PropertyMaps Corporate Blog

Today we quietly rolled out the PropertyMaps website. We are still in a beta phase so any feedback is greatly appreciated. Over the next several weeks we should be adding properties at a rapid clip and hope to soon have millions of properties available to our users.

Also, we have a feature pipeline a mile long, so expect the site to rapidly gain new and improved functionality.

A big thanks go out to the PropertyMaps staff for getting us this far.

Using the newly added GTileLayerOverlay in revision 2.61 of Google Maps API, here is an updated “Loading…” function - http://www.propertymaps.com/maps/loading.php. The layer is semi-opaque and is added/cleared when you click on the “Start Loading”/”Stop Loading” link on the page. The spinning image is just on another layer that is dynamically resized depending on the clientHeight/clientWidth. There is also a window listener to trigger a resize if you decided to resize the window while the loading layer is visible.

More info here

We’ve move this site, www.propertymaps.com, and related tools to a new sever (Two Dual Core Opteron 265, 2GB RAM, 320GB HD, and this is just the start) at theplanet.com. We are now on a redundant, 8 backbone provider, 28 Gbps network. Hopefully everyone will notice the increased speed. Heh.

Props go out to Michael Miller for setting us up with a great deal. Thanks.

Here is an updated version of the previous polyline map - http://www.propertymaps.com/maps/polylines.php. I’ve added 5.8 million data points to cover about 50,000 zip codes in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. I’m also providing some useful statistics for each zip code such as population, average income, and average house value. This is a three way mashup based on the ZCTA data from the US Census Bureau. To read more about ZCTA, check out the FAQ at http://www.census.gov/geo/ZCTA/zctafaq.html.

A somewhat buggy implementation of smooth zooming has been buried in the Google Map js for sometime. I’ve poked around with this a bit and found that after the smooth zoom action completed, the map would jump back to its previous zoom level - quite worthless. Rather than attempt to fix the code, I just sat on my hands waiting for Google to do it. Well, it seems they have pulled it off in maps2.58.api.js. Check out the double click zoom and smooth zoom with the new API calls at http://www.propertymaps.com/maps/zoom.php. This only seems to work on a PC /IE and PC/FF at the moment (GRR).

I’ve noticed that the pushpins don’t take to zooming too well and if you leave an info window open during zoom, it doesn’t rejoin its pushpin correctly. Maybe this is just a problem with my implementation of custom infowindows.

More info here

Recently we installed a dartboard for entertainment. Needless to say, we’re all incredibly bad. I’m talking holes in the wall everywhere. So one morning I tell myself “If you hit a bullseye in the red or green zone within 3 throws, then that means my latest investment will be extremely successful.” First throw misses like usual, so I relax and without even trying to aim, I throw the second dart and this happens:

I swear that this picture was not staged. It really happened. An omen or just a lucky throw?

Here is a simple mashup of census.gov data with Google Maps API 2.57 plotting county polylines for any given valid zip code. Take a look at http://www.propertymaps.com/maps/polylines.php. There is no restriction on the number of hits/second on this so have at it. Also, the polyline XML files are available for download for any given zip code. If you would like to see more functionality added to this, leave a comment.

Update: Map is now clickable.