Watch this video about the new ways to interact with your computers. No more mouse, only hand movements and voice. The video is OK for the first couple minutes but then they have a demonstration with a map. The user is expanding and rotating the map with his hands on the desktop. Then even better the user lays 2 cellphones on a table, and images start popping out of each phone and are displayed on the table. Then the user drags the images between the phones, and shares the data…very cool, unless you have a phone full of porn and you put it on a table and images start flying all over. Then, not so good

How will this be involved in real estate searches? 

Don't just think about home searches from your personal computer, think about how this will change the brokerages and real estate offices. 

I go to KW in San Francisco a lot, it is right in the middle of town with large glass windows all around it. The windows are filled with all the property flyers for that office. not very technical but it does get people to stop and look. Some of the more technically advanced offices in the cities are using flat panel displays to show videos of homes. I've seen some higher end clothing stores use the front glass windows to display videos directly on the windows.

Now, think about how this will change the window shoppers, and even the way the real estate offices are set up. You walk into the real estate office and get your own room or cubicle, and you can move around the city with hand manipulated maps, videos, virtual tours. in 5-8 years all the major cities should have the 3d map views, so you will be able to get some really interesting information. When you have the info you need, the Realtor in the office hands you a GPS device with driving direction that will guide you to the homes you were looking at in the office.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I upgraded the themes last night with a background image uploader. Before a user could only edit the background color, but now you can upload a custom background image and override the colors. 

I also found a very, very nice stripe generator that make stripes for tiled backgrounds on the fly. If anyone knows how hard and time consuming it is to make tiled stripes, this website will knock your socks off.

www.stripegenerator.com - You can edit the thickness, color, and shadows, then download the image as a png and use on our themes instantly.

If you have a stylish condo, or trendy loft, a stripe background adds an element of design and makes the website looks very nice. Here is an example of our olive theme with a newly added stripe background

Go ahead and start a website here and then play with the design features. Add a custom header, change the background colors, add some images…you can do it all! 

Popularity: 15% [?]

While cleaning out my computer, I stumbled across possibly the largest single discover of the decade. Click on the image below to be fascinated.

Warning, this has been described to me be family members as horrifying, gross, and stupid…you've been warned!

Popularity: 4% [?]

It's late and I've been programming all day…Then I run across this. I gotta go to bed before I go crazy

Popularity: 12% [?]

All of Realivent's Single Property Sites are now video enabled. This means you can embed videos that you've uploaded to YouTube or you can upload directly from within your own website admin panel. You can see a sample video enabled site here.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Realivent.com is proud to announce that we have put together some incredible single property websites using Wordpress, our real estate plugins, and other worpdress plugins to make a website for your listings that are just amazing.

Website Samples: (Click to go to website)

In less then 5 minutes you can have a fully functional website, that has all the search engine optimization, spam filtering, lead generation, and contact forms for you to get more business.

Simply add your listing details, add your listing photos, choose a theme and publish. If you have a listing in our system already, you can just select your current listing and choose a theme…this takes less then a minute.

The themes have an interchangeable header image so you can upload your own header to the website. You can change most of the colors on the website including the background color, menu color, and link color.

Change Colors with our color picker 

Since the website is built on Wordpress, you can blog about your listings, and people can subscribe to you listing and get automatic updates via RSS 

Many plugins are installed for you automatically.
The Realivent plugins include:

• Featured listing plugin - This plugin puts your listings on every website you make, add a listing once and it is will appear on every website. includes mapping, neighborhood data, email to friend, print flyer, and information request forms.
• IDX smartframe Home Search plugin - this allows you to put your home search in every website you make.
• About Me Plugin - make one professional profile and use it on every website you make.
• CMA form with Zillow estimates -This plugin is a lead generation monster…It allows people to get the value of any home in the US instantly from your website. There is also a form that allows people to request a CMA from you.
• Calculator - A wonderful financial calculator that returns monthly payments.
• Property Watch - Allows people to send you their home search criteria to you as an email, you then put them on an automatic home search.

Wordpress plugins:

• SEO Title Tag - makes your website better for google search engine
• Spam Karma 2 - blocks all comment spam from your website
• Ultimate Tag Warrior - fills your metatags with keywords based on the website content to make your website better for google search engine
• Related Posts - Adds a list of related posts to each blog post you make.
• Google sitemaps - allows you to add your website to google search engine for indexing and use Google webmaster tools to make sure your site is high in rankings
• Meebo Plugin - Adds Instant Messaging to your site.
• MyBlogLog Plugin - Adds social networking to your website
• Google Adsense Plugin - Allows you to monetize your websites.
• More coming soon!

As we update the websites with more plugins and features your active websites will stay updated, and you will have access to all new plugins immediatly after they are released. This also applies to themes…

Manage Your Listings From Within Your Website Control Panel

Another great feature is that you can add and edit your listings and your profile from any admin section all within your own website. Say you have 5 listings, and therefore 5 websites… You can control all your information from any website…simply amazing. You can also create beautiful HTML Posts for Craigslist, Live Deal, and Backpage from your admin section, and we syndicate to many sites like Google Base and Edgeio automatically.

You can also add a custom domain name your single property website instantly. Just point your domain nameservers to Realivent servers, and your set.

You can make unlimited websites for Free. Custom Domain Name hosting starts at $9.95/month, or host your single property website for a full year and save $50!  

Popularity: 19% [?]

Soon online name and reputation management may see yet another twist as more and more startups are creating people search engines. Matt recently wrote a post about online name management and Joel at the Future of Real Estate Marketing reposted an original article from last year to kick start another discussion about managing YOU online.     This week at the Web 2.0 EXPO, SPOCK debuted with a new service that allows people to search for people. They claim that they already have 100 million people indexed in their database and over 2 billion elements collected about YOU - SCARY!

ZDNET ,  Techcrunch , Webware , and Tim O'Reilly have already covered what SPOCK may be doing in great detail, but I'm interested in the basic business concept as it is a concept that is very similar to what Zillow has done for homes. They are capitalizing on a very basic and natural human behaviour - CURIOUSITY.   Zillow has successfully shown that this curiosity factor is one significant element in driving traffic.

What Zillow and SPOCK have in common:

1.  Large database of information - Zillow collected data on more than 60 million homes at launch.  SPOCK has collected data on 100 million people.

2.  SPOCK raised $7 million even before having an alpha version.  Of course Zillow already was self-funded in the millions initially by its founders before developing the product.

3.  Zillow allows you to claim your home to make valuation adjustments or claim your listing to let others know it is for sale. SPOCK allows you to claim "YOU". 

4.  Plays on the curiosity factor - how much is your boss's home worth ? Zillow it!  Who is that new neighbor next door ?  SPOCK them! 

My guess is whether or not SPOCK will be successful in helping or hindering online reputation management, it will be successful in drawing lots of eyeballs.  Be careful - YOU WILL BE SPOCKED! 

Popularity: 7% [?]

I really try to avoid the media on this matter, and my heart goes out to all families that lost loved ones. I can't imagine how a your life can change in a matter of minutes or even seconds…life is just very so precious.

There is nobody to be angry at in this case. Not the police nor the administration, it was just an awful tragedy.

As the pictures and the stories continue to develop, I ran across this article from the gunshop owner that sold the gun to the shooter

"It was a very unremarkable sale," said Markell, who did not handle the sale personally. "He was a nice, clean-cut college kid. We won't sell a gun if we have any idea at all that a purchase is suspicious."

Under Virginia law, state police keep records of gun purchases from licensed dealers for only 30 days. After that, police destroy the records.

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/ 

I just find those quotes to be unbelievable… 

Popularity: 5% [?]

I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit this but I have neglected my self on the internet and it has come around to bite me in the ass. Well no more! Your online profile is very important, after all you are a brand, and you should market your self accordingly.

My name is Matt Dunlap (Matt#1 for future reference) and if you do you search for me on Google you probably run across all kinds of impersonators. This scares me, especially since many employers are no doing background checks on the internet before they hire potential employees.

In a 2006 survey by executive search firm ExecuNet in Norwalk, Conn., 77 of 100 recruiters said they use search engines to check out job candidates. In a CareerBuilder.com survey of 1,150 hiring managers last year, one in four said they use Internet search engines to research potential employees. One in 10 said they also use social networking sites to screen candidates. In fact, according to Search Engine Watch, there are 25 million to 50 million proper-name searches performed each day.
Source: Computerworld.com

For example, a quick search for Matt Dunlap will bring up this guy…He says he's name is Matt Dunlap, but we really don't know.

Matt delivers a warm, friendly voice for all your voiceover needs. His voice is perfect for your project whether it's a radio or TV commercial, industrial presentation, multimedia CD, game, web audio or book on tape.  He can deliver a range from "man on the street" to "announcer" to "soft spoken" depending on your needs. He is frequently compared to Tom Brokaw by friends and acquaintances.

Not bad…he seems like a professional guy. I don't think any employer will have a second thought about me if they run across matt#2

Then we get to matt dunlap #3 at AmericanSingles.com, The second result in google…This guy is going to ruin my life!

Don't get me wrong I feel sorry for guy, after all nobody likes women that hit you, but come on dude, think about the other Matt Dunlap's out there. On a side note, I like how he is looking for a friend or JUST A LONG TERM RELATIONSHIP.

At least I come up first on Flickr, when searching for Matt Dunlap. Unfortunately, a few pages into it you run across this…not good for me! That can easily be mistaken as me, and I'm 75 percent sure it's not me, even though I've been there… We all have, just admit it!

So as you can see I'm on shaky ground for any interview process. I'm giving myself 3 months to become the most downloaded highest ranking Matt Dunlap on the internet. If I can't do it, I can always hire a professional

A great brand can take months, if not years, and millions of dollars to build. It should be the thing you hold most precious. Don’t let even one negative blog comment go unnoticed, call Andy Beal today to discuss an online reputation management strategy that matches your company’s needs.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Ok, here is a questions for you agents out there…how do you price your listings.

I personally think, no matter what the comps are, you have 5 price points:

1. $519,950
2. $529,950
3. $549,950
4. $579,950
5. $599,950

The first digit (5) doesn't mean anything, it is the $10K range that I'm focusing on.

I say this because most the home searchers out there do not set their max prices at $509,950…they usually set them at the prices above, with $549,950 and $599,950 being the most popular.

It's one of my pet peeves to see houses priced at $465,700…WHY? because of the comps? that house should be listed at $479,950 because you are going to get the same number of lookers at that higher price. I'm not saying grossly overprice homes, but you represent your sellers, you better get them more mullah.

Also, the last 3 digits, should always be 950…not 888, not 500, not 123.

Before you respond, I know what you are going to say…

Because of the advent of the internet, the traditional pricing models do not reflect the best way to price a home in today's market. This is because the internet doesn't know what you really want. So take $499,950…if someone is searching for homes with a minimum price of $500K, they will not see the home for $499,950, even though the potential buyers will probably be interested in seeing a home that is only $50 less then their minumum. The same ideas apply to square feet. NEVER SEARCH BY SQFT. there are so many homes on the market with 1,298 sqft, or 1,189 sqft. If you do a search for homes with at least 1,300, you will not see the smaller home, even though the lack of 2 sqft will not make any difference.

so why not just make home searches that make a buffer and include homes that are within a margin of the min and max price? Well if we did that the entire internet would fall apart…basically.

So how do you price your listings? 

Popularity: 8% [?]