It's Official...

It's been a while since the last post, but we have a good reason. We've been fine tuning the site getting ready to launch. Well, that day is here. We officially lauch Feb 14th. Those that want to see it early, please head over to www.videomagazine.tv

Here's a partial clip from the release tomorrow,

February 14, 2007 – VideoMagazine.tv today announced the launch of its website designed to assist real estate professionals with incorporating video clips, photos, sound and text into professional digital presentations.

The site is designed for the ‘do it yourself’ agent that typically takes control of their marketing, photos and virtual tours and desires to produce professional looking results in a fraction of the time and cost it typically takes to hire, produce, edit, and publish finished work for viewing by the public over the internet.

VideoMagazine.tv focuses on building value for the agent to compete in todays changing and complex real estate climate. By empowering agents to create, edit, distribute or remove their work from any computer connected to the internet, they retain complete control of their creation, branding and distribution of their presentations. The website produces a real-time RSS feed and inventory page for every subscriber. Each presentation is controlled by the agent and has its own web address....

First National Listing Service for Real Estate Launched

Point2 NLS Gives Real Estate Professionals Complete Control of Listings and Breaks Down Artificial Geographic Boundaries for National Listing Exposure

Saskatoon, SK and Vancouver, BC - January 04, 2007 - Point2 Technologies Inc. ("Point2") today launched Point2 NLS (www.Point2NLS.com), the first national listing service for licensed real estate professionals. The new service is launching with nearly 105,000 members in its roster.

Unlike a traditional Multiple Listing Service (MLS), which is primarily an offer of compensation and where rules are enforced with fines, Point2 NLS is advertising and marketing focused, does not apply membership fees, and is self policed by its user community.

Point2 NLS is designed to give real estate professionals complete control of their marketing relationships and of their most valuable marketing assets - their listings.

The new platform allows members to selectively advertise listings on peer websites and on third party consumer search sites. Members always retain control over who displays their listings and where.

Proprietary Point2 NLS data control capabilities are designed to help real estate professionals take back their future, which has been in question given the proliferation of technologies and business models that have allowed virtually anyone to leverage property listings featured on the Internet, for their own benefit.

"Point2 NLS brings to bear the true value and power of organized real estate. It has enhanced the best features of a traditional regional MLS, those being advertising and organized cooperation amongst professionals, and mixed them with web 2.0," said Brendan King, chief operating officer, Point2 Technologies."

"Complete control of listing assets, choice in marketing partners, wide syndication exposure, rich deep data, virtual tours for every listing, consumer empowerment and participation, no regional boundaries and, a drive to provide detailed analytics and return on investment (ROI) data on advertising investments across the network are really what Point2 NLS is all about."

Point2 NLS also breaks down artificial geographic barriers and standardizes listing content data structures to maximize listing exposure, facilitating a richer, more comprehensive real estate search experience, increasing value and benefit to end consumers.

Said Saul Klein, InternetCrusade President and CEO: "I applaud and support Point2's efforts to give control of the advertising and marketing of listing information back to the real estate professional. It is the right move at the right time."

Based on Point2's proprietary, patent-pending technology, Agent HandshakeT powers the peer to peer advertising capability of the new service. Point2 NLS members can add and store unlimited listings, each including up to 36 photos and extensive property details. The system also empowers consumers by allowing them to directly participate in the marketing of their property.

At the discretion of the real estate agent or broker, home sellers can add content to their property listing, through a Seller Login option. Once entered into Point2 NLS, members can easily and efficiently advertise listings on a limitless number of peer websites, and on any or all of Point2's listing syndication partner sites, for free, including Google Base, Yahoo! Classifieds, Trulia, Point2 Homes, Oodle, Propsmart, Livedeal, Edgeio and others.

Additionally, members can leverage listing content to book spotlight advertising on applicable sites including NYTimes.com, all through the same, simple check box process and interface. Users can also integrate their Point2 NLS listings into their existing website or blog, irrespective of who their service provider is.

Other key Point2 NLS capabilities include an advanced lead management and incubation component, and performance analytics that capture traffic data generated from each of the advertising channels. Membership in Point2 NLS is open to all licensed real estate professionals irrespective of geographic location or affiliation.

The system is easy to use and can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. Comprehensive training is offered to the members, online, also free of charge. The Point2 NLS website is now live.

Licensed real estate brokers and agents in the United States, Canada and around the world can sign up at www.Point2NLS.com.

Google Hiring for YouTube Sales in Six Cities

Well, it should be no surpise that YouTube is looking for sales executives.

Google is running help-wanted ads for sales execs for its YouTube unit. These ads were placed in the post-Christmas lull on mediabistro.com.

The Senior Account Executive's primary responsibility is to drive
revenue for the YouTube business unit and consult with brand advertisers and
interactive agencies on how to leverage the YouTube platform and participate in
the YouTube community

QuickTime media player could put millions of Macintosh and Windows users at risk of code execution attacks

As much as this disturbs me, I guess it's just a fact of life. There's always some hacker out there that must spend their existence hacking away to exploit others work in order to prove something to themselves.

eWeek reports:

The QuickTime flaw kicked off the Month of Apple Bugs project, which promises to expose unpatched Mac OS X and Apple application vulnerabilities on a daily basis throughout the month of January.

According to an advisory released Jan. 1, the flaw exists in the way QuickTime
handles a specially rigged "rtsp://" URL.

"By supplying a specially crafted string, [an] attacker could overflow
a stack-based buffer, using either HTML, Javascript or a QTL file as attack
vector, leading to an exploitable remote arbitrary code execution condition,"
said LMH, one of the mysterious hackers behind the controversial project...

"The only potential workaround would be to disable the "rtsp://" URL
handler, uninstalling QuickTime or simply live with the feeling of being a
potential target," according to the advisory.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Have you ever wanted to have a printable copy of something when you're on the road and you're not carrying your TabletPC or portable scanner?

I came across a handy app that will allow you to use your camera phone or digital camera to scan, copy, email and fax as as PDF file. This may come in handy for some of the Realtors in need of sending docs to your clients.

Google's first video advertiser

Robert Schoble's reports on his blog Schobleizer that the Google and Beet.tv will be splitting the $15 CPM 50/50 and that Google will be hand picking video blogs to get advertising. Not everyone on Google Video will get advertising. They are hand picking video blogs to get advertising, Robert reports.

Video tells a story like no other

Attention Real Estate Agents !


Okay, now that I have your attention, I wanted to share and elaborate on an idea RSSPieces blogger, Mary McKnight , gave to the busy real estate blogging community about generating online buzz and getting people to show up:

Reality TV: viral event
You must have some funny things happen in your office- get a digital video camera or video phone and record them as short clips. Or create your own reality show of either office happenings or a local review show of area hot spots like restaurants, golf courses and beaches. You can do this kind of stuff on a shoestring budget and get incredible results.

(If you have not read her post on event marketing, I encourage you to do so.)

So, here's a little proof about how an online wineseller created quite a buzz with their family business using a video blog, with the owner's son as the host. CNBC covered their story on the On The Money tv segment. It revealed how competitive the retail wine business is, how they chose their niche, and then created a series of videos about the wines they sell. They have created well over 100 episodes and created quite a following.


Now, how could you translate this to real estate?

--> You, the agent, are the neighborhood expert, right? How about taking your digital video camera along and showing your audience around. What amenties can you highlight? How about interviewing a few residents on camera (Do you think if you posted that, they would not tell their friends and family they were interviewed on camera and to check it out?) Video is not just for a real estate video home tour, but it is an engaging medium for people to see the emotions, the personality, and the passion you have for your work. Sellsius, another great resource for real estate blogging, posted another article about how video makes real estate agents stand out. If you haven't see the video, it's worth a look.


I hope this provokes you to think of the unlimited possibilities you have using video to reach a larger audience and to keep yourself connected to your sphere of influence.