{"id":2108,"date":"2007-10-27T02:34:53","date_gmt":"2007-10-27T09:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=2108"},"modified":"2007-10-27T02:36:24","modified_gmt":"2007-10-27T09:36:24","slug":"the-disintermediation-of-torquemada-the-inquisitor-do-we-dare-interrogate-ourselves-about-the-future-of-real-estate-representation-and-what-fate-awaits-all-dinosaurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2108\/the-disintermediation-of-torquemada-the-inquisitor-do-we-dare-interrogate-ourselves-about-the-future-of-real-estate-representation-and-what-fate-awaits-all-dinosaurs\/","title":{"rendered":"The disintermediation of Torquemada the Inquisitor: Do we dare interrogate ourselves about the future of real estate representation? And: What fate awaits all dinosaurs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1991, I was approached by Garry Fairbairn (he must<\/i> have been a beautiful baby) of the Western Producer<\/i> in Saskatoon (or maybe it was Regina), Saskatchewan, Canada to write a simple batch global search and replace utility that the paper could use to translate American wire service copy to King’s English spellings — color to colour, favor to favour, etc.<\/p>\n

That was the birth of Torquemada the Inquisitor. Ultimately it came to be much more powerful, but, in the beginning, it did nothing but search for and replace string literals. I was developing a reputation as a Macintosh software developer who was interested in big text-processing problems. There was a good reason for this: I had big text-processing problems and I wrote software to solve them. Torquemada used the then-new drag-‘n’-drop technology in the Mac OS to permit users to run an unlimited number of pre-saved search sets on an unlimited number of text files. If you could write well-defined, error-trapped searches, you could automate a big chunk of your workflow.<\/p>\n

Subsequent versions added wildcard searches, type-casting, wild strings, case-conversion, etc. Torquemada was pattern matching along the lines of the Unix GREP utility, but it was optimized for repetitive tasks common to text-processing, word-processing and typography. It was very useful in the early days of web-page creation, as well.<\/p>\n

I named it Torquemada because I had already written a utility called XP8 (expiate, get it?). This was built to correct a huge number of defects common to word processing files in those days. In addition, it would pre-code text to be imported into QuarkXPress — then and now high-end Macintosh desktop publishing software — with many typographic refinements coded into the text on the fly. XP8 would remove the excess white space from around the numeral “1,” for instance, intelligently ignoring the lining figures in tables. It did quote-conversion better than any software before or since.<\/p>\n

These two utilities had fairly similar objectives, and both were built expecting to do huge batch jobs by drag-‘n’-drop. XP8 was a brute-force front-end to Quark, though, where Torquemada was a general purpose text revisionist. In practice, for Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1991, I was approached by Garry Fairbairn (he must have been a beautiful baby) of the Western Producer in Saskatoon (or maybe it was Regina), Saskatchewan, Canada to write a simple batch global search and replace utility that the paper could use to translate American wire service copy to King’s English spellings — color […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,5,30,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-disintermediation","7":"category-marketing","8":"category-real-estate","9":"category-supplanting-the-nar","10":"category-technology","12":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":153,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/153\/technology-wont-replace-agents-agents-with-technology-will-replace-agents\/","url_meta":{"origin":2108,"position":0},"title":"“Technology won’t replace agents. Agents with technology will replace agents.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 29, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"RealtyThoughts, citing Altos Research. Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":270,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/270\/disintermediation-defenestration-its-all-good\/","url_meta":{"origin":2108,"position":1},"title":"Disintermediation? Defenestration? It’s all good . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 31, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"If, like me, you are stuck using Windows because dipsh*t developers write websites that are Microsoft Internet Explorer only -- such as the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service's Tempo system -- rejoice in the arrival of Crossover for the Macintosh. It's a WINE environment that permits you to run a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2336,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2336\/seth-unchained-obtaining-permission-to-put-yourself-beyond-competition\/","url_meta":{"origin":2108,"position":2},"title":"Seth unchained: Getting permission to put yourself beyond competition","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 7, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Another way of understanding the unchained idea is to envision a world (I call it yesterday) where marketers avidly sought ways to tie down consumers -- with tricks, with lies, with a lack of alternatives. Consumers have broken those chains. That world is gone. Here is Seth Godin talking about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":572,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/572\/links-on-the-lam-a-series-of-interstitial-notices\/","url_meta":{"origin":2108,"position":3},"title":"Links on the lam: A series of interstitial notices . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 25, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm juggling stuff, so I'm going to try to sneak in some little things fast. There's a lot of great stuff out there... Pat Kitano at TransparentRE has a nice scary story for Halloween: The disintermediation of the bond traders. Alive with numbers, Kevin Boer at Three Oceans Real Estate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2789,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2789\/ozymandias-wept\/","url_meta":{"origin":2108,"position":4},"title":"Ozymandias wept…","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"We'll be back. Technorati Tags: blogging, BloodhoundBlog Unchained, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography, technology","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":347,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/347\/welcome-to-the-machine\/","url_meta":{"origin":2108,"position":5},"title":"Welcome to the machine . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Redfin asserts itself. You were saying...? 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