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Category: Blogging (page 29 of 84)

December 28, 2007

A potentially canonical list of weblog naming ideas

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I updated the potentially canonical list of real estate weblogs yesterday for the first time since June. One of the benefits of delay is that I get to see who didn’t make it in the long run, saving me some work. Hope is easy. Weblogging is hard.

In any case, I added a form to the page to make it simpler (and, one may hope, quicker) to add, change or remove entries from the list.

Here are two ideas that occurred to me while I was sifting through 3,000 un-dealt-with emails (of all sorts, not just real estate weblogs):

  1. Naming your weblog with an image instead of CSS-styled text is probably a bad idea. We’re guilty of this at DistinctivePhoenix.com, but it’s something I’ll fix the next time I go after that weblog in a big way.
  2. Naming your weblog with your most potentially-valuable keyword is probably a very good idea. Here we’re entirely off the reservation. With the exception of RealEstateWeblogging101.com, nothing I’ve ever done is right. But the value of having your most valuable keyword as your URL is so rich that it might be worth your while, if you don’t already have a lot of traction, to consider starting over with a new domain name.

RealEstateWeblogging101.com is a complete category-killer, and Dave Smith is studying it extensively. It’s interesting to Dave because it’s built entirely in WordPress “Pages,” with almost no ordinary weblog message content.

The name of that weblog is an image, also, not styled text, but, of course, the title of each post and the name of the weblog are encoded in the title tag of each page. There’s something else we’re doing on all of those pages: The title of each weblog post or WordPress “Page” is shown twice, once as the heading of the content and once on the “blackboard” at the top of the page. I don’t know if that is making a huge difference with Google, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting anything.

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December 28, 2007

Speaking in tongues: Dynamically updated lists of links in PHP

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Let’s get dynamic, shall we? There are a lot of things you can say about PHP — and some of them are even safe for work. But, at bottom, PHP is a working stiff’s programming language for producing dynamic web pages.

What’s a dynamic web page? It’s a page that reflects a user’s actions or editing without requiring manual editing of each little line of HTML. In the world of AJAX coding, web pages are becoming so dynamic that they seem to mimic the behavior of stand-alone complied applications. Calm down. We’re not going to do anything that sexy. And while we will actually be introducing real bona fide PHP programming in this post, you can dial down the palpitations: We will be doing precisely one line of PHP programming. Everything else will be familiar old HTML.

Okay then: Go take a look at this article on HR 3915. Brian Brady wrote that post, and it was one of our most popular entries this year. BloodhoundBlog is the home of big stories on the RE.net, and, when we cover a big story, I do everything I can to make sure that readers — especially readers arriving from search engines or by hard clicks from non-RE.net sites — don’t miss the full extent of our coverage.

So, if you scroll down in that post, you’ll see a bullet list of links to other posts with the heading “More on HR 3915.”

That list of links is done with PHP.

The actual list is simply a file of plain vanilla HTML — no PHP programming. The file for this list of links is called HR3915.php. It looks like this:

&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;<br><B><I>More on HR
3915:</I></B><UL>
<li><a
href="http://www.mortgageratesreport.com/2007/11/
15/daily-kos-on-hr-3915-mortgage-industry-set-to"
target="_blank">Daily Kos on HR 3915: Mortgage
Industry Set To</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/
BloodhoundBlog/?p=2217" target="_blank">HR 3915:
Why Federally-Chartered Banks Get The Pass</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/
BloodhoundBlog/?p=2200" target="_blank">HR 3915:
Open Letter to Senator Dodd from a Veteran
Mortgage Originator</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.mortgageratesreport.com/2007/11/
08/hr-3915-legislating-to-armageddon"
target="_blank">HR 3915- Legislating to
Armageddon</a>
<li><a
href="http://blownmortgage.com/2007/11/07/hr-3915-
mortgage-reform-bill-passes-committee-with-
important-changes/" target="_blank">H.R. 3915
Mortgage Reform Bill Passes Committee with
Important Changes</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/
BloodhoundBlog/?p=2176" target="_blank">HR 3915:
Anti-Consumer Bank Protection Act of 2007</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/
BloodhoundBlog/?p=2153" target="_blank">HR 3915:
Exploring the Minds of the Enablers</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/
BloodhoundBlog/?p=2112" target="_blank">HR 3915 Is
Dangerous</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/
BloodhoundBlog/?p=2103" target="_blank">HR 3915:
Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of
2007</a>
</UL>

(It’s cleaner than that in real life. I had to introduce line breaks to keep it from screwing Read more

December 27, 2007

Speaking in tongues: Presentable PHP in WordPress

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

In the coming days, I plan to take up the idea of PHP for non-programmers, helping you tap the power of PHP’s dynamic text processing without learning (much) actual coding.

The problem is that illustrating HTML or PHP in WordPress is always a problem. Why? Because WordPress eats code for breakfast. Properly-formatted coding looks to WordPress like… properly-formatted coding. Instead of a code example, you get the executed code itself.

There are ways around this. I’ve used pictures in the past, or done elaborate searches to suss WordPress into showing the code sample as a code sample. But because I’m going to be showing a lot of code, and because I want for you to be able to copy and paste my examples into your own files, I built a tool (in PHP) to render PHP and HTML in a form that looks to WordPress like mere text, not code to be executed, but which will work just fine when you copy and paste it into your own files.

Like this, as a very simple example:

<html>
<body>
<p>Hello, World!</p>
</body>
</html>

I’ve made my little toy available to you, if you want to play with it. You can use it to show coded examples to your own readers. It’s not doing any kind of error-trapping, but it’s not doing very much of anything. Let me know if you can break it.

Building this was actually easier than talking about it, but there is a caveat. WordPress won’t love you if you try to go back and edit a published post that has one of these encoded examples in it. The second time through the WordPress parser, it will try to execute the code. The solution is either to write in and edit in an off-line editor like Ecto or to create your posts using coded examples in a text editor, editing your original files, rather than the published post. The point, either way, is to make sure that WordPress parses the coded examples only once before displaying them.

I’ll have more shortly, but if you want to get a jump on things, do this: Copy the example code above and paste Read more

December 26, 2007

Thinking

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then — just to loosen up. Fake Greg

Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.I began to think alone — “to relax,” I told myself — but I knew it wasn’t true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.

That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother’s.I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don’t mix, but I couldn’t help myself.

I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau, Muir, Confucius and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, “What is it exactly we are doing here?”One day the boss called me in. He said, “Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don’t stop thinking on the job, you’ll have to find another job.”

This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my conversation with the boss. “Honey,” I confessed, “I’ve been thinking…””I know you’ve been thinking,” she said, “and I want a divorce!”

“But Honey, surely it’s not that serious.” “It is serious,” she said, lower lip aquiver.”You think as much as college professors and college professors don’t make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won’t have any money!”

“That’s a faulty syllogism,” I said impatiently.She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.

“I’m going to the library,” I snarled as I stomped out the door.I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors.

They didn’t open. The library was closed.To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that Read more

December 26, 2007

The Odysseus Medal: “Until we start fixing what is really wrong we’ll continue to struggle in quicksand”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The story of the year is the lending crisis, so it’s no accident that this week’s Odysseus Medal should go to Morgan Brown for Struggling in Quicksand – Why the Government Continues to Exacerbate the Problem:

So here’s the rub – all of these “do gooders” are making the situation exponentially worse. Their rash actions are actually making it HARDER to get financing. Witness the spreads in jumbo vs. conforming loan amounts. Witness the restriction of loan programs. Witness the increase in underwriting stipulations. Witness the interbank rates compared to the Fed. The fact is that all of these bail out programs (which they all are in one form or another) have added MORE uncertainty to the system. They have not improved the psyche of the people with the money. And those are the people that count right now. If the people who hold the cash don’t want to lend it because their return is unclear we’ll never see the calming of the mortgage market.

The idea is not to make Fannie and Freddie buy everything in sight; the idea is to make the mortgage market a transparent and friendly investing environment so that cash returns to the secondary markets (and debt markets in general). Will that take time to work out? Absolutely. Are any of these rash knee-jerk reactions improving the situation? Not at all. We shouldn’t be worrying about how to bail out responsible people. We should be looking at how to fix the credit and debt markets to provide transparency for investors. Transparency builds credibility. Credibility builds confidence. Confidence drives investment. Investment drives down costs of borrowing, increases program expansion and makes markets healthy.

Until we start fixing what is really wrong we’ll continue to struggle in quicksand.

Krista Baker takes this week’s Black Pearl Award with How To Create Your 2008 Business and Marketing Plan:

Identify the gaps. Now that you’ve documented where you are and where you want to be, where are the gaps? For instance, if you made $50,000 in 2007 and want to make $100,000 in 2008, what does that mean? First, $50,000/12 = approx $4200. If you want Read more

December 26, 2007

Two changes to the About page to clarify BloodhoundBlog’s praxis

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I made two changes to our About page, both of them to clear up potential ambiguities.

The first grew out of a comment from Cheryl Johnson concerning the content of BloodhoundBlog and the possible consequences of Realtors or lenders emulating our outspokenness on their own weblogs:

Verbum sapienti: A word to the wise, that is. We are a real estate industry weblog, and much of our content concerns real estate marketing tools, technologies and techniques that real estate professionals might use in their own businesses. But: We are not appealing for business here. We are not selling real estate or loans or investments, and we are not walking on our tip-toes to avoid offending potential clients. If you are building or hope to build a lead-attracting real estate weblog, BloodhoundBlog is not a model for you to follow. Many of our contributors have client-focused weblogs, and those can be good models to work from. In addition, we wrote a book called Real Estate Weblogging 101 that explains how to build a successful real estate weblog. But BloodhoundBlog is written to be controversial, and we do not — and should not — care whose toes we might step on.

The second is an amendment to our comments policy to clarify what kind of conduct results in a comment being deleted or a commenter being banned from BloodhoundBlog. In this paragraph, the added language is underlined:

Comments policy: Everyone disagrees with us about something, and we welcome this: It’s how we learn. We encourage a free and spirited debate about the issues we raise here. We police comments with a very light hand, deleting comments and banning commenters only for extreme obscenity, flaming or flame-baiting, plagiarism, spam, impersonation (sock-puppetry) or copyright infringement (a fair-use quotation with a link is fine). This warrants emphasis: We are all about ideas, and, because of that, we are very strict about bad behavior. If you get the notion that your fear or anger or rock-ribbed moral fire accords you the right to abuse or insult or brow-beat the other guests in our salon, you will be ejected with dispatch. Nota bene: Read more

December 24, 2007

Unchained melodies: Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Trans-Siberian Orchestra is the most successful of the many attempts to marry classical music to rock, with Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24 being their breakthrough hit:

It ain’t Christmas without the Barenaked Ladies. This is their Christmas medley with Sarah MacLachlan:

Dan Fogelberg died on December 16th of this year. This is Same Auld Lang Syne, the all time best Christmas Eve song ever written:


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December 23, 2007

Spoiler alert: Yet another post about you-know-what

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

Been ruminating my little arse off this week. How about you?

I’m a hyper-local blogger. I’m on the Bloodhound Blog because of a contest Greg and I teamed up to compete in- my being here is kind of a fluke, and frankly the only reason I’m still here is because this is such a great pack of dogs with which to run, at this point I can’t imagine giving up this gig. I have no desire for fame or fortune in the RE.net, best evidenced by the infrequency that I post here. My focus is to build a fantastic and profitable hyper-local weblog. Does hyper-local weblogging work? As someone once said: That’s another post for another day. 

What I do is blog to a very specific group of people. I don’t blog for the RE.net, and if you check your MyBlogLog widget you can confirm that I rarely visit your blog. In my limited time, I visit blogs in Dayton Ohio. Those are the blogs that matter most to me and my local blog. 

I do Twitter though, and from that I’ve met quite a few RE.net bloggers, and I have completely enjoyed making Twitterfriends with each and every one of them. One of my favorites (yeah I got favorites, don’t you?) is Daniel Rothamel. There are very few RE.net bloggers I respect more than Daniel. We’ve had several offline conversations, and that is a RE.net relationship that I value. Earlier last week when he tweeted that he just posted a video, I didn’t hesitate to take a look. I like Daniel’s video. I did then, and I do now. I thought it went well as a link to a post on my home blog, so I added it without hesitation. Then Jeff Brown posted about it and fast forward to all hell breaking loose.

As I said, I don’t spend much time in the RE.net. I had no idea how much hell could actually break loose. At first I simply sat back and watched, taking my place among the elusive ninety and nine. Daniel and I even shared a gentle joke over the fuss. But then, (apparently true to form) I did begin to ruminate and Read more

December 23, 2007

Happy Holidays!

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

To: All Past, Present and Future Bloodhoundblog Contributers and Readers, who shall be referred to as “BHB Friends” or Happy Holidays“BHBF” for the purpose of this document. This an Official Russell Shaw Non-Denominational,
Holiday Greeting.

Dear Sirs, Madames and respective families, this non-transferable greeting is extended solely for the purpose of creating a feeling of “Joy” and general well being. The afore mentioned “feeling” may be enjoyed by BHBF and their respective “families” at the BHBF’s sole and absolute discretion on or about sundown on the 24th of December 2007 until, on or about sundown on December 26th 2007.

Furthermore this “feeling” is not in any way being extended for any other days including but not limited to; New Years, day or eve, Valentines Day, Easter, Labor Day, The 4th of July, Ground Hogs Day, Memorial Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, any and all religious and or ethnic holidays and or any day weather it be known or unknown that may arise out of any day be it celebratory or just an ordinary day. On said day the afore mentioned group of “BHBF”may refer to Russell Shaw only in reference to said holiday greeting.  This “greeting” is in no way an endorsement of any current or future posts on this or any other blog, or any other business that the “BHBFs” may be involved in at this time or in the future.

Any and all questions or comments arising out of this “Greeting’ should be forwarded to Russell Shaw’s statutory agent, per Russell Shaw’s incorporating documents on file with the Arizona Corporation Commission located in Phoenix, Arizona, for name and address of said agent.

Warmly,

Russell Shaw

P.S. Merry Christmas Everyone!

(I stole this entire idea from my friend, Mad Coyote Joe)

December 23, 2007

The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

There are 36 entries on the short list this week. That’s a ton, but, even so, it’s less than half of what we started with. Given that it’s a holiday week, there was a lot of great stuff this week. We knew that going in, because both Jeff Kempe and Kris Berg hit home runs at the top of the week. Vote for the People’s Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy.

Ahem: Please don’t spam all your friends to come and vote for you. First, what we’re interested in is what is popular among people who would have been voting anyway. And second, I’ll eliminate you for cheating. Don’t say you wasn’t warned.

Voting this week will run through to 12 Noon MST Wednesday to leave time between all the Christmas stuff. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.

Here is this week’s short-list of Odysseus Medal nominees:

< ?PHP $AltEntries = array ( "Dan Green -- Consumer confidence Showing How Consumer Confidence Surveys Lead Economists Astray”,
“Jeff Brown — Market correction The Truth — ‘They’ Don’t Have A Clue When This Correction Will End“,
“Teri Lussier — Selling vacant How to sell a vacant home this winter: Make like a Boy Scout“,
“Geno Petro — Bumper stickers How do I really feel about that, I wonder?“,
“Kris Berg — Prop 91 I’ve got a proposition for you.“,
“Jeff Brown — Bernanke Bernanke Goes To The Statue of Liberty Play — Bank System Scores“,
“Dan Melson — New Fed rules New Proposed Federal Reserve Rules: Is This Supposed to Be Helpful Regulation?“,
“Chris Lengquist — Credit problems Why We As A Nation Have Credit Problems“,
“Kris Berg — Next time There’s always a next time.“,
“Chris McKeever — Your way Your way, isn’t always the best way…“,
“Mike Farmer — Zillow Zillow — Microcosm of A Bigger Problem“,
“Trevor Smith — New Fed rules The One Law to Rule them All“,
“Morgan Brown — Struggling in quicksand Struggling in Quicksand – Why the Government Continues to Exacerbate the Problem“,
“Doug Quance — Musical chairs Musical Chairs With Brokerage Signs“,
“Glenn Kelman — TV tips Eyewitness “Today” Account + Twelve Live TV Tips“,
“Brian Boero — Redfin The school of Redfin, Part II“,
“Andrew Mattie Read more

December 23, 2007

Technology is a TOOL Not a Solution

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

There is a formidable conference, next month, that entertains the marriage of technology and real estate. I’ll be sharing the stage with one of the guys who started the whole RE.net, Dustin Luther. Kris Berg, Jim Duncan, Dan Green, and Jay Thompson, all giants in this space, will be contributing to the collective conversation as featured speakers.

Technology and real estate brokerage is an extraordinary marriage that is approaching its 10th or 15th anniversary, amid a misunderstood and sometimes tumultuous relationship. If you attended one on Dustin Luther’s “Relevance on the Internet” seminars, you might remember his history of the courtship. Dustin explained that the tech guys saw the large margins in our businesses as an opportunity to profit off of market inefficiencies. Of course, when they got their heads under the hood they found that the engine runs a little differently than they thought.

Online mortgage lending seemed to be the easiest way to disintermediate my kind. My kind responded with an explosion of product offerings that made the consumers beg for a helping human hand. Today, as the popularity of the 30 year fixed conforming loan is rising, the opportunity to disintermediate, once again, seems imminent. The need to “de-commoditize” your service offering, as a mortgage adviser, is more prevalent now than ever before. The banks and government are conspiring to limit consumer choices and do away with my kind in a cartel-like affront not seen since James Fisk and Jay Gould tried to corner the gold market, in 1869.

Advise and timely execution is all an independent mortgage originator has to offer, right now. Our “wholesale access” to residential real estate capital is dwindling and the information advantage we hoarded is being liberated by the transparency of information technology. Yet the very tool that contributed to our demise, information technology, can be the most important weapon in our arsenal as we fight our way to survival.

Success in this game will be a migration towards the concept of fiduciary from the bonds of functionary. If the consumer values you as Read more

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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