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Zenbu on Android

April 3, 2012

There is now (finally!) a free native app for Zenbu for those of you with Android smart phones.

BizHunt uses the data from Zenbu to power their search database. It’s the data you know and love in a handy wee Android package. One of the early (5 star) reviews said:

Just like findnz for Android but better

Go check it out.

It is worth noting that the ratings and advertising opportunities on BizHunt have no connection with Zenbu, are unique to the BizHunt application and will not reflect on the Zenbu website.

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Big Diff

February 17, 2012

 

This is one for the power users, the data crunchers, the hardcore Zenbu users who are committed to making sure the information on the site is as accurate as possible.

We’ve always had a complete version history on Zenbu so you could see the entry as it existed through time. Now we’ve added a side-by-side difference engine so that you can compare two edits and easily identify what changes were made. Changes use red and green highlighting to show what was deleted and added. Depending on the field, it could be by character or word; on the map we’ll display both locations.

You can see this screen on any entry with a history by clicking on the “Back in time” link on the entry listing.

I trust this will help give better visibility for changes. Wise men have said “With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow“; on Zenbu I think that means that with enough people looking at and using the data we can make the data as current and accurate as possible.

 

 

Zenbu 2011

February 12, 2012

Zenbu NZ had 2.6 million visitors in 2011; that’s like 1 visit for each adult New Zealander although I’m sure a few of us get more than our fair share.

2011 was a year of consistent growth on http://www.zenbu.co.nz. Where we averaged 10,000 visitors a day at the end of 2010, we now averaged 16,000 visitors a day with total traffic for the year also up 160%.

The Zenbu traffic graph by day is interesting for the troughs every weekend and public holiday period. Do Kiwis do all their searching at work?

Zenbu does have sites in a number of other countries (Australia, Cook Islands, Norfolk Islands, Canada, Malaysia) but the traffic from those sites wouldn’t even be a blip on the above graph (yet)…

Zenbu on Zoodle

January 18, 2012

Zoodle is all about property. It is a treasure trove of information about NZ real estate and the neighbourhoods around it. They’ve recently started using Zenbu data to add the list of nearest supermarkets to each area. Nifty!

http://www.zoodle.co.nz/community/taranaki/south-taranaki-district/hawera

A guest post by Wayne

October 25, 2011
Wayne:  was in yellow today, getting ripped off, and they gave me a list of “most popular biz directories” % share
1. Yellow (31%)
2. Finda (24%)
3. Whitepages (18%)
(all  three owned by yellow group)
4. Zenbu (8%)
Go Zenbu!

Zenbu Community Forum

June 7, 2011

We’ve created a Zenbu forum where the community can ask questions, get answers, provide feedback, discuss and debate all things Zenbu to their heart’s content. We apologise for taking so long to create this space for you all!

http://forum.zenbu.org/

The forum uses a different login system to the main site; you will need to register again. Please use the same login name to help others recognise you.

Thanks for being part of the Zenbu community!

Seeing the results of CC

April 20, 2011

Zenbu data is released under the Creative Commons Attribution license which means that anyone can access the complete Zenbu database, of nearly 100,000 Points of Interest in New Zealand alone, and use it in their own project or business for free. They can download it or access it through an API. The ONLY requirement is that they must “Attribute” Zenbu, and link to us online.

I think this is pretty damn cool, and so do many others. Zenbu is a truly wonderful information resource that continues to get better and better.

I love hearing about the different places that Zenbu data ends up and I wanted to share a few recent stories.

1. Poqet Directory is a Windows 7 Mobile application developed by the team at TouchManiacs. It is a really slick interface to access the Zenbu data and you should buy it for $2 if you have a Win 7 phone.

2. DineIn http://www.dinein.co.nz/ is a new website aiming to be New Zealand’s single point of reference food website. They launched with a complete nationwide directory of restaurants thanks to Zenbu. Sadly they forgot to provide a link or attribution but quickly added one when we pointed out their mistake. Thanks Dine In!

3. This final really one appealed to my inner data geek. Peter let me know how he was using Zenbu data to help create a New Zealand place name database with point locations that accurately mark town centres. There isn’t any great source of this information at the moment; the data set provided by LINZ is based on scans of paper maps and the place points are known to be wildly (in)accurate.
Peter realised that most towns have a cluster of businesses around the town centre so he could place the Zenbu POI data on top of a set of road maps to quickly identify where the centre of town is for places he had never been to.

Let us know what cool things you are doing with Zenbu data!
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