Puluwai allows you to search real estate property listings for a particular area. It leverages the power of android and other Google technologies.
Main Search Screen
- Any location format supported by the well-known Google Maps interface is also supported by Puluwai. You can enter a street address such as "53-3959 Hiwahiwa Street, Kapaau HI 96755", a latitude, longitude pair as "37.460,-122.138" , a major airport code such as SFO or LAX, a city name with a state such as "Paris, TX" , a city name with a country such as "Paris, France", or simply a U.S. ZIP code.
- Puluwai supports innumerable locations in North America and around the world. Try, for instance, "Barcelona, Spain" or "Dublin, UK". Sometimes, there simply aren't any property listings in the database for a particular valid location.
- Clicking the near button on the search page causes Puluwai to find your current latitude and longitude (using the android Location API) and use this as the center of your search.
- The keywords input field is handy for searching the description of real estate listings. For instance, you could enter "ocean" if you desire an ocean view.
- To search successfully, you usually need to enter at least location and maximum price.
- When you run a search, all the information you entered is automatically saved for you and is accessible under the recent searches menu item on the main search screen. This provides an easy way to frequently search several neighborhoods.
- The favorite listings menu item allows you to view your saved favorite properties. More on this later.
- You can click the return key ↵ in any text input field to start your search. Alternately, you can scroll down and click the search button.
Search Results
- After the search completes, you're presented with a list of your search results.
- Simply click a list item to view details for that property.
- You can click more results to retrieve additional results, if there are any.
- The image gallery menu item provides an alternative view of your search results as a gallery of images.
- The map it! menu item will display the currently highlighted property on a map. Note that if the real estate agent has provided a very generic location for the property such as "San Francisco, CA" to the database, the map will simply be centered in San Francisco.
Property Detail Screen
- The property detail screen lists the key facts about a property. You can scroll up and down on this screen to view all the details.
- The map it! menu item will display the property's location on a map.
- Select the +favorite menu item to add this property listing to your favorites. You can later access favorite listings from the main search screen menu.
- Some property listings have only one highlight photo, and that is shown on the property detail screen. However, if there are more photos available, the more images menu item allows you to view these.
- If you wish to view the full details of a property as presented on the agent's website, you can select the view web menu item to display this in the android browser.
- Select the contact agent menu item to contact the realtor, broker, or other agent associated with a property. This creates a Contacts entry for the agent with their name, email address and phone number (if known), as well as Notes specifying which property you were interested in. You can then email or call the agent directly. (If you decide you don't wish to contact that agent, you can select the Delete contact menu item and simply return to viewing the property listing.)
- Select the share menu item to share this property listing with a friend via GoogleTalk / XMPP. Note that your friend must also have the Puluwai application installed on her android device, and must already be a buddy on GoogleTalk. (See http://tinyurl.com/4yte97 for a sharing demo.)
Favorite Listings
- This screen is similar to the Search Results screen: You can view a favorite property by simply clicking on it, you can view your favorites in a gallery of images by selecting the image gallery menu item, and you can map individual favorites by selecting the map it! menu item.
- In addition, you can remove one favorite using the remove menu item, and remove all favorites using the clear all menu item.
Recent Searches
- Puluwai remembers your most recent searches and makes them available for re-searching later in this handy list. Your most recent search is shown at the top of the list.
- To run a recent search again, simply click on it.
- If you're looking for property in several different neighborhoods, there's no need to re-enter your search each time: simply search in a neighborhood once, then select that search from your recent searches when you wish to run it again.
Image Gallery / More Images
- You can scroll left and right through the image gallery, using either the left/right nav buttons or touch gestures.
- When an interesting property image is displayed, click the center (select) button on the four-way navigation to see details for that property.
Global Search Launch
- Puluwai supports the android SearchManager / Searchability API. This means that you can open the global search interface from the Home screen or any other application (my selecting menu+S), select the real estate mode, and enter a text search of the form "Location : Max Price". This causes Puluwai to search based on your criteria and then display a list of results.
- If you dislike your search results, you can go back from the search results list and modify your search criteria to make them more specific than the location and max price you initially specified.
Issues and Notes
- Image Gallery: There is a memory leak in android M5 that affects the "image gallery" and "more images" activities. If you scroll left and right through numerous photos, android eventually runs out of memory and crashes. See http://tinyurl.com/66suwq for a discussion of this bug.
- Image Gallery: android sometimes fails to load an image that should be available, possibly because the image is too large to download with the device's current available memory. In this case the "image loading" icon remains visible.
- Results List: When a list of search results is first displayed, and the user hasn't scrolled using the up/down keys, there will sometimes be no item in the menu highlighted. This is a known problem in the M5 SDK when the device is in touch mode. See http://tinyurl.com/4hlacw for a discussion of this issue.
- Sharing: With the current M5 SDK, you must have already set up XMPP on both emulators/devices , and you must have XMPP configured as "Stay connected to server".
- Search: The default search radius is currently set at 3 miles from the location the user enters. For dense urban areas this can lead to many more results than for rural areas. We're still evaluating the best way to make this value user-adjustable.
- Global Search: Due to a problem with the current M5 version of the SearchManager API, you must completely close Puluwai before attempting to run the global search dialog. This means you must "back out" of the main search screen and thereby completely exit the app.)
- "Puluwai" means basically "patch of land" in Hawaiian.