Real Estate Blog Pro

A Blog Stocking full of hacks, tools and tips and buttons

Long time no blog, Pros!  I must apologize for my lack of post-age, as I've recently taken a small break from real estate, focusing more on collaborative art and photography projects (including a book!! I will surely keep you up to date). I know, I know it was very un-Pro to have not tipped you off earlier.  I promise to be more Pro in the future.

So...right to business:

Found a few great resources to exploit in your never ending quest to save time.
250 Free Office Templates and Documents




Addthis.com offers a great tool for simplifying your social bookmarking life.

Also...here are a couple of great posts regarding Hacking your email in 99 ways [IT Security] and a variety of posts about real estate podcast marketing  and podcasting [RSS Pieces]

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Anothr is Another way to get your RSS Feed Fix- this time via Skype

For those of you Pros that use Skype [free internet telephony program], there's now an RSS feed aggregator called Anothr which is yet another way to get your RSS feed fix.  As RSS has become the real estate rage, those of us/ you who are ahead of the game (and are using Skype for your business) will appreciate being able to use the program as an instant messenger and RSS feed reader as well.  Time is money! Save some...


[DownloadSquad] Anothr: RSS aggregator for Skype

Technorati Tags: Skype, RSS, Anothr

Google Reader Launches New Interface

You real estate blog Pros out there may enjoy this new (friendlier) interface on Google Reader.   Personally, I find the Reader to be a helpful tool for staying up to date on real estate this and that via RSS.  Here are a few of the changes:

• Expanded view and list view
  
• Simplified sharing functionality
  
• Improved read-state management
  
• Infinite scrolling
  
• Unread counts
  
• Mark all as read
  
• and a bunch more...
  

Check out the new Google Reader here



Technorati Tags: google reader, news

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

Get your Money's Worth from Google Reader

Over on the Official Google Reader Blog, Jason Toal has put together an excellent screencast that covers nearly all of the features that Google Reader has to offer- including sharing what you're reading. Here's a bucket of tips from the Google Reader Blog regarding sharing:

Speaking of our sharing feature, people have figured out very seamless
ways of integrating clips into their sites.

SocialLearning.ca had this very helpful 5 minute 11 minute tutorial video screencast that shows all of the ins and outs of the reader.  Be sure to also check out their project for collecting google related resources with follow up links on this presentation on a wiki page.

With a little help from our users [Official Google Reader Blog]

Google Reader Tutorial (get your aggregator on) [Social Learning.ca]

Technorati Tags: google reader, tutorial, screencast,

An RSS tip for all you soon to be Pros

Randy Morin from RSS blog published a terrific set of RSS guidelines (pdf file) which he recieved from another blog buddy, Nick Gogerty of Inclue! Thought it might be good to share the wealth and keep it going.  Today's my birthday!!!- sorry i haven't more to share....The Pro will make it up to you next week!






Technorati Tags: RSS guidelines, RSS,

Textcasting: Podcasting for text will be BIG for real estate listing syndication

Almost a year and a half ago, LoftNinja began to maintain an all text blog for strictly listings-at the time, the blog was called Ninjalistings.*  He chose Blogger as the platform because its ownership (Google, duh) and began to use Talkr (a text to speech feed reader) so that his subscribers could download the listings to their iPod.  Just a few days ago, Library Clips Blog posted an entry about Textcasting (which is essentially the same thing) and confirmed further speculated that syndicating text via podcast could be the next thing!  Today, you can still recieve listings from the LoftNinja on your iPod...its still somewhat of a guerilla housing operation, but that's what makes it fun i suppose.


Today's Paper on your iPod [Slate]
Podcasting Listings are we? Hmmmm...sounds mighty familiar, don'tcha think?[Urbanfoto]
The fotoUR BLogger of the Day on iBlogthere4iM [Urbanfoto] (provides a bit of background and links to an interview with LoftNinja's friend- The fotoUR)

* its probably important to note that while one becomes a Pro [ie. zero experience---->learning process through self teaching], sometimes you will run into roadblocks such as getting hacked by outside entities.  In the case with LoftNinja and Ninjalistings (version 1), he hotlinked an image by permission from another blogger's site and one day that blogger's little brother thought it would be funny to insert a pornographic image in place of the original image (on like this: ) and all of a sudden the oh-so innovative real estate blog turned from respectable to smut.  Luckily he caught it right away, but had to delete the entire thing and start over....thus, the Typepad turn.  I tell you thins so that you will learn from the mistake.  1) Make sure your images are hosted safely in a place under your control and 2) Remember that there is always someone out there smarter than you- and if they aren't, thier little brother or sister will most certainly be.


Technorati Tags: textcasting, blogging, ipod, technology, real estate, housing, innovation, guerilla housing