We've covered a ton of floor planners on Webware, but none of them have been as cool as MyDeco. The tool throws in the usual assortment of tables, chairs, beds, and other living accouterments that you can price, purchase, and move around in a customizable space.
The tool lets you emulate single rooms or an entire house by plugging in the dimensions and adding walls, windows, and doors. It also manages to give you a 3D view of what those items will look like in that space, not just from the top down like most floor planners. In this mode you can zoom around, or pinpoint any angles using a virtual camera and take snapshots to send to your cohabitants. It's just plain cool.
I don't think it's really a perfect way to simulate the effects of moving actual furniture, but in about 10 minutes I had put together a pretty slick looking pad. Like I mentioned before you can actually purchase items you like through the tool's sister site, although it's based in the UK, meaning if you don't live there you'll have to track down the local counterparts.
Furniture juggernaut IKEA has its own tools that are a little similar but they're separated into kitchen, bedroom, and office, and must be downloaded and installed on your machine. In that regard, MyDeco's got the upper hand since it will run right in your browser as long as you've got Flash installed.
Related:
Floor Planner helps to plan your pad
Best4c does quick and slick charts
Gliffy, the online Visio killer
[via Delicious]
Create your pad in 3D with MyDeco's floor plan tool. Whether or not you can afford the ritzy additions is another thing.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
I'm in the middle of a hunt for a new place to live, and have been using a variety of tools to keep an eye on local openings. The best offense against the horde of competitors seems to be finding those small, obscure listings, as well as utilizing as many sources as possible.
A new service called Rentbits, created by some former Google employees, is officially launching this morning and is joining a crowded group of other search verticals that help people solve this problem.The tool grabs sources from all over the Web with its crawling technology. In most cases I found the results came from ApartmentHunterz.com, but mixed in with those were listings from Sublet.com and CityCribs.com. A lot of it depends on which city you're looking in, as the service includes some local listing sites. Craigslist however, is nowhere to be found, which is unfortunate.
Also missing is an advanced search. You can set how many rooms you're looking for and how much you want to pay, but there's no way to add things you're looking to be included like hardwood floors, a dishwasher, or laundry room. If these amenities are listed, they'll be included as part of the search results, but some way to weed out places that don't have some of these amenities would be useful.
Despite the handy metasearching qualities of Rentbits, I continue to be impressed by another search vertical called HousingMaps. It's a very simple mashup that uses Craigslist data and keyword search, and combines that with Google Maps. However, the key in any of these services is to mix a great list of sources with a highly customizable search tool--something that Rentbits doesn't quite have yet.
Rentbits lets you search though local housing listings from all over the Web, although only a handful of listing suppliers are included in the crawler right now.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
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