It currently supports complex heatmaps based on travel time (e.g. close to work + close to friends + far from police precincts), and has a browser extension to display your heatmap over popular listing sites like Zillow.
I'm thinking of making it into an API to allow websites to integrate with it directly.
Still working on https://theretowhere.com, which is a website that makes it easier to find apartments and hotels/airbnbs close to people and activities you care about.
The past couple months have been fun since I've implemented a lot of new highly-requested features into the site's city heatmapping capabilities. One thing I've found motivating is having my own private changelog that shows screenshots of feature requests people have given me, and then dates for when I finally finished those features.
It's easy to forget how much stuff you've built in a month or two, sometimes.
You don't have to add them in manually - the heatmap interface supports "Open searches", where you can add in pins for a bunch of locations at a time based on a query (like "bakeries").
Currently thinking about better ways to spread the word about https://theretowhere.com (my website that makes it easier to find apartments and Airbnbs/hotels close to things you care about).
I've actually started getting some back and fourth feedback with a couple users, which has kept me motivated and validated. But I need more organic traffic somehow. I've recently released a new usecase (https://theretowhere.com/vacation) that might be more well suited for vacationers, so let's see if that sticks.
Funny anecdote from today - I just set up Slack notifications so I get more instant knowledge of errors on the platform, and the first notification came in just a couple moments after I deployed. It was for an error that I thought noone would run into for a couple days. Imagine my (bad) luck!
You can probably hack that experience by making use of the "rules" feature.
You can have certain search engines or macros launch automatically upon pressing enter based on the content of the query.
You if you set a rule to check if your search contains a vowel (which most will), it's effectively a catch all rule.
I built a portal that makes it easier to query against multiple different search engines (https://allsear.ch/). It's open source, free, all that. I must say, building it really expanded my view of the internet.
I am also a heavy Kagi and Reddit user for search, and usually that's enough. But when it's not, its concerning how much better other search engines can be, especially since non-tech savvy folks will never use them.
It's an website who's goal is to make it easier to find apartments/hotels/etc that fit your housing preferences (starting with places that are close to the people and things you care about). It's flagship feature is the ability to make heatmaps of cities based on your preferences.
Since February I've slowed down on feature development temporarily as I try and find a way to sustainably increase it's popularity and learn what's the most important thing to focus on next.
The second one (acrage, stars, etc) is harder, you're right.
The "Search nearby places" is really meant to be a convenience feature to fill your OR clauses. It works better for certain types of things. Like, sure, all parks is too broad because not all parks are equal. But use it for something like all Targets (the shopping chain) or something, and its more useful, since those are, more or less, all equal.
I'm still thinking of other convenience features for places that have more nuance, like parks.
> If I put the same thing in two different criteria (with different settings), it says the heatmap parameters are invalid.
That's odd, since the website does not differentiate places by coordinates. I think you might have been missing something else (like you clicked a "new place" button and didn't fill out that place, maybe)
I should probably make the UX better. When you're on the heatmap page (or the distance matrix page), look at the top right of the screen. It shows you where it's basing its searches on, and you can override that bias with any location you like.
You only need to update it once per session - all pages and components will be updated
To echo what loxias said, it is possible to make queries like this on the heatmap. You can use the "Search Nearby places" button - this takes in more general queries (like cafe, gym, walmart, etc) and gives you back a bunch of venues that fit that search.
Yeah, different geo analysis providers have different weightings for travel time (turns, street density, etc). It can sometimes lead to inconsistencies like this, especially if they don't use GPS and proprietary data to correct things...
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/what-does-meta-mean-in-...