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Category: Technology (page 51 of 60)

June 5, 2007

Second thoughts on real estate video production: Video Verite — what video can and cannot do

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is a piece of the video we shot on Sunday. There’s another segment, on marketing, that I may post, also.

This film is a discussion of the nature of discursive prose as an art form, and why video, for all its strengths, cannot supplant prose in weblogging.

This could easily be the most hirsute real estate video you will ever watch. We trip lightly between art and philosophy, taking a moment to reflect upon the Swan of Avon along the way. I started out thinking that the exercise was a complete waste, but, in the end, I think you’ll find that the content, static thought it may be, repays your time.

June 4, 2007

First thoughts on real estate video production: Stuff that works

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I took the Bert and Ernie movie to YouTube to see how it would translate. I had read that much of the YouTube quality issue, that awful blocky MPEGulation, was caused by the quality of the source video, and I wanted to put it that notion to the test. Whatever B&EbtUSA lacks in cinematic art, it is decent-quality NTSC video. In other words, if you drove it into your television, it would look like TV-quality video. Bottom line: Not great, not awful. YouTube clearly is imposing its own compression on the source video, resulting in a significant loss of quality. Even so, the results are not nearly as bad as we resign ourselves to accepting from YouTube. My guess is that worst YouTube videos are being scaled up from iPod-sized source videos.

I think it’s funny to make a video about weblogging, so Cathy and I had our revenge yesterday at open house: We made a two-shot talking had video about video. It’s actually deeply philosophical, which is what poor Cathy has to live through when she lets me talk. But I haven’t cut it together yet, so that will have to wait.

Another project is to recut the Almeria video to try to make it a little less visually disquieting.

Recall that the original idea behind that film was to come up with an alternative to the “this… is… the… master… bed… room…” style of real estate video. In the film Cathy and I shot yesterday, we spend some time talking about the Greek idea of historia — the notion that history is not just a chronicle of events but, rather, an interpretive context — a story. I believe that real estate video works when it works as a story and not just as a visual summary of the MLS listing.

As a separate expression of that same kind of idea, BloodhoundBlog contributor Doug Quance brings forth A Study In Staging A Home In Atlanta. The home is shown to full advantage, but, by making the film about the story of the staging of the house, we don’t feel Read more

June 3, 2007

Blogwisdom: Be found, be relevant, don’t be spam-tossed and don’t even think about being evil in the Church of Google

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Lorelle on WordPress has advice on using the Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress.

Invisible Inkling has good news for newspapers: Weblogs won’t make you irrelevant if you breathe deep and catch a clue.

From my own mailbox there’s this: Along with millions of other people, I whitelist emails composed entirely of images or with images in the signature area as spam. I’ve been doing this since the financial and sex-drug spammers switched to image-based emails. What this means is that if you have a logo or a head shot attachment in your email, many, many people are throwing away your email without seeing it. Interestingly, lately my SMTP server (cox.net), is not accepting emails with images attached in the sig. In other words, if I fish your email out of my spam folder and reply to it, I have to cut your pix out of the sig in order to get my own email server not to regard it as spam. Verbum sapienti sat est.

Seth on The New York Times on Google’s top-secret search algorithm lab:

Being first in the Google rankings is more important than it ever was. And getting there is now more straightforward (but not easier) than ever.

It seems to me that in the SEO arms race, shortcuts have a shorter shelf-life than ever before. Building 43 is obsessed with them, and they outnumber whoever you might hire to beat the system. Organic success, on the other hand, is a clear path. If you want to be on the front page of matches for “White Plains Lawyer”, then the best choice is to build a series of pages (on your site, on social sites, etc.) that give people really useful information. Not just boilerplate information you stole from a legal website, but really useful stuff about you, the local courts, the forms people need… the things you’d want to find if you were doing that search.

The Times article is fascinating.

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May 31, 2007

Tennessee commission rebate ban signed into law

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the the Nashville Tennessean:

Gov. Phil Bredesen has signed a bill reinstating a ban on cash rebates for home sales and other real estate transactions, despite opposition from consumer advocates and federal antitrust officials.

The bill signed late Wednesday reverses a decision made earlier this month by state regulators to repeal the ban under pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Many flat-fee and discount real estate brokerages use rebates to reduce their commissions, which are set by home sellers. Justice Department lawyers have challenged cash rebate bans in several states, saying the bans hinder competition among agents.

But the Tennessee Association of Realtors urged lawmakers to reinstate the ban. They said the ban protects consumers from backroom deals between agents and outside parties, such as referral services and mortgage lenders.

The association also said discount brokerages can reduce their commissions by offering non-cash incentives, such as gift cards and services, or by renegotiating commission rates with sellers and their agents.

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May 31, 2007

Trulian overdue improvement: Zillow.com makes Home Q&A searchable by location

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Zillow Blog:

One request we received over and over again (including impassioned pleas from our own president, Lloyd Frink) was to let people see a list of Home Q&A in their city or ZIP code. Agents and other real estate professionals want to see what questions are being asked in their area and to help answer those questions. Homeowners want to see what people are saying about homes in their specific neighborhood.

Well, as of Tuesday night, your requests have been answered. On the Zillow home page, just below the two sample Home Q&A’s, is a new link that says “See Home Q&A in your area.” Click on it, and you’ll be taken to a page where you can type in any city and state or ZIP code and see the most recent questions and answers being asked about homes in that area.

This is an important catch-up to Trulia.com’s recent upgrades.

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May 29, 2007

Ask the Blogger: How much is eleven months in dog years?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This came in by email:

I find myself commenting on more and more of your blogs, because of my respect for some of your writers.

My concern is who are your readers?

How large is your audience?

Are we dealing with real estate professionals or the general public?

BloodhoundBlog is eleven months’ old today. We’re whipping up the batter for a first-birthday cake that — I assure you — Odysseus will be more than happy to eat.

Who are our readers?: Real estate professionals, by an overwhelming margin.

Weekdays are strong, weekends are weaker, but we average around 1,200 unique visitors a day. Those are click-through visitors, people who are actually landing on one or more of our pages. The overwhelming majority of them come from sites we know, mainly other real estate weblogs. A significant portion come from search engines, this because we tend to score very high on certain industry-related searches.

In addition, we have a very strong RSS subscriber base. How strong, precisely, I do not know, this because I don’t like routing traffic through third-party vendors. On top of that, we add new email-based subscriptions every day. For these latter, I see actual email addresses, so I know for sure we are appealing to real estate professionals.

There’s more I could say. For example, Google Analytics tells me that our readership is extremely “sticky”: Thousands of people have visited BloodhoundBlog hundreds of times. Since last August, when I installed Google Analytics, more than 42,000 individuals have visited us 9 or more times. Over 20,000 people have come here 51 or more times. Again, this ignores RSS subscribers. We are talking to a large, growing and very loyal audience.

Why does it work so well? I don’t suffer the curse of modesty, so I’ll tell the bald truth: We are as popular as we are because we deserve to be. We write wisely, wittily and well about things that matter to real estate professionals. We don’t divide our attentions trying to serve two divergent audiences, and we are so far-flung as to be completely location-independent. We are philosophically and temperamentally diverse, and yet we are able Read more

May 28, 2007

Elaborating the video slideshow beyond all reason: Bert and Ernie BlogTourUSA, the movie

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I got Final Cut Express HD for the Macintosh on Friday. Call it semi-pro video editing software, appropriate to folks like me with significant commercial needs but with neither the time nor the talent to make use of a higher-priced spread.

What you get with Final Cut Express is multi-track video and sound editing with cable-channel-like titling and a blue million sound effects. It doesn’t do green-screen superimposition (I don’t think), but the fanatical home-movie mechanic has everything he needs to alienate an entire family reunion in one elaborate film.

What I want, for now at least, it to insert slide-show images over live video, and I spent a bunch of time playing with those toys over the weekend. Today I built what I think will be my final statement on the video slide show: No full-motion video, but loads of fun with transitions.

I have loads to learn, but I think this hangs together pretty well. Give it a look. It’s fun.

May 25, 2007

MLS ‘ad’ crackdown a waste of time, expert says

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me in today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link):

MLS ‘ad’ crackdown a waste of time, expert says

Here’s an interesting conundrum: MLS rules forbid one broker from advertising another’s listings without permission. The question is this: What is advertising?

At first blush, you might say that advertising is paid space or time in a publication or on a broadcasting outlet and that the rule is devised to prevent Broker Paul from advertising Broker Peter’s listings as if they were his own.

Surely it would be sleazy of Broker Paul to do that, but the rule itself is not without stain. Why wouldn’t Broker Peter want free advertising for his listings?

Because he wants to maximize his chances for representing both the seller and the buyer, taking commissions from both.

With the advent of the Internet, though, things are getting more complicated. Zillow.com, the Seattle-based real estate portal, will permit anyone, including Realtors, to announce that a particular home is for sale. Is this advertising another broker’s listings?

Seattle’s Redfin.com, a discount brokerage, built weblogs devoted to reviews of listed homes. The Northwest Multiple Listing Service has ordered the company to shut these sites down, assessing a $50,000 fine, claiming that the property reviews are advertising.

Two points to consider: First, nothing prevents ordinary people from saying whatever they choose, subject to libel laws, about a property. The only people to be restrained from speaking are MLS members, who presumably have the most information to share.

Secondly, these conversations will go on.

The Internet massively reduces the cost of sharing and acquiring information. The natural course of events for net-savvy consumers is to obtain as much information as possible before buying or selling anything.

Truly, resistance to this indefatigable quest for information is futile. So, smart vendors embrace it.

When you shop for a book on Amazon.com, at the bottom of the page you will find reviews by ordinary people, some positive, some negative — and the reviews themselves are rated by other users.

If Realtors, through the MLS, elect to exclude themselves from Net-based conversations about particular properties for sale, they will hurt no one but themselves.

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May 25, 2007

Newspapers are here to stay: I read all about it on-line

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Wall Street Journal On-line (you can’t make this stuff up):

Even a 30-inch screen can’t match the readability of what cheaply spits out of a printing press. I really believe that the copy protection mechanism for newspapers is their consumer interface, in the form of ink spurted on newsprint.

The author then runs down the litany of new technologies that will bust up the electronic media oligopoly, all seemingly without understanding that print is already on the other side of that hump.

The ultimate argument: Print will triumph because it shackles end-users in a prison of atoms. Print is better because it is user-hostile. You can’t copy it. You can’t extract from it and blog about it, as I am doing here. You can’t share it with a friend except in the same way you might share a communicable disease.

Breathe deep, pal. There’s a clue in the air. If you’re very lucky, you just might catch it.

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May 24, 2007

Making movies: Wrestling with science, commerce and art to sell the idea of a unique and distinctive Phoenix

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I don’t think I’m done with this yet, but it’s coming along. I mentioned last week that I’ve been making a movie in all my spare time. I’ve got about two weeks in the project by now, most of that lost to rendering and FTP. I may start over again tomorrow, but you can see where it stands for now, if you like.

The little idea is to show off how unique, interesting and beautiful homes in Phoenix can be, contrary to our bad press:

Phoenix is sometimes maligned as a vast suburb crawling with tract houses. The complaint is not without some truth, although our tract home neighborhoods can yield some very pleasant surprises. And every home is unique, no matter how similar it might seem to be to its neighbors.

But Cathleen and I get to spend much of our time in Phoenix neighborhoods where every home truly is unique — the historic and architecturally distinctive neighborhoods of Central and North Phoenix, where virtually every structure is a one-off expression of some one artist’s or craftsman’s vision.

The big idea, of course, is to learn how to make movies that will sell houses and us as Realtors and our brokerage.

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May 24, 2007

Trulia.com raises an additional $10 million

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

So says BlogForward in a strange little post. That puts the San Francisco-based Realty.bot’s total VC investment at $18 million, so far.

Further notice: TruliaBlog, TechCrunch, John Cook’s Venture Blog. The BlogForward post is actually a splog of this Venture Beat article, a tendentious mess of unquestioned, uncited misinformation (e.g., “Zillow and Trulia don’t divulge their traffic”).

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May 22, 2007

Watermark play: Ten samples for proof

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Using PicMark for the Macintosh, I built a watermark that satisfies my objective: To put a proprietary mark on photos that does not destroy the beauty of the image. I also wanted to satisfy Thomas Johnson’s goal, to put a web address on each photo.

The ten examples below show the watermark I built. It’s not perfect — there is one photo where I can’t find the semi-invisible mark. But if we presume any thieves are likely to steal more than one picture, we have an excellent chance of catching them. Moreover, being so obviously marked, it’s seems at least plausible that they won’t steal our photos at all.


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May 22, 2007

The Way of the Rain Dogs: Peeing on your pictures to mark your Zestifarm — and to avoid becoming an unpuppy

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is from mail from Thomas Johnson of ERA Houston, which, among other things, coins the terms “Zestifarm” and “Zestifarming” for the various ways one can pee on the tree in Zillow:

I love the marking your farm analogy. I walk my dog, Sophie, every evening and I have noticed that she marks everything that is of higher than average height: a clump of grass, a twig, a lump of Spanish moss, whatever. I liken that to canine text messaging a quick sniff, squirt and move on. When we get to the mailboxes, it is different. That is much more interesting. There is lots of sniffing and squirting. I guess we could call that pee mail. My takeaway is that there are so many little repetitions that we can use to mark our Zestifarms. And, the price is right.

Less like pee mail, more like Twitter. Even so, I just quoted that part to make the girls squeal. But: Nothing focuses the mind like an apposite metaphor. One theory says that dogs mark their territory so they can find their way home if they get lost. Hence the poor, lost Rain Dogs.

Dog owners know better: Dogs mark to cover the scent left by other dogs. To have your pee peed on is to become an unpuppy:

I spent the night tossing and turning thinking about “marking my farm”. I think that an agent could take over the cyber neighborhood before the entrenched legacy agent/broker even knew what was happening. A while ago, I bought a cheap little program called “watermark it”. It enables you to digitally watermark photos. I bought it to protect my MLS photos, but it was banned by policy. My 4 AM revelation was to watermark my Zestifarm photos with a small web address. It would not hyperlink, but “Kilroy was here”.

This is something that I’ve been thinking about, but I hadn’t done anything about it until I got this mail. As I mentioned before, there is an even better “pee on the tree strategy” than listing homes for sale:

Instead of announcing homes for sale, walk the neighborhoods you farm, taking 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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