I just recently got an Android and part of the reason I got it was because I work with Google Maps API and program dealer locators and other things and wanted to see how difficult it would be to program for the Android. I started with a project in mind that would show me on a Google Maps markers of all the homes that recently sold, and homes that were recently listed.
At first this seemed like a daunting task and I was confused how I would accomplish such a thing. I figured I needed to write a program that would send me my gps coordinates in a variable form that php could handle that I could then send back to google maps and keep it refreshing.... that would be a poor mans way to do it.
Turns out that Android is so flexible that it allready had all the tools for everything I needed to accomplish this. There is a program called My Maps Editor by Google. This program for Android does a few things.
First and foremost what it does is that it links of with your My Maps account through Google. You may be asking yourself "What is a my maps account?" It is simple, you can use your gmail log-in to get to "your maps" from the google main page or the google maps page. Once there you can create markers or lines on maps and save them under different titles. You can make them public or private for the world to see.
So for example. Say you have a route that you like to run and you wanted to make it public. You could draw a line of the route and place markers showing distances etc... and put them in a map and save it as Coast Ridge Run and make it public. People who were searching for Coast Ridge Runs would probably come accross your map on a Google Search.
Ok that is great but how does it help us with the houses that have recently sold or are being listed. Well if you go to Trulia.com if you do a basic search for a zip code in a given area you will notice in the top right of the page there is an RSS icon. If you click on that you will see that there is a Google Earth RSS option. If you click on that it will give you the option to save a .KML file. If you save that file and then go back to your google my maps. You can choose to import a .KML file to your my maps. This will put on the map all the markers of houses that have recently been listed.
If you have my maps on your Android you will be able to see these listings from your android. And even better you can have the map follow you by GPS from your current coordinates.
So say you are a real estate agent, and you want to see houses that have recently been listed in the area while you are showing a client a home. If you had specified the URL to the KML file for your my maps to grab information. You would have the most current info at your finger tips of what houses have recently been listed in the area. Or if you were driving your car down the street you could see in the different areas what is going on.
This is a powerful and unique tool for agents. The only problem is that Trulia's web site appears to be broken, or they do not want to put information up about sold homes for .KML files. All of there other RSS feeds do seem to work, but the KML files do not. That means that we need to manually edit their RSS feeds to fit with KML in order to have accruate and up to date information.
This is something that I am working on at the moment, but feel there must be a better way to do it with a screen scrape or PHP program that reeds the feed etc... but this might be getting over my head.
Will have more on this later. But as of now Android is a hit! and has made my housing searches just that much easier.
