Propertycasting is a pretty cool idea. I was househunting not all that long ago and iIwill be again in the near future so I can see the value of subscribing to propertycasts. I wake up each morning to a computer full of new properties. Possible?
Yes, but not probable. Unlike broad topics like "egyptian cats' or 'free operating systems' a 'property' has some pretty specific data associated with it that determines whether it's something I'd be interested in or not. Geography is the biggest. I don't want to wake up to a computer full of prpoperties all over Canada when I'm moving to a specific city. Hot on the heels of geography would come things like price range, lot size, number of bedrooms and neighbourhood data like proximity to schools. How will that data be factored into the properties that are plunked into my computer?
I see two ways. The first (undesireable way) is to pull an Apple and add proprietary tags to the feed that a modified aggregator can read. I despise forking specs, however, so I'm really against this option. The better way would be to build an RSS feed for each user. If I was interested in propertycasts, then I could go to a real estate company's home page, select a bunch of criteria, and press a button to get my customized RSS feed to subscribe to. This solution puts a much heavier burden on both the server and the staff of the company to put properties into the database correctly, but at least it leaves the spec alone.
Is anyone working in this space yet? I'm interested...
