Center for REALTOR® Technology Web Log

My earlier post about an Image Gadget got some feedback asking about how one can do this for a Real Estate specific gadget. The above gadget is a custom gadget that you can use and tailor to display different sets of listings.

This means, you can create various feeds that could be client, location, price, market time, or one of the many other variations that you can come up with. Each can be distributed to a user or displayed easily on a website. The following is a step-by-step HOWTO on rolling this out, and updating the listing feed. Enjoy, and if there needs clarification on any step, pass it on.

Step 1: You need to have access to an area on the web that you can add/edit/share the gadget and the different feeds. This is simply a website that you have some file access to. If you do not have something in which you can add content to, GooglePages can create a quick web presence with the ability to upload files and it is free.

Step 2: I’d suggest you copy my base gadget and place it on the website discussed in Step 1. This just gives you control over it, and in the event my file location changes or the server goes wonky, your users won’t experience my issues.

Step 3: Create a listing feed. An example feed can be found Here. The file format is a simple XML file:

<gadget>
<listing>
<label>9150 S. Hoyne St.</label>
<price>$xxx.000</price>
<url>
http://homes.re....h/listingdetail.asp....lsn=2&srcn....etail
</url>
<image>
http://homepics.realtor.com/image3.../06438557a.jpg
</image>
</listing>
</gadget>

Each feed you make will control what listings get displayed in the Listing Viewer. These files should live in a publicly accessible place. An advanced technique would be to have dynamically created feeds based on your favorite web scripting engine (PHP, Ruby, ASP, Perl).

Step 4: Add the gadget to your website. For the gadget hosted on my site, the Google Creator link would be:
http://gmodules.com/ig/creator?synd=open&url=http://r2unit.com/gmodule/listing.xml

Replace the link to my gadget (the piece after url=)with the one you created in Step 2. Once done with the configurations, click ‘Get Code’ and add that snippet to any webpage.

Step 5: Let your clients know that they can add your gadget to their Windows Desktop (explained Here) , to a webpage (as explained in Step 5), or to their Google Desktop.

There you go, for each feed you create in Step 3 you can plaster a gadget out there. Hot Sheets, Weekend Open Houses, Listing Tours, etc. You name it, build it and the gadget will display it!

Enjoy.