Archive for November, 2006

Get Your Blog On!

Published
by
Chris McKeever
on November 12, 2006
in Internet, Projects and Tools
. 3 Comments

What were they thinking - bringing CRT to the Big Easy could only mean trouble. Wild nights of non-stop blogging, wireless internet and tech celebrities. Ian's laptop just couldn't keep up with the wild nights at NARdiGras.

So did we survive, or am I the last remaning CRT member after the tech blowout? Well, I can safely say, we were all well behaved and are proud to announce our first blog 'hatched' during 2 visits across a 3 hour time span to the blogger's lounge. Please welcome the newest member of the blogoshpere, Randy's Collin County Association Blog.

Our long night's did though slow down our thought processes to keep track of each blogger that came through the lounge for food, fun and mingling. We put together a little map showing those that dropped us cards with their blogs. I apologize for those other bloggers that I have missed - leave a comment, send a nasty note, and I will add you to the list!

Now, don't you wish you showed up? There's still plenty of time!

Disturbance in the force

Published
by
Chris McKeever
on November 10, 2006
in Internet and MLS
. 6 Comments

Google at NARdiGras this morning, announced a much
anticipated tangent to GoogleBase.

force

I am trying to figure what Obi-Wan would have sensed. Would it have been:

“as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced…”
or
“as if millions of voices cried out in joy and were suddenly found on Bourbon street…”

I guess we will see, but that is the beauty of the Force.

It’s Collaborin’ time

Published
by
Chris McKeever
on November 9, 2006
in Internet, Reviews and Tools
. 1 Comment

Clobbering TimeOne of the best parts about Web 2.0 is the focus towards online collaboration. Something which traditional applications never could get straight. For simple sharing of documents, I have been using Writely, which has a very intuitive interface, is very responsive, and more or less gets the job done for quick and dirty document editing.

Although I find myself launching notepad from the local computer - tsk tsk - shame shame - I have been using Google Notebook for notes that I want to have available at any given time on any given computer, and be able to easily share them. I like the fact that I can quickly save links directly to it as well. Unfortunately, I do not find it as responsive as I would like for a quick notepad application, and I question why not just use Writely.

But have no fear, as it seems like everyone is working on the same type of collboration suites - someone will eventually get it right, or at least to where I would like it to be. For instance, I learned about Helipad. Haven’t gotten a chance to tinker with it - but it seems like it can do most of the things I am looking for, including an API fraqmework. Could be promising - we’ll see.

NARdi Gras is here!

Published
by
Keith Garner
on November 8, 2006
in Conferences
. 4 Comments

NARdi GrasNAR's Annual convention starts this week.  This year its in New Orleans with the title of NARdi Gras!

As usual CRT has a number of things going on around the convention.  You've already seen posts about the WiFi HotSpot and the Bloggers' Lounge, but to remind you:

  • The WiFi HotSpot offers you free internet access and is located in the entry foyer of the New Orleans Hilton Riverside.  All you need is a laptop with a wireless card.  Chris and Ian will be around the HotSpot to help with any technical issues you may have and answer any questions.  I'll probably take a few shifts there myself.
  • If you're a real estate blogger who will be at the convention our Bloggers' Lounge is the perfect place for you to compose your posts.  We'll have WiFi access and one computer available for you to use.  There will also be every bloggers' most important tool: snacks and caffeine enhanced beverages.  Make sure you say hi to the CRT staff, we love meeting the others out there in the blogosphere.  If you're not a blogger, feel free to come by and ask questions about blogging.

We also are sponsoring a number of educational sessions as part of the conference.  This year we bring you four interesting topics:

As long as I'm chewing your ear off about the convention, I'll mention two last things.  The REALTOR.org team has created a number of resources for the conference visitor. is having a conference specific blog.  You can find it at http://narblog1.realtors.org/mvtype/annual/. The NARdi Gras live blog will have many contributers, myself included, sharing their thoughts and perceptions on the conference.  The other place you should know about is the main NARdi Gras News page.  It has pointers to many conference resources including links to the Show Daily and the REALTOR Magazine Online daily news.

2 feet away from an almost extinct species

Published
by
Chris McKeever
on November 8, 2006
in General
. 2 Comments

Pay PhoneThe wifi hotspot in New Orleans is starting to kick into full gear. The most amazing part is that it is inces away from one of the most rare and almost extinct species of IT gadgetry - the pay phone! The craziest thing is, that we almost covered it up while putting our workspace together - what were we thinking, how did we not see this magnificient creature in its natural surroundings? In the 2 hours since opening our doors, there has been 5 times as many people using the pay phones as there were on the wireless network. It’ll be a sad day when the last pay phone disappears. Do you remember the dial back trick when you were a kid? I got a big kick out of watching some poor bystander pick up the phone and no one was on the other end. Now that’s old school hacking! What was it again dial 1-958 and the last 4 digits of the number. Ahh the good old days.

Free WiFi in New Orleans

Published
by
Ian Smith
on November 3, 2006
in General
. 0 Comments

CRT will be hosting a WiFi Hotspot at NAR's annual meeting in New Orleans. It will be located in the entry foyer of the New Orleans Hilton Riverside.

CRT staff will be on hand to answer technical questions.

All the kids are doing it

Published
by
Chris McKeever
on November 2, 2006
in Internet and Tools
. 9 Comments

As bandwidth gets cheaper, and the tools and utilities we use for content publishing gets easier and easier, the tech industry starts to bring big boy toys into the hands of the masses. For example, streaming video. If you haven’t heard about YouTube by now, you are like so living in web 1.0, as it was one of the latest companies sucked up by Google.

YouTube provides an easy way to upload video files, and embed them in your site, or redistribute them via email links - and that is only scratching on the surface. From a Realtor perspective, the latest craze is getting your pictoral home tour online for video viewing.

There are many services popping up that can do this for you, but why not try it out for yourself? Get some of those creative juices flowing.

As an experiment, I gave it a whirl. Windows XP comes with Microsoft Movie Maker. If it is not installed, you can find it here, amongst other places.

It seems like it has all the tools one needs to make a quick video tour, image importing, transition effects (fade, dissolve, flip, wipe), and image effects (rasterize, add noices) - your imagination is the only bounds on this. 10 minutes later, I made my first tour - you can clearly see why I am a geek and not an artist! A little more patience, a soundtrack and a some creativity, you can start whipping these off for all your tours.

- Enjoy