Tales from the Techside

Earth to RE, can you read me?
The teams have divvied up.
On one side you have a mishmosh of broker websites, the occasional MLS public website (all hail the HAR experience, and curse having to discuss endlessly how to recreate it on 1/100th the budget), some good (some bad) IDX vendors, and ROOST. Representing billions […]

In a recent meeting with the guys from CRT, Mark Lesswing explained to my boss and several other key people in the local market about developments in the RETS standard and a recent decision by some of the biggest 3rd party data aggregators to agree upon a data sharing standard. Loosely named GTZY (or GITZY […]

It has been a while since I could say that - but I did.
I needed gas on my commute home. So I stopped at a 76 station just off the freeway, sidled up to the one armed bandit, and got out to start the painful transaction.
I stood up and looked straight into the face […]

As someone who works regularly from home often there are files I need to access from the office stored on my home computer and vice-versa. I used to use hamachi to access these files remotely but recent upgrades to the client has caused some issues with my network configuration. For those of you […]

Quick micropost here. I am curious to know if anyone out there is doing anything with Faceforce?
Picture a utility to integrate your social network (facebook) with your Customer Relationship Management. Like LinkedIn, it simply piggybacks off an existing data source, to create your ‘network.’ Instead of using email addresses as LinkedIn does, […]

So the blogosphere has been lighting up with references to the recent launch of Roostsm. It has been quite interesting to read the reactions to the product on many levels.
Having played some small part in helping to bring this product to market, I though I would make an effort to give a description of the […]

I am well aware that across the industry profits are dipping, time between sales is widening and clients are expecting more in terms of service.  To offset costs and increase services many REALTORS and affiliates are turning towards virtual assistants, people who support you from afar and allow you to better leverage your time and […]

I remember when I was eight years old my father gave me his old Polaroid camera. I was fascinated with how after taking a picture the Polaroid would “spit out” a black sheet framed in white and from the black faces would emerge like ghosts. I spent all summer with that Polaroid camera taking pictures […]

I was reading Inman News this morning when I came across a story “Facebook group for Realtors forced to shut down over title” and the subtitle was “Local association takes issue with ‘Realtor’ in networking group’s name”.
As an industry, REALTORS have worked hard for the title of REALTOR to mean something. Daily there a lot […]

So I am setting up adsense for the first time. Adsense is google’s program to allow folks with websites to embed ads on the page and get paid for clicks from that page. The content of the page typically delivers ad results from a particular category, in this case presumably real estate.
I am […]