4realz.net

… continues to move towards a more backend technology play as oppose to a front-end consumer destination site.  I think that’s a smart move by them.

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[UPDATE: This edition of the 4realz Roundtable is now live and you can listen to it at the bottom of this post!]

As part of my hunt for new marketing tools for agents, I’d love to take on a relevant topic similar to how we took on tracking and analytics for agents last week.
With that in [...]

NOTE:  You can listen to the podcast and read a brief summary of the show at the bottom of the post!
As I mentioned last week, I’m putting together a list of resources for agents for a presentation at RE Connect…  and at the end of the process, I’ll end up with a list of [...]

…I’d hate to rely on a working internet connection when in front of an audience!
When I embed an internet videos in a presentation, I always make sure to be running off a copy that has been saved to my hard-drive.
Here is one way to make this happen:

Install the Firefox extension DownloadHelper
Download & install Riva FLV [...]

…is particularly interesting.

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…I subscribe to more than a few Google Alerts.  These ping me (via email) any time my name or blogs are mentioned on the web.
My only complaint is that I wish Google offered to give up their “comprehensive” alert as an RSS feed, but for the time being they don’t, so I’m stuck using email [...]

…which is particularly timely because I had two conversations with people running agent review sites in the past 24 hours, where they showed me new stuff they are going to be releasing in the next few days/weeks.
I found these quotes from Michael’s post most interesting:
“Perhaps more importantly, is it possible to synthesize this data into [...]

I think I’ve recovered enough now to actually post about it!
Despite our best efforts to be prepared, the day started off a bit rough with a nearby mudslide taking out power in our building in the morning (meaning no hot coffee and no projector) and a 9-car pileup on a nearby freeway [...]

As I said to when I started the 4realz interviews, I reached out to four players in the real estate technology space and asked them a similar set of 9 questions.   I purposefully picked four people representing four different companies at different stages of development and different types/levels of funding.   First was Marty [...]

…done even attempted to add value to their brands/websites by capturing the contributions/knowledge of their agents.   I fully realize that brokerages don’t see themselves as publishes (except of listings!), but it would just take one large brokerage to substantially change the game if they could build the right tools and incentives that would encourage their [...]

… Or am I just having too much fun digging into the US Patent Office website for patent applications filed by Zillow employees? (Previous patent digs can be found on my post about Zillow’s auction patent…)
THE FIND: A team of Zillow employees applied for a patent on an “Interactive floorplan viewer” in Nov [...]

(some names left anonymous to protect the innocent)

There’s a hell of a lot of VC money floating around this industry. I was surprised at how many people there were with lots of VC funding. Joel seemed to notice the same thing: “a whole new crop of real [...]

Out of curiosity about a fellow panelist at the CB event, I did a google search on Jorritt Van der Muelen, it brought back a few blasts from the past… Anyone else remember when Rob McGarty (pre-Redfin days) was talking about Zillow’s application to patent an auction marketplace around real estate listings? [...]

…I believe him on two accounts:

He resigned (was not fired).
He is working on something interesting.

I won’t say (even if I knew) what he is up to but would be fascinated to hear some speculation on what the Point2 team members who left should build.   Is there any empty space left to build a niche in [...]

…great new features on Estately: Notes on a property.
I’m thinking that if Estately had a mobile search so that a buyer (or agent!) could leave notes while in the field, then that would be extra useful.

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…I’m not zeeing much different.
Maybe because I’m on a mac (using Firefox)… Or maybe because I’m searching in “The Valley” of LA… Or maybe because I simply don’t remember what searching by neighborhood was like on Zillow before… but I’m lot seeing much that lives up to the hype around Smart Search:
“In fact, we [...]

…in their effort to break open your gmail contact list with the latest addition to Google Reader Interestingly, I mined the service last night for my Burger King post after seeing Paul Chaney had “shared” it in Google Reader.
The gap between Google Reader and other feed readers just got even wider, so [...]

…naturally go together.  But if anyone at NAR can pull off Second Century, it would be Mark Lesswing.
Real estate tech startups: it’s time to rev your engines.
“Lesswing said that the company is already accepting submissions for project proposals. He also said that he will be in attendance at the Real Estate Connect conference in New [...]

… Creative Commons photos from Flickr could make the Yahoo Shortcuts plugin worth installing. (via Matt)

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