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We’ve added lots of new themes to our agent blog platform packages and we’ve tested them with all of our plugins. With 100s and 1000s of Wordpress themes available we haven’t had a chance to test them all, but anything is possible from simple 3-column agent sites to 20 side-bar widgeted community sites. We will continue to add more themes and will provide more updates shortly…

Popularity: 54% [?]

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: 9% [?]

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: 12% [?]

I recall learning about Property Shark last July at the 06' Inman Conference but didn't pay much attention to it because they were not yet in the Bay Area.  But this week Venture Beat reported that the Jaws of Real Estate is swimming to a Bay Area neighborhood near us.  Not only does Property Shark provide AVMs but they also list detailed transaction histories of your home.  They will tell you who you bought your house from and who were the buying and selling parties prior to that.

"The four-year old New York company outdoes Zillow on the snoopy factor, displaying owners’ names as well as things like title history, building permits and code violations pertaining to any property"

says Venture Beat.

One function that caught my attention was the ability to add your listing for sale.  Yes, yet another mean listing machine. 

You can add property pictures  as well if you swear you're the property owner.  What does this mean to the seller ?  If you are the seller you can claim your home and put a price on it.  Not sure how many buyers will find it yet, but looks a lot like Zillow's listing features.  Will they add user generated commenting and questions next ?  I tried to get property reports but there is a subscription fee starting at around $35/month.  With so many restrictions on accessability of data, not sure if this will pick up as fast as Zillow, but looks like shark fins are definitely starting to circle the housing waters.

Popularity: 6% [?]

When Project Blogger started a couple weeks ago, I wasn't too excited. Blogging is pretty hard and you have to get into the groove before it starts becoming a lot of fun. Most bloggers start and less then 4 months (if that) are done and moving onto something else.I thought it was a good idea, but will probably fizzle out

Was I wrong…These guys are in it to win it! 

Drew of Zillow, put out a call for a Zillow wordpress plugin…we responded, and I programmed my butt off to get turn one out for him. I was never far from my computer during that period.

Picture courtesy of TechRepublic

We gave it to Drew, he installed it on his apprentices blog…few bugs when the property is not in Zillow, but over all I think it is a great plugin, and when we release it, I think a lot of agents will benefit from it.

As soon as Drew blogged about, we started getting emails requesting it.

Here is an email from Jeff Turner

"Just read about the Zestimate Plugin and would love access to it for my project blogger apprentice as well. Thanks, Jeff Turner"

Then I responded:

Then Jeff Came out of nowhere with this:

"Matt,

Then no one would be able to use it….

Popularity: 14% [?]

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% [?]

Ultimate Tag Warrior is an awesome plugin. If you don't have it, get it, NOW!  *waiting...waiting*

Ok, now that everyone is back, let's discuss a problem I ran into and how to fix it. When you write a post and have the UTW plugin activated, you will notice a section below the post edit box that gets related tags for you. UTW sends your post to Yahoo's content api, and then Yahoo returns keywords based on the content...really cool stuff. You can see the Yahoo content API Here.

The API will only send 5,000 queries per application ID. So if you click on the "Get Keyword Suggestions From Yahoo" button and nothing happens UTW has probably reached it's limit of queries. Think about how many blogs UTW is installed on...it's a lot.

You can fix this by adding your own Yahoo API Application ID. I know it sounds hard but I don't think you have to even go to yahoo to change it.

The file to edit is in the UTW plugin folder. The file name is ultimate-tag-warrior-ajax.php 

On line 95 you will see $appID = "wp-UltimateTagWarrior"; If your editor does not have line numbers, you can search for "wp-UltimateTagWarrior". Change the appID to whatever you want, but make it unique because if the appID is already in use by another large website you might just run into the same problem as before. I changed the appID to my credit card number: 4532-2344... J/k

anyhow, once it is changed, re-upload the file and go check it on a post...it should work and return the tags based on the content of your post. 

Here is another useful code snippet I use to return tags based on content
You can try the code out here: My Keyword Generator
Simply send it content and it returns the keywords, don't forget to change the appID in the snippet too.

Popularity: 9% [?]

looking to try a different browser then the default Blazer browser? Try Opera Mini...I'm trying it just to see the RSS news reader feature. If you are installing Opera Mini for the first time on your Treo, you might run into some trouble...

First lets get all the software.

1. If you do not have the Java Virtual Machine for your palm, start by downloading that here
2. Download the Opera Browser

Before you can run the opera browser, you have to make sure your JVM is set up properly. If it is not set up properly, the Opera Mini browser will crash during initial setup.

To Configure the IBM JVM, go to Prefs->IBM Java VM (it is located at the bottom in "Other").

Double Buffering: on (default is OFF)
High-res coords: on (default is OFF)
Memory Max: 1Mb (Default is 1MB)
Stack Size: 32Kb (Default is 2KB)

once you have entered the settings, you are ready to browse. I really just use it for feeds, which it handles really well. I'm going to try other feed readers soon, but until then, this should do the trick. 

Popularity: 7% [?]

Photos are the most important thing when it comes to marketing your property online. So, you need a good camera. The best cameras to get are SLR's. SLR stands for single-lens reflex. These cameras can get pretty expensive, but in recent years have come down in price. One major benefit of using the SLR is the ability to change lenses. For real estate a good wide angle lens is very helpful. The wide angle lens really opens up rooms, and makes the space look large.

Here is a good site with example pictures using wide angle lens 

A new cool way to find a camera is to check out photos on flickr.com based on user reviews and photos.
This D40 is an Digital SLR for $499.00

I own a Canon Powershot S2 IS. When I bought it, I had no idea what an SLR was. When I looked at real estate images online I noticed some were better then others, and upon doing research, I found that the SLR was the product of choice for professional photographers. Of course, I immediately wanted to sell my camera and get an SLR, but I figure my camera is still very good for your typical point and shoot camera. Maybe I'll get an SLR for Christmas. 

I thought no lenses fit my camera, but I was wrong...they do make adapters for wide-angle and telephoto lenses for my camera. So maybe I don't need to get an SLR. Here are some examples of lens adapters for the S2 IS. I think I just need to get an extended mount and the lenses screw on...I'm excited. I find photography a lot of fun, and usually use photostitch to make wide shots. I looked on Ebay for a S2 IS wide angle lens, but there were none. There were telephoto and fisheye lenses. I'm going to check out Wolf Camera to see if I can get more info, and possibly pick one up.

Here is another creative way to take a wide angle shot using a home made lens

Popularity: 7% [?]

I have a Treo 650, and let me say, it is the best... When it comes to cell phones people can get really personal, so I'm expecting a few flames about this, but it's true. Yeah, it's heavier then the blackjack, and not as easy to use as the blackberry, but it has by far the most software available...much for free.

Trang, has a Blackjack and loves it. She use to have a Treo 650 but it broke and she now recommends the Blackjack to all her friends, but me and my tech friends all think she's a noob, and has no idea what she it talking about. Actually my brother-in-law got a blackjack, and he is pretty techy, but I don't think he ever had a smartphone before so to him the Blackjack must be futuristic.

Here are few quick appz for your palm to amaze your peers

1. Iphoney - Useless, but it looks like an iphone on your palm. I got mine the day after Apple announced the iphone. This is a hard to find app because Apple had all the download links removed from pretty much all blogs. So if this one doesn't work, then you might be out of luck. Iphoney is an app launcher for your palm: Iphone Download

2. The Core Pocket Media Player - This little wonder lets you play video on your  palm. I love it. Make sure you get at least a 1gig media card to hold the videos. I like showing Trang's video tours on the phone. It does not stream video, yet, and I don't think the company that developed the free version will support this version anymore, but it is open source, so there might be someone out there working on a stream feature. Download here

   There was discussion at FOREM about home searching from the cellphone, which got me wondering if there was a video streamer for the palm. This looks like a nice video stream package from Kinoma, but it's not free, so I will probably not try it, unless they want me to test it and review *(hint, hint). Back to FOREM discussion. The scenario I was thinking about is like this. I'm driving in my car, I see a for sale sign, with a link to the video tour. I whip out my treo and watch the video tour of the property while still in the driveway.

   Seems simple, but currently it is pretty hard to do. I found a website called tinytube.com that allows searching for video on your palm. You can't just go to youtube and search for videos...soon you will, but not now. Tinytube interface is made for mobile searching, basically it is just a search box. I typed in Real Estate and found a few video tours to download. You can download 2 versions from the site, High and low. The low is so bad you can't view it, but the high quality video is nice. Download to the palm was pretty quick, I downloaded a 1meg move in 2-3 minutes, then watched it. It works, and I can see this being useful, but with streaming right around the corner...might want to wait.

   I downloaded the same video to Trang's Blackjack, and it downloaded really fast. Less then a minute to get the video, but when I played it, the video was only about 1 inch x 1 inch?

3. u*blog - blogging from your Treo. Handles multiple blogs, and you can add/edit/update your blogs with too. I give credit for a really solid app, but you have to be hard pressed and completely addicted to blogging to use this. I tried to use it a couple times when I thought I had a couple hours to spare and nothing else to do (shoe shopping with Trang). It is just too hard to make a nice entry with the tiny Treo buttons. Download u*blog here

So there are a few appz to get you going on your Treo. I'm going to start giving more love to the Treo crowd, since it's such a good phone.

Popularity: 11% [?]