My Tablet PC is on the ropes… and as much as I wanted to get another, I couldn’t… I got a “normal” laptop…  It is still pretty cool.

I got another Toshiba, the last one was mostly trouble free for the last 5years, I can’t really complain.  I did consider a few other machines…

• HP TouchSmart TM2.  This is a convertible Tablet PC, like my old one, except smaller.  While it was my first choice, it was also around $1000… and so I opted for being able to return home…
• Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1325RD.  This borders on the Ultra-Portable range.  It is small, with a 13.3″ screen.  It was a hard one for me NOT to get.  It runs about $600, but Office Depot had it on sale for $530.  I might have been able to come home, but it wouldn’t have been fun…
• Toshiba Satellite T115S-S1120.  I actually bought this one… but then found out that the processor was just a single core, unlike the previously mentioned machines.  IT was on sale for $470 at Office Depot…
• Toshiba Satellite L505D-LS5007.  We almost had a winner, but I really wanted a smaller machine with more battery life.  The price was certainly right, $550… on sale for $400 at Office Depot.  The size was the only issue… and if I was dedicated to using it as my only machine, I might have gone for it…
• Apple iPad…  Sorry, but it really wasn’t seriously in the game.  Aside from not being available yesterday, the performance is sub-par for a real computer.  The price wasn’t bad for an Apple… but I need WAY more flexibility.
• Toshiba Satellite® L515-S4010…  We have a winner.  A little more battery life than the big machines and a little smaller.  It also has a little bigger screen and built in optical drive compared to the little ones.  The price was marked down from $570 to $500.

So, that is what I looked at and what I ended up with.  I’m still getting used to Windows 7 (Home Premium).  I like it, but it is a big change from where I was.  I have MS Office 2010, FireFox, Thunderbird, Open Office and most of the rest of the stuff I need loaded up…

The “old” Tablet PC isn’t going to go away.  I loved having the ability to write on my screen and a lot of the functionality of the Tablet.  We aren’t sure what the problem is, but we are going to play with it and hot rod it some.  It doesn’t HAVE to start up on Monday morning to go to work anymore, so there are some things we can try…

Anyone have a license for Windows Vista or Windows 7 laying around that they aren’t using anymore? I’ve heard that it can be ‘mostly’ upgraded to run those…  I’ve already upgraded to a 320GB Hard Drive and 4GB of RAM.  The problem might be an intermittent issue with Windows (we have just completed a fresh install to test) or it could be a motherboard issue…

In with the new…  ;^ )

For those that so, you are a a geek.  I am too.

For those that don’t, it is generally an EXTREMELY dry video where a reviewer opens the box of a groovy new product and introduces the viewer to all of the cool stuff inside.  Usually there is a monotone voice over that makes Golf announcers seem exciting. The reviewer pulls out each and every piece and describes it’s function…

“This is the AC wall adapter.  It charges the battery and can run the laptop from AC power.” Really?  Whoda thunkit?

Patrick Boivin slapped that model to the ground and kicked it in the teeth… Ninja style.  This has got to be the coolest unboxing I have seen.

NINJA’S UNBOXING

I wonder if unboxing videos are going to undergo big changes as a result…  Probably not.

from GwinnettGarageGuy.com

If you haven’t been in Gmail lately, you might not have noticed Google’s new toy tool.  It is called Google Buzz.  In a nutshell, Google is integrating a social media component into Gmail.

In Buzz, users can strike up public or private conversations with integrated video, photos and links.  Kind of like the Status Updates on FaceBook.  In that regard, it is a step above Twitter… the king of the micro-blog/status update world.  Twitter doesn’t allow inline photos and videos, so when users share them, viewers have to leave Twitter to view the associated content.

I haven’t had a lot of time to play in it, but it seems kind of like “Google Wave Lite” to me…  Google Wave has many of the same types of features… of course it adds a LOT more integration with a wider variety of tools… and isn’t tuned to automatically pull in content as sites like Twitter, Flickr and YouTube are updated.

OK, they are very different, but I see the same type of collaboration available with Buzz as there is with Wave.

But there is a big picture here…

The big picture is that you NEED a Gmail account.  Google Buzz, Google Wave, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Docs, Google Voice…  Are you getting the big picture?  There is WAY more than that, but those are a good start.

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If you are going to have an effective business blog, the thing you hear over and over is that…

You HAVE to blog consistently.

That seems to come up every time someone talks about business blogging.  But that is the first problem that many beginning bloggers face… kicking out regular posts.  Occasionally, someone defines blogging regularly as posting up a couple of times a week or more.  Face it, if you post up once a month or once a year, even if you do it like clockwork, you won’t build a reader base.  But if you put up a good post three times a week, and the audience knows when to expect new posts, you CAN build a reader base.

Enter the Calendar…

Actually, a VERY specific type of calendar… an Editorial Calendar.  Basically, this is an outline of WHEN you are going to write, and possibly even WHAT you are going to write about.

Whether you are utilizing a theme, writing a series or just want to have posts appear at a consistent interval for your readers, a calendar can do the trick.  It can keep those deadlines in front of you.  I’m using Outlook 2010.  It allows me to have recurring tasks, which make my writing MUCH simpler.  In effect, I can see what types of posts I have coming up, and schedule material to appear.

I tend to write in bursts.  I might knock out three or four posts at one time, and then not write for a couple of days.  With my calendar, I can write a few posts and then fit them into my patterns.  As I write this on Sunday night, my LaneBailey.com post for Monday is already scheduled.  In fact, it has been ready to go since Thursday.

So…

Find a good task/calendar program.  Keep it open.  Use it to schedule posts and keep an eye on when posts are going to be needed.

And don’t forget to be flexible.  If breaking news happens, don’t wait two weeks to write about it because it will mess up your schedule…

from LaneBailey.info

What comes next?  A few years ago, did we see Twitter and FaceBook dominating the horizon?  Did we see MySpace falling off a cliff and becoming a place for bars and bands… and not much else?  Did we see the mobile would still be “just around the corner”?  Did we know that video would be EVERYWHERE… and still be almost here?

Actually, two years ago at REtechSouth, Pat Kitano told me that Twitter was getting ready to go big and that in a few years it would be a dominant social media.  But, while FaceBook was looming, I don’t think it showed up on the radar as the power it has become.

Regardless, this is an interesting video about the future of technology…

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• REtechSouth Tickets on sale NOW! and I have a discount… (lanebailey.info)

I just got back from vacation… Thank you, I enjoyed it very much… The family went to Disney World for a week. While there, I was experimenting (again) with Live Blogging.

Basically, using my BlackBerry, I was uploading pictures, videos and text posts to a blog throughout the day. I did take a few moments out of the fun, but much of what was included were pictures or videos I wanted anyway. And they were things I wanted to share with friends and family (spelled M-O-M).

And that kept creeping a thought into my mind…

Information is speeding…

A couple of centuries ago, news was largely verbal. It might take years for a story to reach people that weren’t local to where it happened. The news would tavel with people that saw it or heard about it and it had to wait until a person took the story to the recipient.

And then, the printing press allowed news to be printed and distributed. As fast as the paper could move, the news could move. It went from the speed of the house to the speed of the train or ship…

A century ago, electricity transformed the speed of news and events. The telegraph, and then the telephone, allowed news to go where ever the wires went… at the speed of electricity… Finally, if a story happened in New York, the news could be in San Fransicso the same day.

When that combined with printing, pictures could go around the world on the same day. Many cities had newspapers publishing twice a day… if it happened in the morning, it could be in your newsbox in the afternoon…

TV changed everything. And when the satellite truck showed up, “Live” replaced “Film at 11″ in the jargon of TV news reporters. TV cameras could capture news live and beam it all over the world. Just a couple of decades ago, this created a massive change in our expectations of news and how it would be relayed.

And then came blogs… The internet really took things to the next level. Even with cable and satellite TV, there are a limited number of channels. And there are a limited number of satellite trucks and live feeds. Maybe there are a few dozen, maybe a few hundred… But the news had to be defined by someone else.

No longer was news defined by someone else…

My family going to Disney World wasn’t cranking the dials at CNN… but, my mom wanted to know what was happening. An rebarcamp in Raleigh or Atlanta or Dallas isn’t bringing out the Fox News satellite trucks… but, there are agents all over the country that DO want to see what happens. Of course there are thousands of examples…

The point is that there are LOTS of things that are news for someone.

A long time ago we counted on someone visiting to tell them about it. Then there was a phone call or a mail with some pictures. Then there might have been a blog post that day or the next where they could see the pictures from the event.

Technology now allows us to broadcast… EVEN LIVE from devices like our mobile phones. We can write posts, add pictures and videos. We can narrate. We can comment.

the question is… “How can we use this?”

Live, from Lane in the field…

Lester and Sylvester at Dino-Rama in Animal Kingdom

But it isn’t the only platform.  In fact, before there was Posterous, there was Tumblr.  And they are very similar.  Similar enough that many think that Posterous took direct aim at Tumblr when they introduced their platform.

There are some things that Posterous has done VERY well… to start with, the emial post capability of Posterous is amazing.  I’m not going to run over all of the options… it is another post… but let’s just say that you can upate any combination of Flickr, FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, your own blog and/or Posterous with one email.  In fact, I would say that Posterous is one of the best syndication tools available.  With just a couple of clicks from your mobile phone, you can syndicate content all over the web…

Tumblr has moved the other direction.  It is a great aggregation tool.  You can pull in content from 5 or more sources to one place.  That is a very nice option.  It is one of the best aggregators available.  But there is something else that Tumblr does better than Posterous (although there is erosion there).  That comes down to “the look”.  Tumblr has great theme options.  Posterous has made their platform (kind of) compatible with the Tumblr themes, but they aren’t quite there yet…  yet.

The bottom line is that both platforms are pretty cool.  They both do much the same thing, but they do it differently and with different strengths and weaknesses.

As mentioned last time in WordPress and Joomla and Active Rain… oh my!, dynamic websites are the direction the web is going.  In order to live in the dynamic website world, you need to produce content.

That is the first problem.  Good, engaging content doesn’t create itself.  Readers want to see pictures and video.  They want interaction.

Image via CrunchBase

I’m AT LEAST as guilty as anyone else of not serving it up sometimes.  One one of my blogs I don’t have any access to a plug-in called Zemanta, and I have to jump through hoops to use Apture.

On my WordPress sites I have both Zemanta and apture installed, so it is easy to amp up the graphics and add video.  Now, on my Joomla sites I also have Zemanta installed.  I still have to jump through a few hoops to run Apture, but I have bookmarked a direct link to the page to build embeds.

Zemanta

Zemanta is a plug-in and site that surfs for images and links that are related to the article (post) you are writing.  Basically, it scans your content and finds related articles and images.  You also have the ability to refine the results (spelled S-E-A-R-C-H) for specific terms if the automatically returned results are getting it for you. Also, through Zemanta, users can allow content to be reblogged, similar to Active Rain’s reblog feature.  A reblog is a reprint of the post (with permission) on another blog.  It basically syndicates the content.

Apture

Apture is slightly different, but geared similarly.  It isn’t automatic, and I find it best geared towards video.  It also has a linking component.  Apture builds mini-galleries.  You can put as many as 6 videos in one embed on the site.  Here is an example in Joomla.  Here is one in WordPress.  (BTW, the first link was created using Apture and the second using WordPress’s editor)  With Apture, you have the capability of combining multiple content types into one embed.  The only thing you can’t combine are links.  Other embeds, like pictures, slide shows, videos, maps, etc CAN be combined.

Combined, there are great options to make a more engaging site, in both WordPress and Joomla, as well as some other platforms.

Back in “the day”, a website was little more than a flyer or brochure that was available on the internet, rather than mailed out.  It might have had as few as one page and as many as five or six pages.  There usually wasn’t a search capability built in, and it was only updated infrequently… if at all.

Today’s websites have all sorts of cool things to draw the consumer’s attention, and to hold it.  Search is a BIG part of that.  Blogs, updated weekly, daily or even more, are another part.  Twitter feeds for breaking news can be included, as can Flickr feeds for new pictures and YouTube feeds for videos.  There might even be links or widgets displaying other blogs or sites…  The possibilities are almost endless.

In short, they provide a new experience each time a consumer visits. Why go back to the website if it is only displaying something that you’ve previously seen or read?

Which leads us to some options…

Active Rain

This is Active Rain. And so it THIS.  Obviously the blog you are looking at is part of Active Rain.  It says so right at the top of the page.  But the link to GwinnettGarageGuy.com is also linking to an Active Rain blog.  It is referred to as an “Outside Blog” or RainMaker Blog.  It has a custom URL and only a very discreet logo in the upper left corner.

There are some tremendous advantages to Active Rain RainMaker Blogs.  To begin with, they offer built in traffic and “Google Juice” (search engine strength).  The traffic comes from the 170,000 members here in the Rain.  They provide a sense of community, as well as feedback and support.  In short, there is a LOT to learn at Active Rain, and being part of the community enriches the experience.

Another great advantage of Active Rain’s RainMaker blogs is ease…  It is SO easy to get rolling. Build a profile, type up a post and publish… you are GOING.  Of course there are plenty of things to learn after that to tweak the performance of your marketing, but you can learn that here in the Rain as well… and a lot of it is free… and of course there are RainCamps to take it to another level.

The drawbacks of the RainMaker Blogs are few…  It costs $29/month. They aren’t as customizable as the other platforms.

In the world of the web, $29 isn’t that much.  There are a lot of agents paying WAY more money for platforms that don’t deliver these results…  But, $29 is $29.

WordPress

Almost everyone has heard of WordPress. Here is a WordPress site… and another one.  Notice that they look NOTHING alike?  That is part of the beauty of WordPress.  Sites can be themed VERY differently and not look at all like “the next site”… or the agent up the street.  Full-on branding.  Every part of the site is customizable and extensible.  There are thousands of widgets and plug-ins to alter the site experience.  Almost anything you can imagine can be accomplished in WordPress.

However, while the platform is free, hosting it isn’t (expect to spend about $100/year).  Also, there are many free themes, but the best ones cost a little money (expect to spend between $30 and $100).  Just a note, don’t bother with WordPress.org… you’ll spend at least as much to get it up to speed as you would with Active Rain, and not have the flexibility of a self-hosted WordPress blog (sometimes called WordPress.org).

Another drawback of WordPress is all of the flexibility… there are too many choices for some people. There are thousands of themes and thousands of plug-ins and you can do almost anything with it…

Joomla

And then there is Joomla.  Only the fairly hardcore know about Joomla!. Here is a Joomla site… and another one.  There are competitors, like Drupal… but Joomla! is the one with the most support.  And much of what I just said about WordPress applies to Joomla.  It is free, but hosting isn’t.  there are free themes, but the cool ones cost money.  There are loads of extensions… and some of them cost a little bit.

But Joomla is WAY more involved and WAY WAY more powerful that WordPress. Using most good hosts, setting up either is easy.  One click in Simple Scripts and the site is live… but after theming and content creation, Joomla requires a structure be thought out in the way content is arranged.  WordPress organizes content more “on the fly”.  Joomla takes a little time to set up BEFORE content starts to flow… it can be done later, but it is much easier to start out with the structure.

Since Joomla was designed as a Content Management System, that is what it does best.  It can be a news magazine.  It can be a search portal.  It can be a blog. Honestly, being a blog for Joomla is like driving a Corvette ZR1 as a golf cart… you can do it, but that isn’t really using the power.  But incorporating a blog into Joomla is pretty easy…

In fact, using my theme provider, theming a WordPress blog and a Joomla site to look like family is pretty easy.  So, for the consumer, the experience of moving back and forth between the joomla CMS and the WordPress blog is almost seamless… even if they have different domians.  LaneBailey.com and GarageHomesUSA.com are completely different sites and different platforms.  They could even be with different hosts…

FaceBook and Posterous

There are other options as well, and the leader among those are FaceBook Fan Pages and Posterous.  Both are free options and I thik they have a place in a comprehensive web strategy.

FaceBook is becoming THE destination for millions of web surfers.  Maintaining a storefront there will become as necessary as having a website.  Your personal profile isn’t the place to do business… get a Fan Page, they are free and you can even get a vanity URL.  Mike Mueller on Active Rain is “THE Dude” when it comes to FB Fan Pages.

Posterous is a different kind of beast.  I have written about it a few times, and it is certainly worth investigating.  There are more ways to leverage Posterous than anyone could possibly imagine on thier own.  Brad and Bobby Carroll (Dakno) are “THE Dudes” when it comes to tweaking out Posterous pages.

from Lane’s Active Rain blog

• Mobile Search
• Mobile Media
• Mobile Video
• Mobile Ads… delivered based on proximity…

Mobile has been hot.  As real estate professionals we get calls from vendors all of the time offering the opportunity to be an early adopter.  The problem is that we have been able to be early adopters for three years. And there are predictions that THIS will be the year the Mobile Apps move into the mainstream.

Sure, now there are more phones capable of managing these applications.  Blackberries and iPhones and Droids and the new Nexus One.  But the problem there is that we… as real estate professionals… assume that everyone else is where we are.  I hardly know an agent that doesn’t have a high end smartphone.  But yesterday, MediaPost released its data showing that in 2009, only 17% of mobile phones in the US are “smartphones”.  That would include phones operating on Symbian (Nokia), iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, PalmOS, Android and Linux.

That is a GIANT leap from 2008, and I would expect to see another leap for 2010.  In 2008, smartphones had an 11% market share.  We might see a 25% market share for 2010…

2010 could be the year of the mobile application in real estate… but I think we have another year to wait.  A lot of these phones may not be the machines we are thinking of as smartphones.  They have web surfing capability, but not on the level of the iPhone, Blackberry or Android.  about 50% of the smartphones are on Symbian and are Nokias and Samsungs that are more tuned for music and photos…  Of course, some of those phones ARE web optimized, so it is difficult for me to say exactly how many are really web surfing optimized.  But it is less than 17%…

Do you think 2010 is the year that will turn the tide for real estate specific apps on mobile phones?

from Lane’s Active Rain Blog