test

–(test is from my treo, this is from my computer) Sweet, I can blog from my treo 650…and It is free software…more about this later. Stuck in jury duty today I went on a mad search to find Palm software to help Realtors…I got some good stuff. Faxing, mapping, voice, blog, I found it all

Starting a new section for smartphones.

We at Realivent all have Treo’s so I think I will call the section Treo Tips.

I think my ultimate goal is to get a listing, post it on the web, with pictures, create a property blog, all while still at the listing appointment…Trang will be doing the contract work and I will be typing away on my little treo. Of course I should probably do it on my laptop, but think how cool it would be to do all this from my treo!!!

Oh by the way, I’m using U*blog and you will need to have the data enabled on your phone, data = internet connection. It is around $10 extra month for limited, and ? for unlimited…I have limited, so help me out gang.
*Shaking with excitement*

Popularity: 4% [?]

2007 will see a huge increase in the number of real estate videos avalable on the internet. Video is great for open houses, seminars, and commercials, but if you have never made a video before, the task can seem a little scary. Realivent wants to host your videos. We have created some cool tools that allow you to add videos to blogs, and your website, but before we can host them, we need to get these videos onto the internet.

Lets start from the very beginning,

I just bought my video camera and I need to edit the movie.
Any video camera you buy now will include software to move the video files from the camera to your computer. I just bought a Sony DCR-SR40, which has a 30 gig hardrive, so for me moving the files to my computer is a snap. This camera is very simple, just put the camera in its cradle and connect the USB cable to my computer. One annoyance is that I have to hit the DVD Burn button on the cradle to get the camera and the computer to start talking. Once they start communicating, I have to close the DVD burn screen. The camera came with ImageMixer, and I only use that to import the files to my computer.

Moving forward, the videos are now on my computer in the MPEG2 format. Since I just bought the camera, I have no video editing software on this computer. Windows comes with Movie Maker, and if you have XP, with Service Pack 2, you have Movie Maker 2.1 (MM2)…sound good, It’s not…

My laptop had MM1, and I was able to import MPEG2 videos into it with no problem…of course that laptop had all kinds of codecs on it so I don’t know if it was the MM1 or if I just happened to have the right codecs installed.

Now, both my computers have MM2 on it and there is a problem importing MPEG2 videos to edit.

Here is the Error:
C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\My Pictures\ImageMixer3\’06_11_28_00\M2U00173.MPG could not be imported. An interface has too many methods to fire events from

Seems like a lot of people have this problem. after searching for this “An interface has too many methods to fire events from” in Google.
I came across some interesting sites. the first is papajohn.org Tons of advice on this site, but I could not find the solution. After reading a few articles about this problem, it seemed like the solution is to encode the MPEG2 files to AVI and then import to MM2. I not too happy with that, I feel like I will loose some resolution and I do not want to take more steps then I have to. I found out later that even though I can now import MPEG2 into MM2, MM2 has a hard time handling MPEG2 and will crash on you.
http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/PapaJohn/
More links to his articles…many more.

Converting from MPEG2 to AVI is not problem and there is free software to do it. I use a MediaCoder which will convert just about anything to anything. I will use that to make the Flash video later.

I then found this forum which has thread for this problem:
http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=923

At the very bottom, was a post by someone that said to go to tools, Options, Compatability and uncheck all the video filters. So I did, and still did not work, but at least the error went away. There is a new error.

C:\Documents and Settings\Matt\My Documents\My Pictures\ImageMixer3\’06_11_28_00\M2U00149.MPG could not be imported. Unspecified error

Hmmm….how am I going to solve this problem? I know I’ll just start checking half the checkboxes in Tools, Options, Compatability…I didn’t have a hammer to hit the computer, so I figured this would do.

I got a lot of strange errors when checking the checkboxes, sometimes it would work sometimes it didn’t . I ended up unchecking the top half, down to divx video filters (I assume we will all have different codecs on our computers) so the solution from me is just start clicking. Make sure all filters are checked, then uncheck them 3 at a time until you can import. When I was able to import I started to re-check to see where the bad filter was, but I was able to re-check them all except PIXELA AC-3 Decoder but the import would take forever so I just unchecked the top half, and started to play with the Movie Maker. No problems since then. I’m not to picky, I don’t need to find the exact problem.
So there you have it, follow my supurb troublshooting tips and just start unchecking stuff until it works.

Editing is editing, I’m going to go into this to much, because MM2 is pretty simple once you get it going. Next tutorial will be how to convert your video to Flash Video so you can stream it on the web.

Popularity: 61% [?]

I got sidetracked today when I ran across this wicked widget by SpringWidgets:

Portable RSS ? That’s right, embed it, email it, even “Spring It” onto your desktop. Add your favorite RSS feeds and stay abreast of the latest news whereever you are.

Or, if you’re not the typical RSS addict, what about sports ? Here’s an NFL version:

How does this relate to real estate ? Well, if you’ve got a Property Blog or any other real estate blog and wanted to send all of your blog updates to any buyer or seller, just email them this widget and they can keep up with your blog right on their desktop. They’ll never miss another blogpost again. Oh, and make sure you send them your feed link (usually http://www.yourblogname.com/feed) so that they can add it.

Enjoy!

Popularity: 3% [?]

One thing we really try to focus on is lead generation. We had a team meating today about all the tools that are available to agents and agreed that listing designers, blogs, etc. are useless unless you can generate leads from them. The blogging software already included a contact form, but today I added a property watch sign-up form.

A property watch is an automatic email that gets sent when new listings that meet your criteria are added to an MLS. Realivent does not have an IDX system, and therefore does not send the emails, but most, if not all MLS’s do provide this service.

How to use:

• If you have already created a blog, you have to manually add this form…All new Property Blogs have this form added automatically.
• go to you blog admin and create a new page. Give the page a name like “Property Watch” or “Listing Watch”
• go to the page template dropdown and select “Property Watch Form”
• Thats it, you have now added a lead generating form to your blog.

Special note, the email will get sent to you email address on record at Realivent.com

When someone fills out the form, you will get an email with all the criteria and contact information. Realivent does not record any of this information…YET. I am working on adding it to the Lead capture and drip system we have, but that will not happen for a while, so you will get an email. After you get this email, just use the information in the email to set up your new contact with listing watch on your MLS. Remember, the faster the potential client gets the first email, the better the chance you will work with them.

That’s it, simple and effective. Good luck using it. Any comments are appreciated.

Popularity: 4% [?]

The Homeowners Consumer Center and its partners the National Mortgage Complaint Center/Homeowners Consumer Center have just released their US real estate outlook for 2007. This information was compiled as a resource for consumers seeking facts about the realities facing an average consumer/homeowner attempting to wade through the murky mortgage/real estate waters in 2007.

Read More

WOW, I read this story and it just got better and better. To start with the story about the housing bubble burst, which has obviously passed me by without me knowing, and I do read bubble blogs all the time. Maybe I just don’t know what a bubble is? is a 10% correction a bubble or downturn?

Issue Number 3. In the last five years, over half of all new homes in the US were built by undocumented workers/illegal aliens according to organized labor insiders. This reality affects literally millions of homes that may now have construction defects.

As compared to the normal builders, sorry, this is just wrong…housing standards have decreased because they build hundreds of homes at the same time, it has nothing to do with the legality of the workers. As with a lot of teenagers, I worked construction when I was younger, and would have to say that my skill level was not that high.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Looks like “Cyber Monday”, a term coined to the busiest online shopping day of the year, seems to be a fairly big bust. I’m looking for a new laptop and can’t find a deal anywhere. We almost went shopping at 5AM to bestbuy on “Black Friday” to get a $250 laptop, and a $999 HDTV, but decided to pass because we had to go shopping at 5AM to get it.

I have done the black friday thing before…2 years ago in Fresno, we hit the stores at around 6AM. I grabbed a bunch of computer products, and got into what looked like a long line, but not intolerable. After about 30 minutes in line, we realized that the line actually made 2 loops around the store. It was unbelievable. After an hour we just decided to part with our items and give up.

I found out that the *New* busiest shopping day of the year is the saturday before Xmas, but again, this is just a marketing ploy to get you into the stores and spend, just like Cyber Monday 

So, if you know of a good online sales happing today, or before Xmas, let us know. I missed the $100 Xbox 360’s at amazon, only 1000 were available and sold out in 29 seconds.

Makes me think of a good time for a real estate sales day…hmmm…what would it be called and when would it be?

When?
first day of spring? New Years Day?

Name?
Crash Tuesday?
Free Home Monday?
Buy 3 rooms, get the 4th free Friday?

Popularity: 3% [?]

This weekend I focused on the virtual tour, and to be honest got a little carried away. I ended up making a full website for the virtual tours.When you add a new listing, we automatically create a virtual tour for you. I made a configuration page that lets you alter the virtual tours:

• Choose the color of the header
• Choose the color of the virtual tour menu
• Whether or not to display Zillow comps and neighborhood demographics
• Allow document downloads / lead capture

How to use the Virtual Tour:

1. Add a listing, or send us your listing feed. If you send us a listing feed we can create the virtual tours automatically when you submit the listing to your office or MLS. If you do not have a listing feed, but would like one, email Matt@realivent.com to set you up.
2. once you add your listing and uploaded the listing pictures, the virtual tour will be ready to run. Click on ‘marketing material’ for that listing and you will be able to configure and get the URL for the tour.
3. You can also add document downloading to the virtual tour. (Allow the public to download property flyers and other marketing material). The documents get automatically added to an email and sent to their email address. You can then follow up with them via email.
4. When you use our listing designer to create a post to Craigslist, the virtual tour will be the landing page

Example of a virtual tour:
1721 Alabama St

Tags:

Popularity: 6% [?]

Yahoo use to have $1.99 sales all the time, but I didn’t see one until today. This is a great time to get some domains. Here is the secret. They only give the $1.99 special to new yahoo accounts so if you have to buy more then one do this:

Create an Excel spreadsheet, or notepad, does not matter.
To manage each of your domain names, create a new Yahoo user account or each domain.
If the domain name is domain.com I create a yahoo user with the username of domaincom2006.

This way, most of the domain names I can remember because you are going to have to edit the nameservers at some point when you actually put that domain to work. I still put them in a file to remember because I have so many I forget the actual names.
You can use the same credit card for each account.

That’s it, you can get all the domains for under $2.00

Popularity: 4% [?]

I’m excited! I was able to get google sitemaps to work with all the listing blogs…

this means that you can now create a property listing blog, and then use google’s webmaster tools to verify and add a sitemap for you listing blog. Once you submit the sitemap, the listing blog will then be indexed by google for search engine placement. If you are unfamilar with google’s webmaster tools, you can visit the site here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/

This is a great way to keep track of your site traffic, and see how your site appears in search engines. You only have to create one account to manage all your websites.

I just released this today, so it is in alpha, which means it worked for me, it might work for you.
There was a lot of hacking that was involded to get the sitemaps working since this in not a typical wordpress install. The verification process has worked for everysite I tried, exept for 1. The result I got for the one failure said the verification was pending. I then deleted that website from my google account, then added the website again, verified it, and this time it worked…so I have no idea why it did not verify the first time. Other then that it works great. After you submit a sitemap to google it takes a few minutes for google to verify that the sitemap is ‘OK’ I have not had any problems with the sitemap not working once google says it is a good sitemap.
For more information, feel free to contact matt@realivent.com

Popularity: 3% [?]

We have our first listing blog posted at 1721alabama.realivent.com

This blog was created at realivent.com, and The listing agent also used the listing designer to create the post for Craigslist and Backpage.com. The posts send potential clients directly to the blog.

Popularity: 2% [?]