We’re pleased to announce PropertyMaps.com has been acquired!!  Here’s a quick excerpt from the press release:

Austin entrepreneur Jeff Chambers, former U.S. product director for HomeAway, Inc., has acquired PropertyMaps.com, a leading residential real estate search engine. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Real estate has been one of the hardest hit sectors during the recent slow down in the US economy.  However, that pressure created a unique opportunity for Chambers to redefine the structure of a successful real estate company to best serve customers in an evolving marketplace.

“Despite the struggles in residential real estate over the last two years, we believe PropertyMaps.com’s superior technology platform gives us the ability to enter into the market and compete on the national stage.  We will leverage our technical expertise to connect consumers, agents and advertisers like never before, and we’ll do it in a more capital efficient way through strategic partnerships and acquisitions,” says Chambers, chief executive officer of PropertyMaps.com.

You can read the full release here:  http://bit.ly/neXat

Thanks to all of our customers, broker partners and agents – Jeff has a ton of experience and will undoubtedly apply the knowledge he gained from running the US products for vacation rental leader HomeAway.com.  He will take good care of you and we look forward to this business growing bigger, faster and stronger in the years ahead.

– The PropertyMaps.com Team

PropertyMaps was an early proponent of OpenID and became a relying party as soon as feasible. We saw the need for an open, standards-based, single sign-on persona that could be used across the web. There were several competing implementations out there, but each of them seemed to have an agenda. OpenID was different, it was transparent. We dug deeper and liked what we saw so jumped on the bandwagon. Shortly thereafter, Yahoo, Google, and even Microsoft announced their plans to become providers. This solidified our commitment as we realized we could provide over a half-billion potential users with easy registration.

Using JanRain technologies and the example set by Plaxo, we got OpenID up and running in short order. We saw our registrations spike and whenever a large provider came online, we saw additional spikes. When Yahoo opened up we experienced a record number of registrations.

There has been an increased push lately to bring OpenID into the mainstream and to encourage more sites to support the technology. JanRain has been a big part of this push along with the OpenID Content Provider Advisory Committee and the OpenID Foundation. A new product from JanRain, RPX, is an instant OpenID and Data Portability solution to make the setup process even easier for site owners.

JanRain is also providing case studies of successful OpenID implementations. We’re happy to be the focus of the first study published on their site – PropertyMaps OpenID Case Study. We look forward to greater adoption of this technology and will do our part to push it forward.

PropertyMaps has been added to the native iPhone application SearchQuest GPS. The SearchQuest GPS application is a suite of location aware applications and PropertyMaps is placed under “Real Estate For Sale”. The full description of the application is:

“Location-Based Utilities and Travel Guide

SearchQuest is a suite of location-based utilities that leverage location, communication and content from the Internet.

Access location-based web apps, share location with acquaintances, worldwide travel guide with Wikipedia, and update location on the web with Yahoo! Fire Eagle.”

Download this handy app today!

SearchQuest GPS

We are happy to announce the .Net version of the PropertyMaps mapping engine, available for use on Windows Mobile 5 and 6. You can find more information by visiting the PropertyMaps Mobile page.

Read more about PMM for Windows Mobile.

Google recently announced Mapplets on their Lat Long Blog allowing for people to easily mix and match different map mashups. This seems to be a very powerful application as it allows you to view temperature mashups with crime mashups with real estate mashups with whatever else is available as a Mapplet.

To join in on the fun, PropertyMaps released its own Mapplet so you can see all our MLS listings mixed in with whatever other content you can find.

We have submitted our Mapplet to Google, but they are yet to put it on their content page. In the meantime, if you want to check out the PM Mapplet, go to http://maps.google.com/preview, click “Add Content”, click on the small “Add by URL” next to the search box, and enter this URL: http://www.propertymaps.com/mapplet/mapplet.xml.

If you like our Mapplet, please send an email to Google suggesting they add it to their content page.

PropertyMaps.com’s Google Mapplet

As a member of the Alliance, we will be able to promote and develop the PropertyMaps Mobile application to a new level. We plan to branch the J2ME core code to make a more BlackBerry-specific PM Mobile application. Using deeper RIM API calls will allow us to greatly improve application performance, functionality, and a more seamless UI experience.

Also, we get to use the cool BlackBerry Alliance Program logo on our promotional materials:

We are proud to announce the J2ME version of the PropertyMaps mapping engine, PropertyMaps Mobile. Currently the application is only available for BlackBerry devices, but we will start supporting additional platforms in the near future. You can find out more information by visiting the PropertyMaps Mobile page or by visiting the download page with your BlackBerry.

Read more at the PropertyMaps Mobile page.

We are proud to announce the .mobi version of the PropertyMaps site. Please visit the new site at http://www.propertymaps.mobi. The .mobi site provides the mobile user with full access to our nationwide MLS database through a simplified, yet powerful, interface. We’d love to hear your impressions of the site so please post your thoughts in the comments.

http://www.propertymaps.mobi.
Check out our new .mobi site geared towards mobile devices.