New feature - Gadgets

Introducing a new feature - Gadgets from Rent Cottage Canada.

Our Gadgets are small scripts, which you can use outside of our site to promote your properties.

Gadgets can be embedded into your website, your blog, personal web page etc. Anywhere you can add a few lines of HTML.

Anyone who has a listing on our site can use our Gadgets.

It's easy to use, it adds value to your property's website, and it's Free.

We have developed the following three Gadgets:

Google Maps Gadget

Points of Interest Gadget

Panoramio Photos Gadget

Use the Gadget Script generator to adjust the Gadgets' size and look on your site (click Gadgets button on your Owner's account Listing Control Panel).

What do the Gadgets do?

Google Maps Gadget:

• Displays an enhanced Google Map with a marker indicating your property's location.
• Clicking on the cottage's marker will display a short description and directions to the property.
• The "More..." button adds Points of Interest, Wikipedia info and Panoramio photos to the Map, exactly as it is made on our site's Google Maps page.
• The Local Search feature will allow site visitors to perform local searches around the cottage (for example: Hospital, Restaurant, Beer Store, Live Bait etc),
• and more

Points Of Interest (POI) Gadget:

• Will display the POI that you have added to your listing, and also all POI within 25 km of your property;

Panoramio Gadget:

• It will display up to 20 of the most popular photos from Panoramio, taken within 25 km of your property.

Both, the POI and the Panoramio Gadgets will let your site visitors see the distance and directions from your site to the points of interest.


For Example
With two lines of script added to your web page, you can populate our Google Maps Gadget like this:





A few lines of script will add Panoramio photos taken near your property to your web site. They can be displayed in Sliding, or the Scrolling style of your choice:




The Gadgets' size and look is adjustable so you should be able to fit the Gadget on your site's layout without a problem.

New feature - Photos from Panoramio are now on your listing

Dear Cottage Owner;

We have added a new feature - photos from Panoramio (http://panoramio.com) on the site listings.

Please check out your listings (in preview mode, not update) at the bottom of the page, in the section titled

"Explore the area near this Cottage with Google Panoramio Photos"

Up to twenty photos taken within 25 kilometers from your property (from the location you've set on the map when creating the listing) are now displayed on every listing.

These are the 20 most popular photos supplied by Panoramio, who have over 2 million photos already.

The photos of the area will help your guests get familiar with points of interest around the cottage, and should also attract more attention to your cottage.

The number of photos displayed on your listing can be changed. To change it, please log in to your owner's account and edit the listing. The second page of the listing update screen has a "Number of Panoramio Photos to display" selection from 0 to 20.

We have also added Distance from the Cottage to every Panoramio photo, displaying the distance from your cottage to the place the photos were taken.

And, last but not least, we have added a Show Directions button, which will give directions to the place the picture was taken by car if possible on Google Maps.

Panoramio is open to the public and you can upload your photos to Panoramio too. However, we cannot guarantee that your Panoramio photos will be displayed on your listing, since we receive only the most popular pictures.

The good thing is that there is another solution to add your own Points of Interest (POI) to your listing.

This feature is available on your listing Control Panel.

Up to 20 POI of your choice (with or without photos) can be added to your listing. Your POI will be displayed on Google Maps near your Cottage as well as on your listing page.

This feature (POI) has not been thought of before, in fact, we are the first site to have anything like it, so we thought it would be important for you know about this. The only listing that has added POIs so far is a listing from New Brunswick:

http://rent-cottage-canada.com/cottages/province/new-brunswick/rent/spectacular-waterfront-all-season-home-in-new-brunswick-302/

see "Points of Interest near the Cottage" section.

The purpose of POI displayed on your listing is the same as Photos from Panoramio, the only difference being that POI's are be managed by you, whereas Panroamio photos are not.

The same features as display Distance from the Cottage and Show Directions are available for POIs too.

Please check the accuracy of your cottage's map placement, since an incorrect placement may confuse guests relying on the Show Distance and Show Direction features provided by us and Google Maps.

You cottage's location on the map can be set via the "Listing Update" link on the Owner's account page on the bottom of the second page. Just drag and drop the pointer to the cottage's actual location on the map and click the "Save Changes and Continue" button.

Best regards, Yuriy Setko
Rent Cottage Canada