problem case I’ll talk about below.
3. A bit easier on browsers with bad javascript engines (looking at you, IE), since the browser no longer has to fade the bubble in and out.

Their biggest drawback is that the range slider handles can now overlap, to the point of one being completely on top of the other. This makes it hard to create small ranges since one can’t see the value on the slider itself. This is mitigated somewhat by the readout below the title, but it’s not ideal. It’s also somewhat unintuitive when attempting to move the sliders after they’ve overlapped – it will only let you separate them in one way. Another drawback is that the sliders have sharp corners except in more modern browsers like Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Sorry IE…

Hopefully these drawbacks are outweighed by the benefits. Please let me know your thoughts. Post here in the comments or email padmapper@gmail.com .

Thanks everyone!

Wow… thanks LH!

Five Best Apartment Search Tools

There’s a poll on that page about which is best. If you vote for PadMapper, I’ll continue offering you this service for free. Actually, I’ll continue doing that regardless, but you should still vote.

Yesterday, Mashable wrote a fine article covering PadMapper:

http://mashable.com/2009/08/12/padmapper/

Thanks guys!

The server has been seeing quite a bit more traffic than normal, so apologies if it feels slow to anyone (and I’d appreciate if you’d send feedback to padmapper@gmail.com if it feels slow).

This marks the official launch of PadMapper.com. It’s been a long time coming, but the core experience is good enough now that it’s time to start letting the world know about PadMapper. As such, a press release went out this morning letting the press know about the launch, and there’s a 30 second TV commercial introducing PadMapper. That will play on HGTV and other channels as funds permit 🙂

As always, please send any feedback you have to padmapper@gmail.com

Happy hunting everyone!

Update: Here’s the launch press release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/apartments/rentals/prweb2725974.htm