NearBuy - Real Estate for the iPhone

New iPhone Application a Hit at Apple Global Conference

Tony — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:31:40 +0000

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Four University of Missouri students (Team NearBuy) showcased their innovative mobile phone application recently at Apple’s WorldWide Developer Conference in San Francisco. The students demonstrated a new way to deliver classified advertising as Apple, Inc. unveiled a new version of its iPhone.

Team NearBuy – Anthony Brown, a senior majoring in convergence journalism; Zhenhua Ma, a doctoral student studying electrical and computer engineering, and Dan Wang and Peng Zhuang, doctoral students studying computer science – earned the trip to Apple’s annual conference for software developers after winning the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) iPhone Student Competition this spring.

(read the rest of the release here)

New Additions to the Family!

Tony — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:16:11 +0000

Big news everyone!

All three NearBuy applications are now available for download from the iTunes App Store!

Real Estate Search
NearBuy is the most powerful real-estate classified listing search tool in the App Store. Take the convenience of online classified search with you in your car!

Apartment Search
Renting a new apartment has never been easier than with NearBuy Apartment search, now with features like Search by School, a rent calculator, and Flickr photos!

Listing Manager
NearBuy’s Listing Manager is the full-featured counterpart to NearBuy that’s designed to connect home buyers and sellers through seamless integration with the NearBuy network. Currently in beta, we’re looking for Realtors and private sellers to give the The application also gives full access to Google Base—edit or add new listings from your iPhone!

Be sure to leave your questions and suggestions here on our blog, and we look forward to helping you on your home hunt!

-Tony

NearBuy Wins!

Tony — Sun, 17 May 2009 04:38:30 +0000

COLUMBIA, Mo.—More than 20,000 downloads of a new iPhone application created by four students at the University of Missouri helped cement their victory in a competition sponsored by Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.

Four students from the University of Missouri competed in the Reynolds Journalism Institute iPhone Student Competition and came away with the grand prize: an all-expenses paid trip to Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco June 8-12.

The competition brought together students from the Missouri School of Journalism and the MU College of Engineering to develop applications loosely designed around the journalism industry.

“[NearBuy] put on a really impressive presentation, both technically and marketing-wise,” wrote Mark Glaser, writer of PBS’ MediaShift blog and a judge of the contest.

The NearBuy student team consists of Tony Brown, journalism undergraduate; Zhenhua Ma, electrical and computer engineering Ph.D candidate; Dan Wang, computer science master’s candidate and Peng Zhuang, computer science Ph.D candidate.

The students created NearBuy, a real estate search application currently available from the iTunes App Store. In coming weeks, the team will be unveiling three new applications designed to fill niches in the real estate application market.

Throughout the month of April, NearBuy Real Estate Search placed in the top 10 most popular free applications in the business category of the app store. Among applications that appear when a user searches “real estate,” NearBuy is the third most popular application.

NearBuy (v.0.31) is a free application currently available for download by iPhone and iPod Touch users.

Media coverage:
PBS’ MediaShift (includes video)
AppScout
The Maneater
MizzouWire
Reynolds Journalism Institute

Preview of NearBuy version 1.0

Tony — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:41:33 +0000

Take a look at the latest version of NearBuy, built for the soon-to-be-released iPhone OS 3.0.

Vote for NearBuy!

Tony — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 05:28:26 +0000

I made an iPhone application! Well, more accurately, a couple of incredibly smart friends and I did. And now we need your help in voting us to the top of a competition sponsored by Apple for student developers. The best news is the application, called NearBuy, is entirely FREE! Tell your friends, tell your students, tell your parents!

See a video demo of our application and vote here:
http://tinyurl.com/nearbuy

iPhone and iPod Touch users can download the application here for FREE:
http://tinyurl.com/nearbuyappstore
(Don’t forget to rate and leave a comment after you’ve tried it!)

What we’ve created is a full-featured suite of applications designed to connect buyers and sellers of real estate with an entirely mobile-based platform. Now, buyers can browse one of the most comprehensive classified databases on a map of their surroundings. Vivid photos, descriptions, and links to useful tools like mortgage calculators and neighborhood information put the buyer in total control of their pursuit.

Sellers aren’t left out of the fun. For the first time on an iPhone app (coming soon), real estate agents can upload listings to Google Base directly from their iPhone. Of course, we’ve also built in the ability to access the listings that already exist on Google Base, with the ability to create a premium virtual tour—an immersive, sleek, and effective way of showcasing listings.