Upcoming Fixes

It’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog, which someone just pointed out to me. In January 2011 I finally finished my original goal of linking the website to the mobile apps. Now yard salers can use the feature-rich web site for their planning, then send their planned route to their phone and use the on-the-go app features for Android and iPhone.

Also, yard salers are understanding the power of the “Add Sales” tab and how they can plot sales from other sources into YSTM to make it easier to plan.

Based on your feedback, the next few updates will be:

  1. Fixing the delete sale feature in the itinerary
  2. Fixing the update sale feature so that any sale can be updated by anyone
  3. Revamping the add sales feature to let users put in neighborhood addresses and make corrections as necessary
  4. Taking a fresh look at making the craigslist addresses more accurate

Thanks again for all of the feedback!

5 comments - Latest by:
  • JenV
    I absolutely LOVE this site and use it almost every week for my yard sale planning. There's one thing ...
  • admin
    On the itinerary window there is a "Clear" button at the bottom that will de-select all sales in your route. ...
  • teresa
    I would love a re-set feature. Right now, I have to manually delete a previous route, one garage sale ...
  • RENATE PARKS
    Just wanted to let you know I LOOOOOVE your site! It saves me sooooo much time! I used to copy ...
  • Maria
    I added about 6 sales then noticed I didn't have my starting address in place. I put that in ...

Community Sale Private Maps

After many requests, I have finally started working on a way for communities and neighborhoods to map their large-scale yard sales. Community sales have their own private site (using a more interesting and powerful Silverlight map) while all sales are also displayed on the main site, the iPhone app (Yard Sale Mapper), and the Android app (Yard Sale Treasure Map).

If you don’t see the above map, please hit the download silverlight button… you’ll be glad you did!

While I have only agreed to put together these private maps for a few communities this Fall, I intend to polish up this technology over the Winter so everything is good and ready for the Spring yard sale season!

Additionally I plan on updating both mobile apps with search capability as well as a route sharing feature.

2 comments - Latest by:
  • Jen
    Would be nice if there is a way to tick it off or colorize it so a person knows they ...
  • Ken Graham
    I was looking at Google Maps to see if I could do something like this as I have 30 or ...

Android App

I have just uploaded the Yard Sale Treasure Map Android App (v1.2) to the Android market. This has been a rocky start since I do not yet own an Android, which makes it extremely difficult to properly test the thing. My apologies if you downloaded the app earlier this week (v1.0 or v1.1), because I’m pretty sure that it didn’t work for you. I am sort of kind of maybe a little bit confident that my latest fixes will let folks see the sales.

If you do experience problems, please drop me a note below or by email. Otherwise I may not know that a problem exists!

8 comments - Latest by:
  • Lynda Ballinger
    This doesn't seem to work in my area 62301, how could I get our area to use this. Is ...
  • admin
    John, my own phone was running 2.1.1 until last month and things worked fine for me, so I'm not sure ...
  • john r findley
    Hi, Love the idea. The app store won't let me download the app. Says not compatible with my device. Motorola "citrus" ...
  • shelli starkey
    I have been wanting something like this for SOME time!! Awesome!! But I did just notice that for ...
  • john
    This is the best app. But since lastest update I can not see map or streets. Google ...
  • Rick
    Please increase size of screen to use with tablets too. Very nice app!
  • HappyCamper
    WOW - what a great idea!! I just found your site, I haven't used it yet, but already ...
  • Angela
    Just found your site and will be trying it out on sat. makes me want to go get a smart ...

Mobile Devices

A few months ago I released a mobile web page version of YSTM that you would be re-directed to if you use a mobile device to access this site.  To my surprise, very few people are taking advantage of this feature! This mobile web page is everything that the YSTM iPhone app is, but you do not need to download anything and it can be accessed from other non-Apple devices (like Android, Palm, Windows Mobile, etc).  If you have a modern smart phone, YSTM will even take advantage of your phone’s GPS capabilities.  See the comparison below of the iPhone app versus the YSTM mobile web page:





iPhone App Mobile Web Site


Maybe there are not as many iPhone and Androids out there as I thought.  But if you or someone you know has a fancy mobile phone (iPhone, Android, or otherwise), take it with you on Saturday morning!  Take a peak every so often at the map.  When you find a nearby sale that meets your fancy, you can get instant directions to that sale.  Call this ad-hoc yardsaling!

Additionally, most people jump on to YSTM and create their map on Friday.  This is a great time to do your planning, but I can tell you that my yard sale database jumps another 25% in size during the wee hours of Friday evening and Saturday morning.  For this reason I worry that many of you are missing out on some great yard sales from those procrastinating yard sale hosts!  If you have your mobile phone with you on Saturday you may still catch these late breaking yard sales without missing out!

11 comments - Latest by:
  • Kyle
    I love this App The Main Reason I Own My iPhone, is this App Kyle
  • Kyle
    One of the Few apps I would be willing to pay for, and its Free!!!! I saw the pop up on ...
  • admin
    I have just added Kijiji for parts of Canada so you should hopefully start to see more sales on your ...
  • Kyle
    Please add Kijiji, I beg you, I love this app but most list with Kijiji in my area. Kyle
  • Cindy
    Saw your site mentioned in good housekeeping. Love your site. Thanks
  • Lg
    How about Blackberry ap????? Please
  • admin
    I'm sorry this free tool was not useful to you. A more descriptive review would tell me what needs ...
  • Rob Pratt
    Your mobile app for iphone is crap. Spent 30 minutes making a route on the laptop and it is ...
  • Sandy
    You made it into Real Simple magazine page 66, May 2011. Cool!
  • Sandy
    Officially: this is worth paying for. Thanks for making it happen.
  • John Westra
    Congratulations on your creation of a truly useful and people-friendly application for both PC's and mobile devices! This is ...

Sale Advertisements and YSTM Mobile

Despite most of the country being in yard sale hibernation, I have been hard at work on the site.

I have finally posted a feature that will let you advertise your sale directly on YSTM.  Of course if you are posting your sales to craigslist, your sales will show up on YSTM anyway, but I have added sticky notes to the right of the map to highlight specific sales (and give those sales a different marker on the map to stand out better).  This idea stems directly from user comments to advertise their neighborhood sales and flea markets so thank you for your input!

I have also put together a basic mobile version of the YSTM.  When you open YSTM from your mobile device you should be automatically re-directed to this mobile version.  This page is much more friendly to small screens and lower bandwidth, however, presently no fancy features have been added.  It is simply a map with markers, but it will hopefully suffice as a tool to get you from sale to sale in real time.  I will be tweaking the mobile site from time to time to make it as friendly as possible across all mobile devices.

The mobile site has been tested successfully on iPhone and Android.  This may or may not work on Windows Mobile devices depending on what browser you are using.  Unfortunately, mobile Google maps do not work correctly on the Blackberry browser (I’m sure the Blackberry map app works great, but I’m talking about using the Blackberry internet browser to view Google Maps v3 API webpages which is optimized for mobile devices)… we will have to wait for Blackberry to update their browser or for Google to find a work around.

3 comments - Latest by:
  • Darren Smith
    Would like to have you come on my Radio Show and Talk about your app very cool stuff ! Darren Smith
  • admin
    Yes right now craigslist and yardsaletreasuremap.com are the only sources. I have considered adding Kijiji for our Canadian users, ...
  • Leslie Abraham
    Is Craigs list the only site that is used for garage sale mapping? Here in the Ottawa Ontario area, ...

Adding Sales… And Sharing Them!

Up until this point users could add non-craigslist yard sales to their map using the “Add Location” search feature (which can also be used to map other useful stops like coffee or bathroom breaks).  This information would be exclusive to that user’s map.  Well, I have finally gotten around to making a nice update that I am pretty excited about.

Yesterday I added an “Add Sales” tab that will let users quickly and easily add any other yard sales from other sources, and (optionally) share the sale information with other YSTM users!  I’m hoping that this will save everyone time by reducing redundant effort.  If only one person in town adds the extra sale information while making her map, then every other YSTM user will be saved the time and effort.

The “Add Sales” tab is not intended to be used for advertising a sale; I would prefer that folks stick with craigslist for their advertising.  This feature will hopefully be used as a way to bring all of sale information together each week to speed up the route planning process.

As always, if something doesn’t work the way that it should, or if you think I left out some important feature that would make it easier to share sale information, just email or leave a comment and I will see what I can do.

7 comments - Latest by:
  • Dblscup
    How do I ad my ad from Craiglist to your site? HELP please?
  • admin
    KJ, that's a great idea. I will put this on my todo list over the winter.
  • KJ
    This feature is great! One suggestion I have is to let users enter a URL to the original listing, ...
  • admin
    Hi Myesha, I know that we have been talking on email, but I thought I should reply to your ...
  • Myesha
    I am looking to publish information on our Citywide yard sale ( i have an address for each participating location). ...
  • Jo
    I entered some addresses to share one came up wrong i needed to delete it so others will not go ...
  • Jennifer
    Just thought I'd say that I'm glad I stumbled across this site and I also shared it with my readers! ...

Fixing Incorrect Listings

One of the problems that I have struggled with while working on this site is the bad address issue.  There might be 195 different “105 Elm St.”s out there so which one do I map?

I am constantly working to improve the accuracy of my mappings, but there will always be a small percentage that just won’t be correct (for instance, “turn left at the 7-11 and follow the road to Maple Ave”).  To combat this problem I have introduced controls that allow you as the user to fix ads with incorrect information.  When one person finds and corrects an error, all will benefit.  This is something of a social experiment I suppose.  When a yard saler is planning a route and spots an excellent, but poorly mapped sale, they can correct the mapping (and thereby improve their own map) and be on their way.  The next yard saler will have access to the new and improved map, and all the while everyone is saving time and energy while still finding the best sales.

And in that vein, stage two of my social experiment will be to add the ability for yard salers to share the locations of yard sales through YSTM such that for each locality, this information need only be entered once.  Basically if you were adding blue markers before for non-craigslist yard sales and wished to share this information, other users would thereafter see your markers.  This feature is yet to come and still needs some design work.

Let me know what you think about the current and future updates, and as always, please let me know if something doesn’t work!

2 comments - Latest by:
  • Angela
    Hi - just a question...how do you fix the content of the listings? I have somehow wrote the wrong date ...
  • Roger Mullins
    This is a great site. Small Correction to your wording. You say..."When a yard saler is planning a route and ...

Radius, Search, and Unmappables

This week I have a short list of things to add/fix.

There were dozens of comments regarding the map advertisement blocking sale content.  I have moved the ad to the bottom of the screen.  Let me know if this does not solve your problem.

Someone made a great comment about having too many sales nearby and wanted a 2 mile radius option. This is easy so you should see this fix by next Friday.

I am still working on making the search feature work properly. Hopefully this will be done before next Friday.

I changed a few things around and now and the Show/Hide Unmappable Sales feature may not always work so I’d like to get this working properly too. For those of you who have not tried this feature, you can use this to scroll through your local sales that I could not find a date and/or address. I need a date so that I don’t send you to yesterday’s sale and I need a proper address to put a marker on the map. I don’t want anyone to miss a sale, so you have the option to scroll through these listings and add the sale to the map yourself.

Please keep the comments coming!

2 comments - Latest by:
  • Rachel R.
    This is great! Is there any possibility of adding a feature to choose which Craigslist location to pull from? ...
  • SALLY
    neat site. I'm sure you put a lot of time and work into it. Can you get rid of old sales?"

Route Optimization

One feature that is painfully absent from any of these kind of mapping web pages is route optimization.  The map should tell you what the fastest route is rather than let you drive in circles and backtracking to hit the next sale.

This is actually a pretty difficult problem to implement.  Lots of math and fancy terms like “traveling salesman”, “np hard” and “ant colonies”.  College math students do research projects to figure this out.  Fortunately for you, the folks at Optimap have agreed to let YSTM use their optimization magic to make your life easier!

I have added an “Optimize Route” button on Step 2 of YSTM.  If you have less than 21 sales mapped you can select this button and your spaghetti route will miraculously transform itself into a efficient trail!

optimize_example

2 comments - Latest by:
  • admin
    Barb, a 604 in this case means that one of the markers was "off the reservation"... that is, google couldn't ...
  • Barb
    I keep getting Code 604 when I try to Optimize route and am not able to print my map. ...

The Vision

The vision for YSTM was to create a web application to improve on the tedious process of yard sale planning.  Paper maps, post-it notes, newspapers, and hours of research seems to be terribly inefficient, especially in larger urban areas where address locations are not completely obvious.

With the advancements in technologies it was obvious that a better way could be found.

Enter Yard Sale Treasure Map.  This website was created with the following simple goals in mind:

  1. Automatically put local sales on a map
  2. Allow the user to add other sales or stops (sales from newspapers, a stop for coffee, etc)
  3. Provide the means for the yard-saler to plan and order the route
  4. Let the yard-saler print a customized map