This posting is somewhat self serving (I’m a hot minute away from getting an iPhone), but it’s also a chance to find out if anyone has taken advantage of their iPhone to assist them in conducting real estate business.

Has the Google Maps on the phone helped you out?  What about visual voice mail? Would you recommend this phone as a business phone?  Can it stand up to your Blackberry (crackberry) or Treo?

New to the real estate business?  Want to find some information for your clients regarding the “livability” of a certain street or neighborhood in Modesto or any other street in the U.S.?

Visit: http://streetadvisor.com

This site allows people to rate  or post street level reviews of neighborhoods based on criteria such us:

“Cost of living”
“Clean and Green”
“Peaceful”

and even “Cell phone reception” and “Internet speed.”

So cool! Check it out!

Kelly just posted an article regarding the sale of virtual real estate on SecondLife (the online, virtual reality world).

I just found another article on MediaPost’s Marketing Daily that announced the first broker to market an ACTUAL home through virtual reality. The broker, located in Washington, hired an outside company to build a duplicate of the real house into the virtual realty world.

Prospective buyers, or just the curious, can go to the virtual home on SecondLife and “walk” through the 5,702 square-foot house to get a 3D view of every room in the house.

Read the full article here.

I was searching around for some good real estate technology news. Something uber geek.

I ran across this article about a video production company in New York City who set up shop to service Realtors full-time. However, their job is not to go in with a camera to spin it around for a 360 view, but to go through every part of the property to give an “intimate” and personal view of the house’s features.

The footage is taken with the listing Realtor narrating each feature. After production, the video is uploaded to YouTube immediately for distribution.

A few New York Realtors sold their listings the NEXT DAY beause someone saw the “home video” on YouTube.

Do you think a fully narrated, nicely arranged video would help market your listings?

It seems as though this website, Agentopolis.com, is cataloging all the agents in the country, including each agent’s business and contact information.

If I were you, I would go update my information. The webmaster of the site boasted an estimated 100,000 page views in January and it looks as if your agent profile will be crawlable (searchable) through Google and Yahoo, so you would want the most up-to-date and accurate information showing in case people visit.

Internet marketing is fun! Haha.

When I started my career in the “professional world” I took over the position of creative marketing and design at a title and escrow company here in town.

The computer I sat down to on my first day was the computer that had been used for 5 years to put together this companies marketing tools, fliers, brochures, graphics, website designs, and more.

Trying to find a file I needed, on a computer I’ve never used, and trying to parse through the massive amounts of folders and pictures and Word documents, etc, was no easy task. Especially when I needed to find it “RIGHT NOW!”

So, being a tech savvy nerd, I turned to Google. Google has an AWESOME application you can download for free to your personal computer that indexes all of the files on your computer, including the content inside the files. It’s called Google Desktop.

Google Desktop basically acts like a search engine for your computer. Imagine putting the power of Google Search onto your personal computer. Well, now you can with Google Desktop.

Say, for example, I was looking for a Word document that included the words: Real estate, transaction, mchenry, 2004. After installing Google Desktop, I hit the “CTRL” button on my keyboard twice. Google automatically pops a search box into the middle of my screen. From there I type in the keywords and Google immediately returns a list of any documents, files, etc. that matched my keywords. Whether the keywords are in the filename, or inside the actual file, it makes no difference. Google will still find the file I need and save me!

If you’re like me, this might be a useful tool for those of us who have massive amounts of files on our hard drives, but not enough time (or energy) to organize them everyday. To download it, visit the Google Desktop website.

FutureOfRealEstateMarketing Blog posted an interesting story about Microsoft’s just announced new technology called “Surface.” This new technology is basically a table top that is made of a touch/gesture sensitive touch screen. Set your phone on it, and it will pull all the pictures you have taken and show them on the “surface” of the table. Rotate, zoom, organize, move to other devices, all by gesturing over the surface of the table.

Another example for that will be useful to restaurants: Set your credit card on top of your table at the end of the meal, and drag the pictures of the food you bought to your credit card. Splitting the bill is EASY!

Imagine using this technology to show homes to your clients. No more huddling around a laptop screen.

Click more to view Microsoft’s Surface demonstration video:
Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a video from the new “Inman TV Network” (part of the Inman Real Estate News website) that provides interesting tips and insight into starting your own real estate blog.

We’re not endorsing this, just passing along the news about this new website. This shouldn’t replace your current appraisal process - it’s just help satisfy your curiosity in a quick way online. Here’s the news:
Visit Eppraisal.com and type in a home on their homepage and hit submit.

Eppraisal will return a detailed home appraisal with comparable properties and neighborhood demographic information. It will also provide you with detailed information report on the subject property. The report includes details that read similarly to a property profile you might receive from your title representative. Including property characteristics, location information and sales history. Now you can go online, and pull information you need for your clients, yourself.

Yahoo acquired Eppraisal.com on Wednesday to help bolster there real estate search engine.

http://www.eppraisal.com

Realtor.com is now offering free blogs to all agents.

Blogging is a great way to keep in touch with your clients and let them know what’s new on the market.  It’s also a great way to show off your knowledge and understanding of the market.  Consider setting up your own personal blog on Blogger.com and set yourself apart from the crowd.

Maybe this is an idea for PMZ 2.0?  Would you keep a blog on your agent page?  Comment and let me know your thoughts.