Microsoft has a new mouse that looks normal from the top, but flip it over and you have a whole world of new features. Ok, so it's not that exciting, but you have to admit, it's pretty innovative.
Check it out here

I've been a gamer a long time now. From Duke Nukem, circa 1997, to present, CS:Source, and the most buttons I've had on a mouse is 7…the normal right and left buttons, the scroll wheel, and then buttons on the side that are programmable to do anything. I never used the programmable buttons but it was cool to tell my friends and family I had a 7 button mouse.

I doubt this mouse will help any gamers, since you have to flip the mouse over to access the additional buttons, but the laser pointer alone is well worth the $90 price tag.

What next?
Well that's pretty obvious, Microsoft is obviously going after the iPhone, which will be released later this year. I expect to see full mousing on all cellphones within the next 10 years, maybe sooner.

I can see myself using this mouse with my laptop, since I always use a mouse. I hate the touch pads on laptops. When giving presentations or seminars this will come in very handy. It's bluetooth enabled so no wires. Just pull it out and start playing with it.  

Popularity: 10% [?]

Good news for all you Vista Users. Winforms, ie. Zipforms has patched the Winforms desktop and made it Vista Compatible.

Winforms worked with Vista, but you could not use the Vista Aero theme and Winforms at the same time. More of a hassle then major problem. 

I just downloaded it and upgraded our laptop and winforms is working fine now with the Aero theme, so all is good for that. Now I just need to patch all the other problems I am still having.
Get the Winforms patch here

I really tried to get Trang over to Ubuntu, but there are some major deal breakers, most are not because of Ubuntu, but they are deal breakers all the same.

1. Couldn't connect up to all our printers. WE have 2 all-in-ones and 1 laser printer. The all-in-ones work fine with Ubuntu, but there are no drivers for the laser printer…and Konica does not plan to support linux. I will not buy a Konica printer again. It was on sale, and it was cheaper then all the other makers, but prices have really come down so next time, it will be an HP.

2. Cannot connect to the San Francisco MLS. You need IE6 or 7 to connect. It will not work in Firefox. I also tried to run IE6 with Wine (windows emulator on linux) which will run IE6, but sfarmls.com still did not work. This also bring ups another "Major" Problem with sfarmls.com. They do not support the public access to the IDX anymore, yet they still allow agents to use it on their websites. The problem is, most agents do not know that is does not work with Firefox and and their home searches are broken. The Solution, get a third party IDX provider. This brings up another problem….You can only use the IDX provider that your broker uses.
   As you can see I have some issues with Sfarmls because they make it so difficult for agents to use there products. Ironic since, San Francisco is the one of the most technologically advanced places on earth, yet our home search technology is from 1984.
3. Top Producer will not work. Again it's an IE thing, will not run with Firefox. Solution, use SugarCRM, a free open source Customer relationship manager, or Act. Unfortunately Top Producer puts its users into year contracts.

Other then that it works fine. Email, Excel, Word, Browsing all work great.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Trang sent me an email today that KW has partnered with Cyberhomes.com to market KW listings.  This was the first time I have seen cyberhomes, and I saw they have an online house value estimator, so I I thought I would put their values up against the other online estimators that I already know about. Cyberhomes is powered by Fidelity National Title, so I was expecting their information to be very comparable to Zillow (The leader in online property values).

Let's start by looking at the web ranking:

Now, My House Details
Bought in Oct 2005, as a 2 Bed, 1 Bath. Converted about 6 months after to a 4 bed, 2 bath. 

The Cold Hard Facts: 

Cyberhomes.com
Estimated value: 777K, Beds= n/a, Baths = 2, 2 Month value change=Down 77K (Ouch!).
I'm dissapointed that they have the beds and baths wrong…especially since they are title company. I'm also dissapointed in the price, since I gander at my zestimate every now and then, I know this is way below.
Trang's reaction: "That's crazy..they're totally wrong!!!!!!"

Zillow.com
Estimated value: 894K, Beds= 4, Baths = 2, 1 Month value change=Up 32K (I love you).
that's more like it, I can't remember if I went in a changed the beds and baths, I don't think so.

RealestateABC.com
Estimated value: 723K, Beds= n/a, Baths = 1, 1 , they do not provide value change.
Not much to say here

Reply.com
Estimated value: 779K, Beds= 0, Baths = 1, 1 , they do not provide value change.
Not much here either…this site has a few errors, and I think they do provide a price trend, but it was not working.

Results:
Zillow is the winner, not because they priced my house higher, but because they had the correct information and priced my house higher. But with a high of $894K and a low of $723K, I'm not too confident with the results.

On a side note, I really wish the other players would release their data as an api, like Zillow does, so I could put them all together in a simple search, but I doubt that will happen. 

Popularity: 24% [?]

It's been a pretty tough week for us. We got hacked by the wordtube exploit that has nailed many websites. If you are unfamiliar with this exploit, it allows hackers to upload perl scripts to your server and then run wild.

We added the wordtube plugin to our sites. It is a plugin that allows you to easily add video to your blog. The publisher Alex Rabe has a few plugins that all have these exploits, and he is feverishly trying to patch them. I think he already has the wordtube plugin patched, but I think we will hold off for now.

We are reloading the server and will get the site back online as soon as possible.  Thank you for your patience.

Popularity: 10% [?]

I had a request for a Recent Transactions plugin for Wordpress so I took our featured Listings Plugin, tweaked it and developed a plugin that shows only pending and sold listings.

Pretty simple, but effective. You can get it from our widget section.

Unlike the Featured Listing Plugin, this does not create a sidebar widget. it only builds a page.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Little video that shows how to add a "Link This" button to your internet browser toolbar. When you are on a website that you want to add to your Wordpress blogroll. Please note that this only works in Firefox and Mozilla browers.

How to add to Toolbar

1. Go to your Wordpress Admin Section
2. Click on blogroll > Add Link
3. Scroll to bottom of page and drag "link this" to your toolbar.

How to Use

1. Navigate to the website you want to add
2. click on "Link this"
3. This will open your wordpress admin section. Click on "Add Link"

You can test it by adding Realiventblog.com to your blogroll

[MEDIA=1]

Popularity: 12% [?]

Last Christmas Trang and I both got new laptops, They both came Vista Ready but had XP installed. We both sent in for the upgrade. Trang received her upgrade about 3 weeks later, but mine is still missing, and to tell you the truth, I don't want it.

I installed Vista on Trang's Laptop the same day she got it. Remember this is a "Vista Ready" laptop, and should run fine, with no problems. It has been a complete nightmare…as far as computers go.

The short list of problems: 

1. The Video camera on her laptop does not work anymore…no drivers available as of yet
2. The sound to the headphones doesn't work, but the speakers are fine
3. The Areo windows have to be turned off to use Winforms which makes the desktop look aweful
4. It is incredibly slow…

that's not a lot but Trang doesn't do a lot on it either, except for use Winforms and the headphones. I Was so disappointed with the release of Vista that I decided to go with Linux as a Desktop again…this time with Ubuntu
If you thought vista looked Cool, check this out:

I play with the new Ubuntu Desktop and get blown away. First because it is free, and secondly because it is awesome. It comes with everything. Open Office suite, Video editing, Feed Readers, etc… I've got it sharing the printers and files. this is the first release that I can honestly say, "Now is the time, to move to linux"

my other blog http://mattdunlap.smartlegacy.com has a lot ore entries on Ubuntu.

Popularity: 17% [?]

I was introduced to Google Analytics be my friend Jeremiah (web-strategist.com), while at a "Cinco De Mayo" party. Jeremiah always has the most up-to-date information concerning start-ups, web2.0, and social media. He advised me to look into Google Analytics to see how it would help track visitors to our websites. I did some searching around his blog, and found this good video:

Web Strategy Show: How to start a Web Analytics Program at your Company with Avinash Kaushik
Watch and learn

In the past I just used Webalizer, which comes with most hosting accounts. Webalizer is OK, it will get all the data for you, but analysis of the data takes time, So it's not really worth looking deeply at the data. It's good for a quick snapshot of your site. Since our websites are starting to get more and more traffic, I am more interested in the learning about how our sites are being used. I'm especially interested about setting up marketing goals, and keyword analysis

I was impressed with Google Analytics from the first day I started using it…3 days ago…I thought it was a tool for adwords so I never tried it before. I was reading the Google Analytic blog, and they have a new version released Today! They are moving all accounts over to the new system as we speak.
Here is a tour of the new system

Now, Let's talk about the magic of Wordpress and how to get Google Analytics on your site. If you have a normal website, for every page that you want to monitor, you have to add a small piece of javascript. If you have Wordpress website you just use a Google Analytics Plugin. There are a lot out there, but the one I use is from Boakes.org

Get the plugin here 

Simply activate it, and add your Google Analytics ID Number. The Plugin will add the javascript code to the footer, which is displayed on every page in a Wordpress blog. Within 24 hrs, you will start gathering data from your site.  

We added a Google Analytics plugin to our single property websites (Start one here). This is a great way to track activity for your listings. See what people are looking at, their location, set goals, and marketing strategies for your websites.

Plugin Troubleshooting:
If you enable the plugin, but Google.com cannot find it on your site, make sure you have this in your footer:
do_action('wp_footer') That is the hook the plugin attaches the javascript to display.

Popularity: 14% [?]

I remember last year at SF Connect, Rich Barton got a personal Zestimate… It was a while ago so I can't remember the details of his "Estimation of Value" but it was a funny little joke during the "10 things Zillow learned about real estate" session.

Well, how about this for a Zestimate:

Roger Clemens, the newest Yankee signed a 1 year $28 Million dollar deal a couple days ago.

 He agreed to a one-year contract for $28,000,022 — the last two digits matching his uniform number — that will start when he is added to the major league roster for his first start, most likely in three to four weeks. Clemens will earn about $18.5 million under the deal, which will cost the Yankees approximately $7.4 million in additional luxury tax, meaning they are investing about $26 million in a seven-time Cy Young Award winner who will turn 45 in August.

Let's break this down.

• Per month: $4.5 million
• Per Day: $147,541
• Per Hour: $6,147.54
• Per Minute: $102.46
  thanks to Espn news for these stats

It will be fun to see how much he earns per pitch. being that he is not a reliever, he will probably throw around 70-80 an average.

If Roger wrote this post, it would be worth about $3,000

Of course when Oscar De La Hoya reads this post, he will just laugh. Rumors estimated his Saturday Boxing Event netted him $40 Million 

Popularity: 15% [?]

There are two features of our single properties websites that need to be highlighted because they are great features and essential to get the most from your sites. Google Sitemaps, and Google Analytics. In this post I will be talking about google Sitemaps.

Why do you NEED to do this?
Because every single property website you make needs to have links to all your other websites, creating a web of links to all your websites. When the Google bots index your websites they see all these links to your websites and increases your page rank. The higher the page rank, the more often your website will appear on searches.

What does it do?
The Wordpress Google Sitemaps plugin builds an XML file that maps your website and lets the google robots know about pages and posts in your website. Once the sitemap is built, you submit the xml file to google using their webmaster tools and within a few days you will be indexed on google and in the search engine. The webmaster tools allows you to see how Google indexes your site, views your keywords, shows incoming links, etc… You can add unlimited number of sites to you account which makes it easy to check the status of all your websites

If you have a self hosted wordpress website, you can download the google sitemap plugin here

Since we run wordpress MU to host all the single property websites, we had to tweak the sitemap plugin to work for us. Below are the steps to create and submit a sitemap for our single property websites.

1. Activate the plugin, then in options you will see the sitemap tab. Once on the sitemap page, simply click build sitemap. Or rebuild sitemap. You only need to build it once, unless you do major changes to your site. 

the sitemap gets created instantly and then provides a link to the webmaster tools.

2. If you do not have a google account, create one, then add your site. At the top of the page, when you are in webmaster tools, you will see the textbox to add the url of your website.

3. Once added you need to verify it. There are 2 ways to do this. Since our single property websites do not have ftp permission, and you cannot add meta information to the site we had to make a little hack to allow Wordpress MU to get indexed.

4. at the dropdown, choose Upload an HTML file.

5. That will bring up this page, which tells you to upload a certain type of file so Google can verify that you are the owner. 

You are suppose to upload that file, but our little hack takes care of it for you, so just click "Verify" and in a few seconds, you will see a success message that your site has been verified by the google bot.

Now you need to tell Google where your sitemap is.

Navigate to the sitemaps section in webmaster tools. You have 2 selections, mobile or nrmal sitemaps…choose normal. You will then see this page. Notice the example below the textbox. That is the link you need to add. Just copy and paste the example url into the textbox, click submit and your done. Now just let Google do it's magic. 

Like always, if you have questions, shoot them my way  

Popularity: 21% [?]