I know of a few local agents here in Portland, OR that have different pricing structures based on how much the seller wants to utilize your talents and experience.

Any thoughts or comments on how your tech savvy-ness affects your commission percentage?

**EDIT**: as it has been brought to my attention by a smart reader, I am not looking for numbers here, but more for tactics.  do you value yourselves higher because of your technical know-how?  Is it part of your base package?  These are points that I am looking for.  Thanks.

In a world that is rapidly filling up with internet access points, that question might be more and more realistic. Introducing Ulteo.com, a complete online desktop with the tools to do most day to day work. I urge you to take a look at this, and see what you think. True, working with an online desktop can definitely slow you down without a fast internet connection, and lag time could drive you crazy, but just imagine being able to access any file you want to, from anywhere, collaborate at the same time with others, have automatic backups, never worry about a hard drive crash, virus, or spyware problem again, keep your old computer running without having to upgrade every two years (or so), and all for FREE.

What you get:
-access to OpenOffice.org, without downloading it locally (Create and edit MS Office compatible files)
-GiMP (to manage and edit photos, read this post to see what it can do)
-Access your IM buddy list with Kopete
-Call VoIP contacts with Skype
-Access email with Thunderbird
-Use Inkscape (vector illustrations)
-Use Scribus or OpenOffice Draw to make great looking page layouts (Flyers, Postcards)
-Much more and mobility

There are paid accounts available too, with more storage, longer login times and more invitations. But for free, they sure are giving you a lot. I personally see the future of computing moving in the direction. Most businesses and power users will have a local desktop to use whatever enterprise software or really heavy duty applications (Adobe Suite), but the masses (library computers, internet cafes, grandma and grandpa) don’t need powerful machines.

Any opinions as to the future of the desktop?

“With the lack of face to face business taking place today, we have decided to help out those that never got sidetracked with all this fancy technology. Good for you with your ad in the paper, your 1000′s of mailers and your door to door marketing. Paper is the only medium that people trust when they read it; if it’s not in print, it’s not the truth. The internet is over rated anyway.”

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If you live near the Portland, OR area, and you read this blog, chances are you should think about attending this event. All the tech savvy Real Estate people from the Portland Metro area are going to get together for a few drinks, some talking and absolutely NO shameless self promotion. Hosted by Joel Burslem from FOREM and Inmann, you know this will be good exposure. It’s almost positive that the guys from PlugMyListing.com will be there. Time to meet the neighbors.

The location is still TBD, so if you have any good ideas, let us know. Right now there is some talk of Bridgeport?

Who: Tech savvy real estate, lending, title and marketing professionals.

What: Lets meet up to grab a drink or three and formally meet one another.

Where: Still TBD – Check back for updates

When: Friday, March 28th 2008

Why: Why not?

Sign up HERE

I personally don’t recommend their websites though. Simplistic, template based websites have their place. They should have their price too, and I believe that what you get for $59.95 a month isn’t really worth it. Integrated IDX solutions are pretty much standard now, and without Top Producer 8i (or 7i) already set up, you really loose out on the lead capturing benefits. For $20 a month, you can get the best web hosting that is available, and have $30 a month to spare on finding a great IDX solution. Your start up fee will probably be more than the $149 startup fee that you have with Top Producer but you aren’t stuck in a bubble.

Check it out if you want to. For everything that they offer, most agents can find a package that works with their budget (packages range from $59.95 to $249.95 each month).

First, I started with a basic office photo. This photo came from a Realtor that I work with setting up virtual tours and is an actual photo used. There is no color correction here and all I did was add the text in the top right corner using splashup.com before saving the image to my computer. I had a choice of file type, compression and matte color to choose from while saving, which was a nice feature. I saved the image at 100% quality and was a bit depressed to see that some of the graininess was still present. I think that the jpg compression built into flash is at fault, though.

Here is the image after working with the brightness and contrast for less than five minutes. Then I changed the text in the top corner to “After” and saved this version to my computer again at 100%. I think that this tool greatly brought out the color of this rather dark picture. Needless to say, for less than five minutes, this tool is a great help to anyone away from their personal computer.

This last photo was edited on my personal computer (also in about 5 minutes) using the photo manipulation software called The GIMP. I personally think that this is by far better than the either of the other two, but you can’t always get to your personal computer to make these touch-ups. This is when an online tool is a great option, especially one of this quality.

One last image, below, is a screen shot of splashup.com while working on this image. You can see many familiar tools and options if you are at all familiar with any image working program. All in all, this is a great tool to use for simple to advanced photo manipulation. Working with a desktop app, such as photoshop, corel draw or the GIMP is still great (and faster) but many do not have these programs. Working with SplashUp.com can make your properties photos shine, but for now I don’t know if it is up to par with a desktop application. What do you think?

They have put together a list of the 15 biggest tech disappointments for 2007 and I was quite surprised by some of the items listed. Both of the “revolutionary” OS upgrades, Vista and Leopard, were both not only on the list, but in the top ten (Leopard at #8 and Vista being the worst of them all). The fact that they were both on the list leads me to a couple of realizations. Some people have been speculating that PCWorld is becoming more and more slanted toward Apple products, but I don’t agree (the iPhone made it to the list as well). I think that the writers for PCWorld were rather disappointed after all the hype with the end products. Also, I think that with the rising levels of hype, companies need to start delivering. Too many people are living with XP and don’t want to change because they are comfortable. People have found a system that works (fast), is stable, runs the software they need they don’t see the value in a $299 upgrade for more restrictions and pretty windows. Despite the hype, Vista is not giving the people what they want.

When you have some free time, take a look at the list. You might be surprised at some of the items you find (while others are just obvious, Office 2007. Why redesign the interface that people took so long to get used to?).

• Use numbers when it makes sense to use them. This might not seem like a big deal when you put your listing information into a system, but when see an entry for a field that should probably be numerical, please use numbers only. Many times I see “.2 A” or “Half Acre”, but a computer can’t understand that. When this data gets passed into a feed, it shows up as a bug, because the computer was expecting a number. In today’s world, computers are getting closer and closer to performing like magic. But in reality, systems are all still built by humans, and one small error like this can break your entire feed or have your listings rejected. This includes the number of bathrooms. See below.
• When displaying the number of beds and baths, just use one number. If the home has 2 full baths and a half bath, round up or down, and put a chunk of text in the description to say how many beds/baths it has. This one is so common, as people will read that the number of bathrooms needs to be a numerical value (or an int), so they use 2.5 as that is a number. This still breaks the feed, as one number was expected, with no decimal points, to give a correct value to the server.
• Stop using the ampersand. The ampersand (&) is a nice shortcut. It looks pretty and saves you a very little amount of time by making you press two keys instead of three. But this key is a bad key to use when you want it in a text block. This is a special character as far as web systems go, and it usually tells the computer, “Stop displaying text, and get ready for a command.” When you use the ampersand, web systems convert it (for the most part, if you have a good web coder) into &. Each and every character you see on the screen has some weird version like that one that will make it hard for you to read, but the computer prefers it. All of these start with the ampersand. Here is a list. In general, it is a good idea to avoid all special characters, including the @ symbol.
• When uploading a file, don’t have spaces in the name of the file. This one isn’t as bad, as most up to date browsers can deal with spaces, but it is more of a guideline than a hard rule. Notice how no domain names have spaces? It is for a reason. In code, spaces usually help the coder understand and read the code more clearly, but computers can do many things with it. With some systems, white space is ignored, while in others, it is necessary to have it just right to have a working system. For now, replace spaces with the hyphen or underscore and save all of us an unnecessary headache.

There are more problems that show up when trying to make a feed out of listings, but for now, if you are trying to get a feed submitted to any of the classified sites, and it isn’t working, really read the examples close. Each website will have a spec sheet that you can use to help you format your feed and data. What you think might not be an issue could be the one big problem keeping you out of the system.