Thursday, May 1, 2014

Microsoft, build "Bing Apartment Search"!

For the past few months, I have been in the unpleasant process of searching for an apartment in Silicon Valley (or within ~40 miles). Recently, I have been finding myself using Microsoft's Bing search engine quite a bit. I find apartments, generate a list in Excel online, that is shared with my husband, and we proceed to call (and recall) one apartment after another. But the act of copying info over manually is quite unpleasant when you're adding 30 or so a day.
Introducing "Bing Apartment Search"! Okay, so this is not a real product. But the idea came to me this evening, and I really wish Microsoft would make something like this. The process doesn't have to be super-complex or fancy. Here's an example of what the process could be like:
  1. User goes to "Bing Apartment Search" and enters the area they want to move to (possibly select a radius). Or, for those that want to know the distance from their work, enter an address and have to-from travel time/distance displayed
  2. The user selects apartments they have/want to contact and they are added to a "notebook" that can be shared with other people via OneDrive
  3. Through the notebook users can view the name, address, and phone number of apartments. As well as a rating, website, email address or any other available information that is already available via Bing. (The previously mentioned travel time/distance to-from work could automatically be added to the notebook).
  4. As the user contacts the apartments, they are able to enter notes and "favorite" apartments, as well as note complexes that have or do not have availability
Sure, this would take some time to build, but it would be one heck of a convince! Especially if it was available on phones (especially my Windows Phone Nokia Lumia 920). This would allow users to update info for apartments they actually visit, and possibly call them without having to manually enter the phone number.

This would be a wonderful resource to have. And for those that aren't a fan of Bing, I am sure Google and Yahoo! would jump on the bandwagon as well. What do you think? Is this something you would want/use?

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