Real Estate Blog Pro

Virtual Tours, Newsletters and Resources on the Fly! Now that's Pro!

Wanna create Virtual Tours like a PRO?  Integrate them into your blog or website?  Lifehacker told us last week about this kick ass new website called Mapwing and let this Pro be the first (ok, second) to tell you, It Kicks Ass. 


Mapwing simplifies all of the hassles involved with creating real estate VR tours.  No stitching of panoramics. No learning code in order to embed the 360 pano thingy.  None of that crap that you have to pay web designers bizillions of dollars to do for you.  Just follow the instructions to the T and you'll end up with a terrific looking floorplan with integrated Virtual Tour.  In the end you'll have the option of embedding it within your own website or emailing it to your clients! Its the perfect blog marketing tool.


Create newsletters on the Fly with Letterpop [found via Lifehacker] This is an AMAZING tool!  Look at the newsletter that I created for my father's surveying equipment supply company in South Carolina here.  This is perfect for real estate agents because you have so much flexibility with how photos and text can be displayed, you can have multiple pages and instantly email the newsletter to up to 500 people.  Give it a whirl!

A hefty list of blog resources can be found over here at Daily Blog Tips Blog.  You should definately subscribe to this blog's RSS because it always comes packin!'


Technorati Tags: newsletters, resources, links, virtual tours, Letterpop, Mapwing

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Google Notebook Adds Search and Real Estate agents Catch On

Today Lifehacker  tipped us off to a helpful new feature on Google Notebooks- you can now search the content of public notebooks.  Check out the content that comes up when you search for "Real Estate."  Google Notebooks are the perfect tool for compiling researched content or publishing content for the public.  Real Estate agents are becoming quite saavy in the podcasting arena and tools such as this have become a powerful way to broadcast. 

If you are using Firefox, the Google Notebooks extension makes adding content to your personal notebook a breeze!  Your notebook can be accessed through your gmail account and you have a choice of keeping your content private or sharing it with the world.  Go gettem Pros!

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Some Mobile Phone Mania to Keep you Productive, Pros

Gmail goes really mobile!  Go to  gmail.com/app  to download that new application that is bound to free up some of your time- and its free.  Now you'll be able to get all of your glorious  email (real estate related, of course) in two clicks...unless you are like me and happen to be so behind the times that your phone has basically become antique (my phone =Treo 600).  So, if you don't have a rotary dial on your celly, chances are the new mobile Gmail will save you time.
If you are living in history, Learn more about Gmail for mobile devices.  You may remember Pro telling you about Google Calender mobile a few months back.  Well...I'm just reminding you.  Pretty soon, maybe none of us will even need homes...just a place to sync our crap.  Then we won't need real estate agents, i suppose.  And I guess this blog will be pretty stupid at that point too.....hmmm. 


Now that you have all that free time...why not save more time by refusing to enter contact info from the mountain of business cards you've collected.  As mentioned before, there's a handy tool out there called Scanr that turns your camera phone into a heavy duty, light weight rolodexing machine.  Lifehacker discovered it today and gave a few tips on how to utilize this paperless beast.

Go gettem Pros!

Technorati Tags: Scanr, Gmail, mobile

Real Estate Agents Will find This Tabbed Text Editor Handy

Do you post to online sites like Craigslist and Backpage?  Sure you do.  Well check out this text editor that the Pro found over at Portable Freeware.  Its called Edit Pad Lite is sure to be a hit among real estate agents.  Now you can save all of those posts that you must constantly repost over and over in one place.  Not only that, but you can open as many text files at the same time as you want..making it easier to switch back and forth.  Thats Money!
The Pro has actually been using an program designed to write sceenplays for saving his HTML garbly gook posts.  Edit Pad Lite will help me help myself straighten up a bit and definately save some time.



Go Gettem Pros!                       Download EditPad Lite

Technorati Tags: text editor, software, freeware

A New Google Page for (real estate-ish) Web 2.0 Tools

Pro made a tools page for you guys to bookmark and refer to periodically.  From now on, a list of resources and Web 2.0 tools can be found there.  There are so many tools that come out, that its hard to keep track of them all.  Thats why I try to only pay attention to those that might be useful to real estate agents.   We can all help each other grow into the next this technical age.
If you have something that you would like to add, please to write me. 

[btw.  I made said page from a Google Pages.  It can be created through (and attached to) your gmail account. If this is confusing, let me know.  As you know, happy to help.  Good Luck Pros!



Technorati Tags: tools page, tools, google pages, resource

Instant Messenger to RSS to Email Hack

If you've ever wanted to send yourself to-do items from your cell phone, here's a mashup hack for you to try out:  IM to RSS to Email. [via Library Clips]  You can start by looking at the possibility of using Gmail as a to-do service from Devin Reams.   Its basically just sending yourself tasks to your email and doing them as you read them.  Then look at John Tropea's  Gmail RSS Reader hack but replace the step of emailing yourself with a subscription to an RSS feed (try using Sabifoo), so that you are automatically updated.  Set up your RSS feed through one of those RSS to email services (I prefer Rmail as well).  Now, you can send to-do items to your Gmail account from out in the field.  
What a great field hack for real estate Pros!


Technorati Tags: hack, instant messenger, GTD, mashup, Rmail

Create Property Diagrams and Plans Online with Gliffy and a Peak inside Pro's Del.icio.us account

On Pro's way to becoming Pro today he stumbled across a post from good ole faithful Lifehacker- (which happens to have a completely new blog design btw and lookin' good!!) regarding a new online diagram creator thingy.  It's called Gliffy [beta] and it looks pretty interesting. But most importantly, it looks like it can be very useful to all my favorite real estate agent 2.0 Pros out there. Its quick and easy to use- Pro tried it out already- thumbs up!  Give it a whirl and see if you can start making your own floor plans.  Good luck!


Gliffy
CNET [review of Gliffy]
Make diagrams online with Gliffy [Lifehacker]

ALSO....  i just wanted to mention that I appreciate all of the nice comments and questions that you guys send me via email.  If at all possible, lets try to start putting questions and remarks in as comments so that everyone can benefit from your inquiry.  No question is too stupid for the Pro- he's just trying to help you out.  Its hard to find that in real estate 1.0.


Keep this in mind:  If you ever have a specific question or are looking for direction on your own, a good place to check first is my del.icio.us account.  If you are not yet familiar with what this (ie. del.cio.us) is, its a way of publishing all of your bookmarks to the public- or social bookmarking, rather.  Search in the tags for the subject that you have in mind and take a stab at it.  Pro doesn't have time to post every trick that he finds or comes up with, obviously.  Therefore, in between posts, you can always find goodies in my bookmarks.  Happy Hunting!

and if you like tag sifting, check out this new site TagFetch [via Webby's World]


Technorati Tags: property diagrams, online tool, gliffy, tips and tricks, del.icio.us, tagging, bookmarks

Trick: How to speed up the loading of an Adobe Acrobat PDF file AND best way to redirect a web page

Here's a very useful tip- stop waiting so long for PDF files to load!  Did you know that everytime you run Adobe Acrobat, there are as much as 20 plugins that load unnecessarily?   DWTIPS Blog shows us aspiring Pros how to do this by following these steps:

To disable unneeded plugins and make them optional instead, follow these instructions:

1. Install the latest version of Adobe Acrobat - you can get it here
   
2. Browse to the plugins folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Reader\plug_ins
   
3. Create a new folder named Optional
   
4. Move all files from the plug_ins folder to Optional, except EWH32.api, print*.api, and Search*.api
   

That’s it! Load any PDF in Adobe Acrobat to see the difference!

Here's another tip: Steven Hargrove: How to redirect a web page, the smart way

[found via .ect via Lifehacker]

Technorati Tags: redirect web site, adobe acrobat, pdf files, tips, tricks

Go ahead and Cheat. All the Pros do it!

Here's a great HTML Cheatsheet from WebMonkey. 


Technorati Tags: HTML, cheat sheet, tools, tips

Feeling overwhelmed? Here are six steps for learning difficult subjects quickly

I know.  All of this blogging biz can be a little overwhelming at first.  Believe me, looking at RSS, AJAX, and all of the other stuff one should know when blogging, its enough to make you wanna dig a hole and crawl in.  and In fact, if the Pro had begun blogging knowing that there would be all this stuff to learn, he might have gone about it a different way.  But for your sake, its good he didn't!  Everything that you are learning on this blog was self taught and most of it had to be figured out becuase there havent been many tutorials around for this stuff for very long.  If you stick with it, it will be worth it to your business and your clients.  This much is for certain.  With that in mind, take a look at these six steps for learning difficult subjects quickly (Paul's Tips). [link Lifehacker]
Step 1: Bombard yourself with information
Step 2: Identify the key concepts and make them yours
Step 3: Only memorize what absolutely has to be memorized
Step 4: Get some feedback on your understanding
Step 5: Bombard yourself with some more information, but from another source
Step 6: Get some real-world feedback (blogging makes this one a given...)
[read them all in detail here]

If you think that one is helpful, you might wanna also check into the Five Minute Organizer [Success Begins Today]



Technorati Tags: tips, real estate, learning, organizer

Add dates quick to Google Calender with new Firefox extension

On the run like me? Add your dates and reminders to Google Calender in a flash with this new Firefox extension for Windows/Mac/Linux [via Lifehacker]  The Google Calendar Quick Add Firefox extension enables a keyboard shortcut in Firefox that adds events to Google Calendar without having to visit the calendar. Also, as of 2006-04-23 Now it also monitors Google homepage searches for terms that could become appointments.[link for updates]

To add an appointment, all you do (after installing of course) is press Ctrl + ;(semicolon) and you will be prompted on screen.  This is a definate time saver!

Hope this helps guys.  Don't be late!


Technorati Tags: timesaver google calender firefox extensions realestate

Ever get annoyed when having to copy and paste URLs from one browser to another?

Well, here's a good solution:  Optool is a smart browser switcher.  It gives you the option of switching your current browser window into Mozilla, Firefox, Opera8 or Internet Explorer.
Its kinda like the IETab extension for Firefox, except ..um, better. [link DownloadSquad]

Find the number you need online with Calcr

This handy little online calculator (found via Lifehacker) may save you time. Its called Calcr and although there are several alternatives out there that do a similar job, Calcr seems simpler to use and the interface is much more attractive.  If you like crunching numbers on the web, its not  a bad idea to check out Google's calculator capabilities and there's thsi other one as well called Calcoolate that can handle the scientific math of a TI-82.

technorati tags: calculator, online, tools, realestate, timesaver

Save time with AJAX enabled homepage

AJAX ain't just something to clean with

You may or may not be aware of what AJAX is, but it is a definate timesaver for the real estate agent.  For most agents (that I've talked to, anyway), AJAX seems like some sort of computer voodoo- it might as well be magic.  Nevertheless, for the real estate agent, it can be a time saver.  For example, ever wonder how it is that you can move the screen with your cursor on Google Maps, without switching screens? AJAX. I'll be honest about the fact that much of it is foreign to me as well, but for our purposes we'll just explore a few of the current uses of AJAX enabled websites and applications that will enable the real estate agent to save time.  You need not be able to code it to use it. With a little patience, you can put it to use for you without really having to know exactly how it works.  There are (but definately not limited to) three ways that a real estate person could utilize the power of AJAX: with homepages, with Flickr photosharing and by using certain Firefox extensions that plug into your browser. For our first lesson, we'll look at AJAX Homepages.

Basically, an AJAX enabled homepage will allow you to have almost all of your most frequently visted sites all on one page, along with your favorite RSS feeds, your photos and your del.icio.us bookmarks (more on this soon)- not to mention your ever important things to do list and calender. All of this information (even constantly updated media such as blogs) can be accessed from one custom page that you create- and best of all, you needn't know any code and you'll have the ability to move the content around and rearrange it however you like (just like Google Maps!).  This is a timesaver!  Why? 1) Less typing in URLs 2) less plowing through bookmarks 3) all of your photos and feeds in one place and most importantly, more time for you to spend working on the most important tasks, like  being a dynamite real estate professional. You design your page in whatever way you like, just like 1, 2, 3. It's remarkably fast! Howver long it takes to put it together is all up to you. The more content you want, the longer it will take you (obviously), but for the sites that I am about to show you the average time was 15 minutes for setup.

AJAX enabled homepages to check out:

• Eskobo
• favoor
• Google (yes, Uncle Goog has one and it will work with your Gmail and Google RSS Reader)
• Gtalkr (I personally prefer this one over Google Homepage, because it integrates Gtalk-Google's instant message program)
• Goowy (Flash, not Ajax)
• HomePortals
• Microsoft Live (extensions available here)
  
• Netvibes
• Pageflakes (our personal favorite, at the moment)
  
• Protopage (updated recently and looking great!)
  
• Wrickr
• Zoozio
  

The guru on the subject of AJAX (and most any other current techy subjects) is Techcrunch-which has some very nice detailed descriptions of each site, if you don't have time to sift through them all.   What the REBlogPro recommends is to spend a little time finding the one that works best for you and appeals to your senses- then go about gradually adding the content until you have a  managable homepage that holds all of the information that you need during your daily routine. Be sure to go into your Tools header and select Options and then in your General preferences pick Use Current to set your homepage at  the one you chose.

For a great overview of how AJAX works internally, check out this article.  Be sure to check back in a day or so as the Pro will demonstrate a few more terrifically tactful time saving secrets for the hard working real estate agent.

By the way, ever checked out Google Suggest?  Its powered by AJAX too.

technorati tags: AJAX, tips, tools, realestate, timesaver, agent, homepage, tech