Street View in Charlottesville

Posted on June 13, 2008 by Jim Duncan

While it’s not “street view” in the traditional sense (Google) and in spite of some questions about how they’re doing the display of IDX data, but what CurbPlaces is doing is pretty cool.

We’ve begun rolling out a solution to this at CurbPlaces.com: Street Pictures. Now, when you zoom all the way in on the CurbPlaces map, little camera icons will appear throughout the neighborhood. Clicking a camera will bring up 360 degree pictures of the area. Try it out. We’ve started with Downtown and the City and our slowly making our way across the map (as fast as our intern can ride his bike carrying a laptop, digital camera, and GPS device…)

Update 13 June 2008: For a tremendous discussion about display of the “good old days,” where we are today and where we might be going, take the time to listen to this discussion on 4Realz.

About Jim Duncan

A Charlottesville Realtor who tries to stay on the bleeding/cutting/functional edge of technology and real estate trends. I have been selling real estate for the past 10 years, lived in C'Ville for twenty+ and am married to one of few Charlottesville natives left.
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  • http://www.cloudbrain.com Daniel Strickland

    Thanks for the comment Jim.

    What questions about the IDX display are you referring to? We currently have an account with the CAAR / MLS and download the IDX data straight from the CAAR FTP site the way it is supposed to be. The CurbPlaces (unless I’m missing something) follow all the CAAR rules for display and usage of IDX as well.

    We used to simply scrape data from the mycaar area, but have since moved away from that to make sure all our data was as accurate and legitimate as possible.

    Are there still other questions about how we use IDX?

  • http://www.realcentralva.com Jim Duncan

    There are concerns being raised about the lack of sufficient disclosure on the page and the use of IDX data on your site. CAAR is still working through them, as our IDX rules were written before the internet had really started to do its thing. A lot of the questions are based on fear of the unknown and fear of loss of control.

  • http://www.realcentralva.com Jim Duncan

    Also, some want to see a return to a control of data – which is a moot point, in my opinion. I love the innovation and “stuff” that you’re doing – don’t get me wrong -

  • http://www.cloudbrain.com Daniel Strickland

    Thanks for the explanation. I agree that the rules don’t really seem to take into account something like CurbPlaces. However, we are really trying to be above-board with our use of data – even as we explore Curbplace’s business model.

    If you have any specific concerns or suggestions for our use of the data, please let me know. We’ve had conversations with David Phillips as well.

    One change we’ve recently made: we added the “Advertise with CurbPlaces” link under every paid advertising banner to further distinguish them on the page from actual real estate data.

    I look forward to updates as CAAR works through what to do about the Internet…

  • http://www.cvillehoods.com Pavel Dovgalyuk

    I wonder what’s stopping a site like Zillow or Trulia from getting the same FTP data from CAAR by using the same means of gathering data as CurbPlaces does. There is so much discussion about “giving data” to Zillow, but CurbPlaces already has 100% of the IDX data. Is it because a local real estate agent is behind CurbPlaces? If not, I don’t see why Zillow and the likes couldn’t follow CurbPlaces’ model and our lengthy discussions in CAAR committees are just a waste of time.

  • http://www.cloudbrain.com Daniel Strickland

    Pavel: Yes, CurbPlaces data is the result of a partnership with a local real estate agent (which we describe on our About page). I am not involved your committee discussions, but as far as I know, there is nothing stopping Zillow from doing the same thing. In my experience, lengthy discussions in any committee meeting are often a waste of time…