🚀 go-pugleaf

Internet is a powerful tool, but I am still disappointed how difficult
is to find something there. And it's not because it isn't there but
because of the way people build their web pages.

What about finding a right house on the Internet?

You want to buy a house then find a real estate service; probably I
would hear many of times. Well, but there are dozens of reasons why
using the Internet to sell and buy a house. First of all if more people
would start advertise on Internet than would be greater chance to find
what you really looking for, and for the seller to show and expose all
what he really wants. Buying a house you do not have to go for all the
appointments with your agent, cruising around and waste your time. You
can search for the house in your spare time, without feeling obligated
that your agent already spent so much time and gas for you. You can
still use the agent for advice and the final transaction, if you choose
this way, after finding several houses that really interest you.

You can find real-estate services also on the Internet today. You can
even reach Multiple Listing Service (MLS) for the whole country, but
what I have found they are still cripple. In MLS listing in Canada for
example you have to pick-up the small area first. If you are looking for
cottage or house in 150 miles around the City of Toronto this is not
good point to start doing it. You wood have to go through all single
designated areas to find it. The properties are very often poorly
listed. You may look for lakefront and you find a waterfront, so you do
not exactly know, it might be the river front. Finally the information
shown is only marginal, and you cannot really decide whether it is what
you are really looking for. The number of pictures is limited and often
in poor quality.

And finally what about all of us who want to privately sell or buy the
house to save on commission. What if we want our page to reach not only
local, but also international market? What if we want to investigate
remote market? It not only concerns real estate market, not only
trading, but also other issues in general. Similar problem could be with
cars, boats, etc. The real estate example is just a good one to start
with on this group because it's what interests most people. There are
much more things we should be able to sell and buy privately on
Internet. We have a very effective tool now. The only problem is how we
use it.

I would like to show the way of how we can easily produce our page to
sell our house presenting all information much more effectively than
using any real-estate service.

The main problem that we cannot find easily what we are looking for on
Internet starts with how we use our language. Using exotic style is
maybe cool, but would it be easy to find this information for somebody
who tries to do it? That's why we should apply most commonly used words
and terms. Secondly there is a many way of saying and writing the same
thing in English, as well as in other languages. We can write 4
bedrooms, or 4 bdrms, or bedrooms: 4, etc.


Why not give an easy try. Let's say we want to find 4-bedroom house with
brick exterior and gas heating. Let's use these commonly used terms. One
way of finding it is to construct the search string like:

+"house for sale" +"4 bedrooms" +"brick exterior" +"gas heating"

For those who are little familiar with searching on Internet I am giving
detailed instructions in brackets:

Highlight it then copy to clipboard
(by pressing <ctrl> and <c> keys simultaneously, or using Edit then Copy
from the menu of your browser)

Now click the URL (address) below to access the Altavista search engine,
and paste it into the space after the "Search For:"
(by pressing <ctrl> and <v> keys simultaneously, or using Edit then
Paste from the menu of your browser)

http://www.altavista.com/

or just simply click on URL below to do it automatically at once:
http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=q&kl=XX&stype=stext&q=%2B%22house+for+sale%22+%2B%224+bedrooms%22+%2B%22brick+exterior%22+%2B%22gas+heating%22&search.x=34&search.y=4

You were probably disappointed by how few houses you have found. After
all we might have expected much more 4 bedroom, gas heated with large
master bedroom houses for sale in the whole English speaking world. It
was not because the Search Engine failed. The Altavista Search Engine is
probably the most powerful and comprehensive Search Engine in the world.
It has many powerful search options. We used so called simple search
technique and there is also advanced one, which allows for much more
precise constructing of search strings. It was because on all these
pages you tried to find, the data are organized in different ways, and
because the search engine did not access MLS and other local commercial
databases, where data are organized also in different way.

Thus what I am trying to say is, that we also need some kind of
standards, to be able communicate more effectively.

We need standard, which will allow for effective searching. For example:
instead using "four bedrooms" or "4 bdrms" or "bedrooms: 4", in
standardized version it should be just something uniformly assumed like
always "4 bedrooms" for example, and instead " house 4 sale" or "we are
selling our house" or "we sell house" only "house for sale".

This idea is not new. It is borrowed from way how databases are being
built. In typical database all data are organized in so called fields
and records. It is just simple table where fields could be columns and
records the rows. The field is just one piece of information represented
by 1 column. The field has its name. Examples of field names are:
"Street Address", "City", "State", ..., "Number of Bedrooms", ..., etc.
Each field consists of the same kind of information. The field may
consist of only one kind of information (data). The information (data)
can be numerical, text and other kind. The record is the all data
collected on 1 item in 1 row (in our case it's 1 house). The same rule
we can apply to the web pages, despite that they are built in a text
form. If all single pages, which in this case represent one database,
would be built accordingly to database rules, it will be easy to find
only those, which fit our search string. So by analogy for example: the
word "bedrooms" represents the field name and number "4" the data.
Looking for 4 bedroom hose we write +"bedrooms 4" in our search string.
The sign "+" is the request that the whole term (so-called the string of
characters) has to exist on the page in exactly the same form (except
that word "bedrooms" can also start with capital letter) according to
Altavista search rules. This way in our search string we will be able to
specify exactly what we are looking for. If we put +"house for sale"
+"bedrooms 4", we find all 4 bedroom houses. If we add +"City Toronto"
we will find all 4 bedrooms houses located in Toronto, of course if we
all apply the same standard rules, or all pages which comply to our
rules and particular search string. This way we can advertise for the
whole world and be able to find houses in the whole world.

We can produce the whole standard page for selling houses, put it in
several places on the web, so anybody who wants to build his own page
can access and use it. Not every page has to be the same. This would be
extremely boring, but at least part of it. The rest could be in free
form. So page would include the standard part only, and anybody who use
it just fill the blanks, will add his own non-standard part, pictures
and whatever he wants to. It is very easy to produce and modify web page
using today's widely accessible software. You can use Composer from the
Netscape's free standard "Netscape Navigator" package, or even
Microsoft's Word word-processing software. In Netscape you can move the
page you are looking at now into the Composer by executing <File> then
<Edit Page> from the menu. You can modify it and then save as your own,
into your own hard-drive.

We can put steady information on each Usenet group dealing with the
subject and let people know it exists. Additionally we can advertise it
on the web and let the pyramid of those who will know about it grow.

So let's do it.

I am waiting for further ideas and suggestions.



Regards,

Ricaro