I love Hulu. Yeah, I know, I’ve said it alot. I don’t bother with cable, I get all my content online. It’s a good place to be (and is cheaper than paying cable and Internet bills, IMHO).
Google Labs is always coming out with something cool and new (if ONLY they had the same stuff for my google apps paid account!) and now my favorite video site has a “labs” offering too.
So if you want to go check it out, you can play around in Hulu’s Lab too!
I hope that an expanded play list will be added to this great new resource for those iPhones and iPod Touch models availing themselves of the use of a wi-fi connection.
Hollywood Pocket is a website offering Quicktime movies that download and play beautifully straight from the website. The selection is rather small now, but I hope it will grow.
This resource is a great example of what could be done with the the wi-fi access of these pocket devices. Since I get most of my television shows from the Internet these days (through Hulu usually or straight from the TV websites), I’d love to see iPhone-friendly layouts for those.
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to cruise to the latest episode of Bones or Life or Gossip Girl (yeah I watch it, so sue me), or a dozen other great options — all on my iPhone?
If the idea is to increase viewership, I’d hope that one of the executives realizes that there are some of us who would not only use the service, but would wax poetic about it if it were available.
In the meantime, check out Hollywood Pocket and see what (I hope) the future will hold.
With the market like it is right now, you may want to take the time to build up marketing impact when the daily work of real estate isn’t all-consuming. Are you interested in finding new ways to advertise your listing online to improve that home’s chance of selling, while boosting your own visibility?
Featured Listings
Here’s a list of a few of the best online resources for advertising yourself… er… I mean your listing. Be sure that you have your listing FEATURED on your own home page. By doing this, any incoming links “for more information” will lead to the index page of your website. So, even if the home sells, you still have a link that’s live and is helping you. And when you sell a home, you will have other “featured” homes listed for the incoming traffic to review.
Landing Pages
You may want to add a landing page that gathers the “from” URL and customizes your website to say, “If you were seeking the featured home from Craig’s List, it’s already sold… but we have these great homes still available! And then list the home you do have featured in a thumbnail format so they can click for more information.
Localized Online Classifieds
Most popular websites for free (or extremely low cost) real estate classified ads today:
http://www.kijiji.com
http://www.craigslist.com/
http://www.backpage.com
http://www.tenant.com/
http://www.nfafn.org/
http://www.usfreeads.com/
http://www.freeclassifiedads.com/
http://listsomething.com/
http://www.nocostclassifieds.com/
http://www.postlets.com/
http://www.facebook.com (Free “MarketPlace” ads)
http://www.trulia.com/
http://base.google.com/
http://www.oodle.com/
http://www.local.com/
http://www.propsmart.com/
http://www.vast.com/
http://byownermls.com/
http://www.livedeal.com
Many of these websites have an expiration day- so don’t forget to renew!
(photo by mconnors of morguefile.com)
Ubiquity, by definition, means being everywhere (or at least seeming to be everywhere) at once. That’s the dream I’ve tried to fulfill for decades. Now, even though I’m more about “slowing down” and taking life a bit easier — I’m still a stress-monger when I’m online.
When I’m on the web, I always juggle a dozen things (at least) at any given time. So when I find a tool that promises some relief… I’ll take it!
I find that my online workstyle is a bit schizophrenic — I’m so many different people, going in so many different directions. The problem is compounded now that I’m participating in several social networking groups. It’s hard to get all the different versions of me synthesized back into a single entity once my workday is over.
Life seems a bit fractured. Between you and me, carrying an iPhone everywhere doesn’t help, but I won’t eliminate that complication — I’m addicted. 
A new Foxfire addon, Ubiquity, promises to whittle away at my problem. And the way it does it — by using standard language commands to do a whole slew of tasks online from inside your browser window — is simply awe-inspiring!
With a shortcut command (the standard is alt-space, but you can set it to anything you like), a grease-monkey overlay pops up and you can use plain language to do what you want. Like… “Twitter I’m testing Ubiquity and am loving it!” and it updates your twitter. Ditto for the steps to update Facebook. Other platforms are probably planned for the future.
I’m still just testing this little gem, but so far, I’m loving it. It’s still under development. It’s free. And, it promises to be just one more reason that I’ll never give up Firefox.
The only thing that I don’t like is that it’s still limited to Google Calendar and Google Mail for the quick launch apps (and I’m using Google Apps which doesn’t play the same way.) Learn more on the Ubiquity Wiki. Then download Ubiquity and try it for yourself!
I blog. I’ve blogged since the turn of the century. (I just love saying that!)
I love saying it, even though it makes me sound like I’m sitting in a bentwood rocker, creaking slowly back and forth, reflecting on my long-ago wonder years.
During the course of the last decade, it occurs to me that, when it comes to blogging, there are four distinct groups of people.
Early adopters:
There are some forward-thinking folks that fall into this category, but even those bright-eyed optimists in the early days of blogging were usually shocked at the outpouring of benefits and followers of this new format for online communications and (a bit later) for relationship-building.
Gee-whiz folks:
I’ll admit that I did my blogging anonymously in the early days, before I was quite comfortable with this “complete transparency” concept.
The folks in my group may or may not “get” how important blogging is to a small business, but they do it because… like any other opportunity to write… it must be done or because their inner geek cries out for it.
The opportunity to publish my stuff in a WORLD-WIDE forum was just too alluring to ignore. I started with small, personal vignettes, and moved up to articles on technology, marketing, real estate, politics and personal opinions. Those of us in this group quickly discovered the many layers of benefits. Many of us became blogging evangelists.
The “but” folks:
Some members of this group, know they need to blog, they understand the importance, but they never seem to find the time.
The members of this group usually don’t blog or at least they don’t blog for long. They are the reason that so many new blogs, like new businesses, fail in the first few months.
There is always something a bit more important to do, or they genuinely doubt the long-term advantages. These are the same folks that have business leads sitting on their desk that are days, or weeks, old. They really intend to get to them, but they never quite manage to do so in a timely fashion. It’s sad.
Case-study: I was meeting with a client this week. I’ve been preaching “blog” at this guy for over two years now. I even showed him a blogger in his own market a year ago and said, “This is your competition — he’s going to eat you alive because he blogs and you won’t.”
His response? “I never heard of him.”
(Note: a few months later, said competing blogger powned most of the best search terms in my client’s market.) The client ignored this and refused to discuss said blogger with me anymore. It became a not-so-silent point of contention.
Suddenly, this week, he calls all excited.
After agreeing to do regular blogging for 30 days — JUST this ONE month — he’s seeing a huge boost in his Google results on his key terms. Go figure. (I guess that 30-day challenge — which was my desperate final attempt to move him — was a better idea than I’d hoped!)
“This blogging thing,” he tells me, “it really works!”
“Oh?!?!” I reply, “this blogging thing? Really? Who’da thunk it?”
“No really!!” he insists, all jazzed up and trying to explain that he’s now a convert.
I roll my eyes silently, despite my quite audible huff, and am thankful that I’m not on webcam for this particular call.
All I can say is it’s a good thing that he’s a couple states away, or I may have been tempted to hop in my little car, drive to his office and shake him with my bare hands until his teeth rattled.
(Yes, I know that’s HORRIBLY unprofessional, but I don’t really care — that was my honest impulse.)
The best I can hope is that he will now blog on a regular basis. He’s already agreed to craft his titles with effective SEO in mind and with more thoughtful consideration on how to grab more attention from his visitors. We had a tutorial on that this week.
He has also endured “how to categorize” and “how to tag” tutorial sessions, so — who knows?!?! Maybe he finally has hopped the fence to become a believer. I guess stranger things have happened.
The nay-sayers:
Case in point: My father. Just yesterday he and I had a conversation wherein he said, “I argued with him (a mutual friend) about this blog crap, and he’s like you… he thinks it’s great. I want MY news and information to come from a source that’s been vetted and checked and has at least had an editor look over it. I don’t care what someone without anything more than a computer and a website has to say about something.”
And my response, as a long-time blogger was rather snippy (it WAS my father, after all), “Yeah, I see how wonderfully well-researched and balanced the national news is these days as a result of following your prescription for perfection.” (This was a continuation of an earlier and ongoing debate about the way the election and every other important news item is being covered — or not covered — by today’s media.) We like this debate (we must) because we have it often.
He “humphed,” and I “humphed.”
I reminded him that I’d been a journalist, a newspaper editor, and had been making my living as a writer and researcher for nearly ten years now and that I blogged.
He summarily excused me from the “bloggers” category he was blasting. (There are some advantages to being an offspring — like being excused from a group of wayward souls by your parentals.)
I “humphed!” again.
His views however, are fairly common. Many people assume that online conversations are meaningless. They assume that bloggers don’t take the time to verify their sources. Sometimes that may be true. After all, it’s often true with journalists. (I know — I used to check the sources on some of my reporters’ stories before printing them.)
Because he thinks blogs are unimportant, it never ceases to amaze him when I pop up in a Google search on the front page. I try to explain how and why, but I might as well be describing the attributes of magic.
He now uses the “customer reviews” on his favorite websites, but flatly refuses to ever leave any feedback of his own. He won’t do it.
So I know he understands the value of “collective” experience and collective thought being shared about specific computer products on, say, NewEgg.com (his favorite online vendor). But he feels no responsibility to reciprocate or participate in the building of that knowledge base. (I’m still working on that one with him.)
To try to explain micro-blogging and twitter to my father makes him ready to fight. So, I give up.
The fact is, my father doesn’t really need blogging (he has me to listen to him on his soapbox) and he doesn’t need twitter (although he’d enjoy it and learn a lot if he’d permit himself to try). Pops doesn’t run a small business and he can just forget about the conversations on the web and the cutting edge thinking and continue digesting the pablum that the national media outlets dispense. (And, I told him as much.)
My clients… and YOU — if you are working on the web… can’t afford to ignore it. Blogs aren’t dead. They are stronger than ever, it’s just not as easy to own (pown) your niche now as it was a few years ago.
And despite what you may have heard, the new microblogs, relationship marketing, and other forms of social media haven’t replaced blogging. They have augmented blogging and have brought a whole new, shorter format to the online, immediate communications realm. Personally, I find it all quite alluring.