In Technology on Aug 30 by jason
If you have a Sprint PPC-6700 (Verizon XV-6700), one of the things that you’ll find (or shall I say lose) is that it’s easy to lose your stylus. It’s a great device, but stylus storage could use a better design. I’ve learned to carry my phone with my finger on the stylus so that it doesn’t slide out. Even with my special phone carrying technique, I’ve resorted to clumsily using the back of fingers to do detailed work. Yes, I lost my stylus… again.
As an owner of a PPC-6700, my best advice is to buy a bunch of extra styli. The best price I was able to find was at Amazon. If you’re a Treo owner, I’ve provided a link for you, too.
In Blogging,Miscellaneous,Technology on Aug 24 by jason
Okay, it’s my fault. I broke it. As I tested my Talkr podcast, I broke my Feedburner feeds. So sorry to all you RSS feeders.
What happened?
All my feeds are forwarded to FeedBurner. This allows me to better manage my feed statistics as well as offload the [minimal] feed bandwidth. When I Talkr-enabled my site, I setup Talkr so that it pointed to my local feed. As you guessed, my site redirected Talkr to my FeedBurner feed. Now here’s the kicker, I setup FeedBurner to read my Talkr feed. This was so it would pickup the generated audio. Big mistake.
Are you thoroughly confused? Here’s a visual:
My site redirects to FeedBurner. Talkr feeds FeedBurner. FeedBurner feeds Talkr. It’s an endless loop. So the feeds were never updated.
How’d I fix it?
I created a special feed just for Talkr. If you really want to know the technical, I created a new RewriteRule in my .htaccess file. This feed will not get redirected and it allows Talkr to retrieve any new updates. So no more crazy redirects.
Thanks for your patience!
In Marketing,Real Estate,Technology on Aug 24 by jason
Welcome Google Base Data API. And say goodbye to listing control.
Google recently released the data API for Google Base. With it, websites can communicate with Google Base obtaining any information available. I think this is very cool and have already started to play. Listing agents will also love the exposure they can give their clients. However, I know a lot of real estate brokers that won’t be too happy.
You see, there’s a lot that you can do with this new service. Most notably, people will be able to stick everyone elses listings on their own website (provided the data is in Google Base). They won’t even need special IDX access to do it. This is where I think we’re going to see some trouble.
I’ve heard in multiple cases of brokers that are very tight fisted with their listings. They won’t share anything and always check the “don’t include in IDX” box. With Google Base, it really doesn’t matter. If an agent entered a listing in Google Base, it is now fair game to anyone and everyone.
Any guesses on how long before the lawsuits start flying? Or at least complaining?
In Marketing,Real Estate,Technology on Aug 23 by jason Tagged: domains
I often receive questions about “good” real estate domain names. Here are a few of the key topics:
- Short domain name or long domain name?
- Company name or descriptive, city keyword-laden names?
- One domain or multiple domains?
I will share my point of view on these domain questions. My goal here is to help you to understand a bit of marketing strategy, business planning, and search engine optimization when it comes to buying domain names.
Domain Information: Getting Started
- Domain name
- A unique name that corresponds to a computer (i.e., web server) on the Internet. Examples are google.com, yahoo.com, and ungos.com.
- Purchasing a domain
- You can purchase a domain through a domain registrar such as GoDaddy.
- Domain costs
- Buy domains for 10 U.S. dollars or less. Anything more is a rip off.
- Web hosting
- Buying a domain doesn’t automatically give you a website. You need to purchase both web space for your website (hosting) and a domain name. Some services will bundle these. Be sure to know what you’re getting.
On to the questions…
Short domain, long domain?
As a rule of thumb, short is better. A short domain name is easier to remember, less likely to be misspelled, and can fit easily into both print and online marketing pieces. Regarding SEO, domain names play a very limited role. The length of a domain name, for search engine optimization, is trivial.
Company name, keyword-laden name?
Both. For people that know your company, you definitely want to have your-company-name-dot-com. Web surfers will assume you have a website and guess your website’s domain. So if you are First Rate Real Estate, try to get both FirstRateRealEstate.com and FirstRate.com.
A keyword-laden domain such as your-city-name.com is even more important. It can be used for marketing your site to buyers and sellers that know your area, but do not know you. City domain names are also more susceptible to viral marketing. This may even include links from your competitors!
And what about SEO? Don’t worry about it. Good content and good inbound links play a more significant role with search engines.
One domain, multiple domains?
One domain is obviously much easier to manage. However, multiple domains can open various marketing opportunities. You can place dot-com newspaper ads for specific townships or subdivisions. You could even have a unique domain for each of your listings. You could then hang the unique website as sign riders.
Note: Be aware of the dangers of duplicate content.
The Best Real Estate Domain
With all that said, there is no perfect domain name. By now many of the really good ones like SeattleRealEstate.com have been taken. Notice that they’re not currently in the top 10 for “seattle real estate” searches. The most important thing is to get started. Buy a domain. Setup your website. Market it like crazy. And while you’re at it, get more!
In Marketing,Technology on Aug 22 by jason
Have you ever needed a low-tech way of showing a listing? Maybe you don’t want to start up your laptop. Or maybe your clients don’t have a computer. Well check out FlipClips.
Remember the “old school” way of creating flip book animations? It’s been rejuvenated. And with FlipClips, you can create a flip book from any video that is 30 seconds or less. Prices start at just $5.99.
via: Oh Gizmo!
In Technology on Aug 18 by jason
Box.net is a great and inexpensive way to share files online. Get 1GB of data storage for free (or 5GB for $4.99). With the space, you can do all the standard functions (depending on your plan):
- Share files publicly, privately, or in workgroups
- Access files through your phone, PDA or other mobile device
- Create automatic backups for your PC
One thing that I like about the service is their RSS feeds. You can setup document feeds so your clients get notified of new files. Or use the feed to keep a document list updated on your website.
Try it out and let me know what you think!
In Blogging on Aug 18 by jason
Are you a victim of a splogger? Maybe a spinger? Got comment spam?
Here are a few ways that you can fight back. Please share if you have other ideas!
- Install quality anti-spam plugins to your blog
- Enable comment moderation
- Ask to be removed from their feeds
- Add the culprit to SplogSpot, a listing of spam blogs, ad blogs, link farms, and more.
- Report them via SplogReporter, Blogger, AdSense, or InterNIC as appropriate.
In Marketing,Miscellaneous,Real Estate,Technology on Aug 16 by jason
Within real estate, or any business for that matter, website functionality matters. Businesses are always riding the cutting edge of web technologies, hopefully gaining the largets market share. Well, if you want to know what’s really cool, check out TIME’s 50 Coolest Websites. It’s a conglomeration of cool websites, most of which are decked out in shiny Web 2.0 garb.
Here are few that might inspire those with real estate websites.
There were many more, that had some great function (But I didn’t see how to immediately relate them to real estate):
In Blogging,Technology on Aug 13 by jason
Well, I’ve finally done it. I’m now officially podcasting.
(Okay, maybe I should probably say that it’s in beta.) I’m using the Talkr blog-to-podcast service. It automatically converts my entire blog into an audio podcast. This means I don’t have to say a word!
If you listen to the podcast, let me assure you that it’s not my voice. The female voice is part of a computer generated text-to-speech program that Talkr uses. It will be very cool when I can configure it to use my own voice.
So, take a listen. Subscribe to my podcast. And enjoy yet another avenue of accessing the site’s real estate technology tips.
In Blogging on Aug 11 by jason
Well it looks like I’m signing up for yet another service, coComment. coComment is a comment management application (yep another web2.0 app) to help you track where you’ve commented.
I’ve tried in the past but thought it was rather limiting and impractical. However, Jim mentions that there have been some great upgrades. In addition to helping you to remember where you commented, coComment can also do things like:
- Notify you of follow-up comments
- Syndicate your comments (i.e. place all of them on your site)
- Comment on regular websites that don’t allow commenting
Check it out and let me know how it works for you.
