There’s always something to howl about.

Get potent ping power for the price of a promo . . .

I read about realPING on the Zillow.com weblog’s coverage of Real Estate Connect in San Francisco. I never think about something until I do. This morning Cathy mentioned the idea of having something on our web pages that would induce prospects to contact us. We have a big phone number on the BloodhoundRealty.com website, but she was looking for something at once sexier and more hi-tech. I did my best not to think about this all day, and then, when my thoughts should have lightly turned to thoughts of slumber, I saw the realPING page.

This is really dumb technology. I never know for sure how much other people understand of software, but I can reverse engineer just about anything I see running — in the abstract, anyway. Understanding an algorithm is a lot easier than replicating it — unless it’s something really dumb like realPING.

I just wrote the basic functionality. The “Get Tracking!” button in the sidebar took longer to make than did GetTracking.php. All I have right now is the basic paging function, not the on-and-off for business hours business, but that’s simple to mimic, also. What I have is a clean-room perfect clone, reverse engineered solely from the descriptive promotional material made available on realPING’s home page. (I didn’t even drill down to sub-pages.)

Here’s my offer:

I will make my PHP files for this function available to you as PromoWare: You put me in your blogroll and the software is yours. No cost, no further obligation, no contracts, no monthly fees, no salesman will call. However: You hold your own hand for installation and support.

To take advantage of this offer, you need two things:

  1. The site this runs from must have PHP installed on it with the mail functions turned on
  2. You need a mobile phone or other device that can receive email or epages sent as email from PHP

Ninety percent of everybody reading this will have both of these things, but if you don’t know, the person you check with is the one who should do the installation and support hand-holding.

I wish I had more time to write software. The other week, Cathy and I wrote the spec for a killer IDX + Google Maps mash-up, stunningly better than anything else we’ve seen. Meanwhile, I’m guessing the realPING people are going to wish I had gone to bed early tonight…

Update: Added the on-the-job stuff: If you’re on vacation or taking a day off, if it’s not a work-day as defined by you, if it’s not during the hours of the working day defined by you, the button doesn’t show up. If yes, then yes. I need to add more-rigorous error trapping for the form and I’m done.

Further notice: I just read the realPING web page. What they have is cooler than what I built. On the other hand, they’re charging $17 a month and I’m free…

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