Nelso was selected as one of the 20 finalists for Seedcamp Prague. I'll be presenting on Tuesday, March 2, and will probably also stop by the OpenCoffee event Monday evening at Jazz Dock.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Nelso selected for Seedcamp Prague
Nelso was selected as one of the 20 finalists for Seedcamp Prague. I'll be presenting on Tuesday, March 2, and will probably also stop by the OpenCoffee event Monday evening at Jazz Dock.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Outranking TripAdvisor
Here's something that we don't see very often: we are ranking above TripAdvisor.com for some searches for accommodation. For example, when searching in Danish for "accommodation in Prague" ("Indkvartering i Prag") we rank #1 on Google. We even rank #2 in Danish for searches for accommodation in Copenhagen ("Indkvartering i København").Our limited SEO strategy has never targeted hotel and accommodation searches; we've always assumed that the competition in this space is so intense that it makes little sense to spend our time trying to rank for searches like "hotels in Prague".
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Magyarország
I spent the week-end in Budapest, to kick off our coverage of that city for our web site and for upcoming Budapest iPhone and iPad apps from Nelso.
We expect to formally launch Nelso.hu on April 1, 2010 (although the site is already live for beta testing now). The iPhone and iPad apps should also launch around that time.
We expect to formally launch Nelso.hu on April 1, 2010 (although the site is already live for beta testing now). The iPhone and iPad apps should also launch around that time.
Friday, January 8, 2010
How many App Store downloads are required to rank in the Top 20 in the Czech Republic?
We had exactly 155 downloads of the Nelso Prague iPhone app in the Czech Republic1 yesterday (January 7, 2010), which earned us the #15 spot for free apps. This put us ahead of Google Earth, Facebook, and Skype.The previous day (January 6, 2010) we had 125 downloads in CZ, which got us the #25 position. Based on this info, I'd guess that the total number of downloads from the App Store in the Czech Republic yesterday was fewer than 10,000.
1 That is, we are counting here only downloads from users in the Czech Republic, and not including downloads from any of the other App Stores.
Nelso iPhone app for Copenhagen now available
Our iPhone app for Copenhagen was approved very quickly (36 hours) and is now available in the App Store. The app is free and about half the size of the Prague app (there are fewer photos in this app, but that will be corrected soon). Download it and send us feedback at iphone@nelso.com or leave a comment below.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Nelso Prague iPhone app hits #16 in Italy
The Nelso Praga (Italian version) iPhone app started climbing the charts in Italy leading up to Christmas, and on New Year's Day it had hit #16 in the Travel category.This has far exceeded our expectations. It's well known that a lot of Italians come to Prague for New Year's Eve, but because our app is specific just to the city of Prague (unlike, say, a translation app or currency convertor that might be downloaded by travelers going to any city), we were hoping only to rank in the Top 100 for travel apps, not to break the Top 20 and appear on the first page of the Travel section. Having the only free app in Italian for the search term "Praga" doesn't hurt, of course, but it's still (to us) a surprising result.
Needless to say, this has encouraged us to continue improving the Prague app, and to release similar apps for other cities. We'll be submitting an app for Copenhagen this week, and apps for other European cities later in January.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Nelso Prague iPhone App Rankings
As of today (December 30, 2009), the Nelso Prague iPhone App is a Top 100 Travel app in 12 countries. For comparison, there are 6780 travel apps in the German App Store, where we rank #73. To get into the Top 100, you must be in the top 1.4% of all travel apps.
The list of countries, and our rank:
The list of countries, and our rank:
| Country | Rank |
| Czech Republic | 6 |
| Hungary | 30 |
| Slovakia | 39 |
| Slovenia | 41 |
| Russia | 45 |
| Greece | 48 |
| Croatia | 60 |
| Germany | 73 |
| Lebanon | 74 |
| Italy | 74 |
| Sweden | 86 |
| Portugal | 100 |
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Google Zeitgeist 2009 - Czech Republic
Google didn't provide a list of the most popular travel searches for the Czech Republic (unlike Denmark), but they did provide a list of the most popular searches on Google Maps Czech Republic.
A large number of these are either definitely travel related searches (airport, hotel, accommodation) or possibly travel related searches (restaurants, public transport). Many of the top "Yellow Pages"-type searches (plumber, lawyer, locksmith) don't appear on the list at all.
A sign that this is the list for 2009, and not, say, 2007, is the appearance of "employment office" in the #4 spot. Hopefully, that will fall off the list next year.
- hotel
- restaurace (restaurants)
- ubytování (accommodation)
- úřad práce (employment office)
- pošta (post office)
- airport
- mhd (public transport)
- firmy (business)
- poliklinika (medical clinic)
- metro (subway)
A large number of these are either definitely travel related searches (airport, hotel, accommodation) or possibly travel related searches (restaurants, public transport). Many of the top "Yellow Pages"-type searches (plumber, lawyer, locksmith) don't appear on the list at all.
A sign that this is the list for 2009, and not, say, 2007, is the appearance of "employment office" in the #4 spot. Hopefully, that will fall off the list next year.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
An App for Touch Travelers
Mark Sigal wrote a post titled "Touch Traveler: London, Paris and only an iPod Touch" for the O'Reilly Radar blog in August 2009, right before we started development on our first iPhone app.
This article detailed his trip though Europe using only an iPod Touch for maps, to plan itineraries, and to find restaurants and tourist attractions. For the most part, it seems this was a success, but there were a few hiccups:
Inspired by this (and by horror stories from friends of how much they'd paid for data roaming while traveling), we tried to come as close as possible to the perfect iPod Touch travel guide to Prague. It's important to note that sales of the iPod Touch are nearly equal to sales of the iPhone, meaning an app that can work on both devices can reach double the audience of an app that requires a full-time internet connection.
While we can't offer all the functionality of Google Maps in our app (e.g. a database large enough to handle driving/walking directions would make the app unacceptably large and complex), we can offer something that Google Maps can't - the ability to work offline, without an internet connection. So using an iPod Touch without 3G, or an iPhone but don't want to pay data roaming charges to use Google Maps online, you can still use the Nelso Prague app for maps, with a pinch-and-push interface like that found in the online version.
Actually, it wasn't Google Maps updating the location data for his iPod Touch when it sensed a WiFi connection, it was the CoreLocation API in the iPhone OS, which makes this location data available to every app (for example, when using the "Nearby" tab in our app).
But we can do better than hoping that the user passes by an open WiFi spot to get a location (obviously, someone using our app with an iPhone 3G or 3GS has access to GPS). Our coverage of Prague is so dense that we can do pseudo-location sensing simply by asking the user to enter the name of a business or landmark near them. This would not work with most offline guides that contain fewer than 1000 locations in a city, but with more than 10,000 locations in the center of Prague, there is a very good chance that we have GPS coordinates for the bar or restaurant you are sitting in while doing a search. If you enter that name in the search box for "Near", we can give the user distance-sorted search results as good as, and usually better than, those possible with GPS (e.g. if you are in a small cafe, the margin of error for your location will be only a few meters, much better than the average error of the GPS in an iPhone).
We've included over 5,000 photos in the Nelso Prague iPhone app, so you can see the front (and sometimes the interior) of most businesses in Prague. Even with connectivity, Street View is not necessarily a good source of storefront images, as you can see in the view of Pařížská embedded below (in this case, trees planted between the street and sidewalk make it difficult to read many of the store names).
Although we feel we have a strong 1.0 release, there are of course many things missing from the Nelso Prague iPhone app. Because we started with our local search database (rather than a travel guide database), we need to add a lot more content for tourists to the app (e.g. how to get in from the airport, top restaurant picks, how to use the subway, etc.). Speaking of the subway, we'd like to add at the very least a public transport map to the app, and even better would be routing information for the subways, buses, and trams (we did include public transport info for businesses in this version, but we can't help you find your way to that subway/bus/tram stop).
We're always open to suggestions/comments on our app. You can send us email at iphone@nelso.com or leave a comment below.
View Larger Map
This article detailed his trip though Europe using only an iPod Touch for maps, to plan itineraries, and to find restaurants and tourist attractions. For the most part, it seems this was a success, but there were a few hiccups:
In London, this meant that 99% of the time, I had decent Wi-Fi connectivity at my hotel but no connectivity when mobile. This was key as we walked a ton, and took the Underground a lot (it is a great service).
Not having reliable connectivity in mobile contexts crippled some of the utility of Google Mobile Maps since it essentially removed the Real-Time goodness of the app. Moreover, it crimped the ability to search for nearby restaurants when on the move.
Inspired by this (and by horror stories from friends of how much they'd paid for data roaming while traveling), we tried to come as close as possible to the perfect iPod Touch travel guide to Prague. It's important to note that sales of the iPod Touch are nearly equal to sales of the iPhone, meaning an app that can work on both devices can reach double the audience of an app that requires a full-time internet connection.
Maps
First off, the revelation (for me) was how much the Google Mobile Maps App on iPod Touch completely changes the equation when traveling. Touch-based control with a virtual keyboard is the perfect UI for zooming in and out of geo-locales, and Mobile Maps offers a workflow whose predictability and logical structure both de-mystifies and anchors foreign travel.
While we can't offer all the functionality of Google Maps in our app (e.g. a database large enough to handle driving/walking directions would make the app unacceptably large and complex), we can offer something that Google Maps can't - the ability to work offline, without an internet connection. So using an iPod Touch without 3G, or an iPhone but don't want to pay data roaming charges to use Google Maps online, you can still use the Nelso Prague app for maps, with a pinch-and-push interface like that found in the online version. Location
What was almost magical was how Maps seemed designed to watch proactively in the background for a live connection so it could autonomously update location data when connectivity was intermittent.
Actually, it wasn't Google Maps updating the location data for his iPod Touch when it sensed a WiFi connection, it was the CoreLocation API in the iPhone OS, which makes this location data available to every app (for example, when using the "Nearby" tab in our app). But we can do better than hoping that the user passes by an open WiFi spot to get a location (obviously, someone using our app with an iPhone 3G or 3GS has access to GPS). Our coverage of Prague is so dense that we can do pseudo-location sensing simply by asking the user to enter the name of a business or landmark near them. This would not work with most offline guides that contain fewer than 1000 locations in a city, but with more than 10,000 locations in the center of Prague, there is a very good chance that we have GPS coordinates for the bar or restaurant you are sitting in while doing a search. If you enter that name in the search box for "Near", we can give the user distance-sorted search results as good as, and usually better than, those possible with GPS (e.g. if you are in a small cafe, the margin of error for your location will be only a few meters, much better than the average error of the GPS in an iPhone).
Searching for Restaurants, Tourist Attractions, etc.
With over 10,000 businesses and tourist attractions in more than 200 categories, we've got this covered.Photos
The ability to visually follow block-by-block, and see the storefront of a business blocks or miles away was very powerful.
We've included over 5,000 photos in the Nelso Prague iPhone app, so you can see the front (and sometimes the interior) of most businesses in Prague. Even with connectivity, Street View is not necessarily a good source of storefront images, as you can see in the view of Pařížská embedded below (in this case, trees planted between the street and sidewalk make it difficult to read many of the store names). What's Missing?
Although we feel we have a strong 1.0 release, there are of course many things missing from the Nelso Prague iPhone app. Because we started with our local search database (rather than a travel guide database), we need to add a lot more content for tourists to the app (e.g. how to get in from the airport, top restaurant picks, how to use the subway, etc.). Speaking of the subway, we'd like to add at the very least a public transport map to the app, and even better would be routing information for the subways, buses, and trams (we did include public transport info for businesses in this version, but we can't help you find your way to that subway/bus/tram stop).
We're always open to suggestions/comments on our app. You can send us email at iphone@nelso.com or leave a comment below.
View Larger Map
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