This week I’d like to continue talking/typing to you about the question that’s been posed after we changed the policy on Craigslist, this time focusing on our premium value to our consumers, and why spreading our listings to those “30 national sites” would dilute said value.

When a consumer comes to us, they are expecting the premium value that working with us brings them. They aren’t simply coming to us because of a fancy sign, they are coming to us because we offer a premium experience to our buyers and sellers. We also offer a consistent experience to that consumer, one that’s tailored to the Lincoln/Eastern Nebraska market. One that we can fully control and tailor to that market, and react to the needs of the market – not one tailored to California, or the highest paying advertiser of the week. Most importantly, one that we can offer a consistent experience emphasizing our listings and agents on.

That’s a lot of wording, so let’s grab a visual aid. As many of you know, here is how a listing appears on our sites:

Everything above we can customize, and has already been customized for us. We can control where every button goes, but more importantly, we already did research on where to put them. We did it, with the help of other HomeServices companies in the midwest and our website vendor. We, however, can change whatever we would like on that listing detail page. Notice a theme? We. If you look, we also emphasize the agent and how to contact the agent to see this listing. Everything is in the same place if you go to either of our company sites – where your listing will appear – giving the consumer a consistent experience.

More about the agent emphasis should be noted – we realize that a computer doesn’t sell a home, it’s you – the Realtor. Above you see my picture, that’s because I pulled that listing up on my test site just as a consumer would do if they visited an agent website. It’s not my listing, but it’s my company’s listings so if I’ve done the work getting my name out – the leads are going to me. Let’s compare this to how a listing appears on Realtor.com:

I see a big AT&T ad and a box to find a mover.. but where’s the agent/broker info?

We’ll play “where’s waldo” here, and see if you can find it. This is after I scroll down a full page on my already large monitor, or rather what we in web design call “below the fold”. Here’s a link to see for yourself: http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/9335-Ravenwood-Ave_Lincoln_NE_68516_1119872480

I’ll give you a hint: the agent info doesn’t exist. Not only that, but there is no way to contact the agent OR BROKER with one click on this page. At the bottom of the page I can one-click order a refurbished HP monitor, I can learn about e-cigarettes, and I can even find out how single moms can earn grant money.. but I can’t click to contact a Realtor. It’s almost like they don’t really want to sell the home isn’t it?

Huh.

So if the Realtor sells the home, we want the Realtor to be one click away from the consumer. We want neon signs and flashing buttons pointing to our Realtors’ contact info, not to make it harder to find. For your sellers, this is important because it’s the buyers agent who sells the home. We focus on our agents, and focus on driving leads back to them because we’re not trying to sell AT&T phones – we’re trying to sell homes.

Sellers who list with us expect us to bring buyers, and our web experience does that. We don’t waste an hour or two a month – or more – watching our IDX feeds to 30 different websites, we focus on how we can drive consumers back to our listings on our sites. We don’t dillute the value of our listings by putting them where everyone else does, we put them where the buyers are – and then we do everything we can to bring the buyers to you.

If you have any questions, as always, please feel free to let me know!

Did you know that as Realtors you fall under the federal CAN/SPAM guidelines?  Let’s look at what the FTC says:

Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email. It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law.

So it’s pretty clear that we too must comply with this regulation – the good news is that for you, the HOME or Woods agents – this isn’t too tough.  We have most of it covered already, but to ensure we are OK, I want to focus today on a simple “blurb” that we can add to our email signatures in order to ensure compliance on that front:

If you consider this message a solicitation and prefer not to receive future messages from this sender, click ‘reply’ and add the text ‘remove’ to the subject line.  The information contained in this email is privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above.  If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited.  If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify the sender via return email and permanently delete the original message from your system. Thank you.

UPDATE (2:30pm): It’s come to my attention that there’s another key component that needs to be added to your signature, and that is both your company name and the physical address of your office.  As an example, mine now reads:

Ben Dinger
HomeServices of Nebraska
3355 Orwell St, Lincoln NE, 68516
(my email address, phone, web links, and opt-out paragraph all fall below this)

To add this to all your outgoing messages, in webmail, it’s pretty easy.  Just click this button at the top right:

Then copy and paste the above into the “Email Signature” area halfway down the page, and check the “Automatically include my signature on outgoing messages” box below the signature box:

There you go, now you’re covered on Webmail.  Now we have the “tricky” part, how about on your BlackBerry?  Do you need to have it there?  The short answer is: yes, if you send email you definitely do.  The good news is that yes, you can have your Blackberry append an auto-signature to all of your emails, and setting it up is pretty easy.  First, when in your messages, hit the Menu key (which I like to call the BlackBerry key – what my finger is pointing at):

Next, select the “Email Settings” option:

Finally, set “use auto signature” to “Yes”, and.. well.. let the typing begin..

There you go!  You can add an auto signature to pretty much any smart phone currently on the market, if you can’t find the options on yours send an email to the helpdesk by clicking here and we’ll help you find the option on your phone.   If you have any questions about the CAN-SPAM act, shoot them my way!

Quick Tip of the day: I used to take a few pictures, and after getting a new camera I now take a LOT of pictures.  After losing two hard drives on two computers at home recently (thankfully the backup drive waited to fail until AFTER I had restored the drive that backed up to it), I began worrying about “what if” in regards to all the pictures of the kids.  It seems the folks at Google have a great option for online storage that works seamlessly with my favorite free photo editor, Picasa.  Picasa Web Albums gives you 1GB of online storage for free, which is awesome, but if you’re like me – you have many more pictures than that.  Google has you covered, for $5 per year you get 20 gigabytes of online storage that you can seamlessly “sync” your Picasa albums to.

What’s even better about this?  If you use Gmail and Google Docs  – which I use both of extensively for personal things – that 20 GB extends to them as well.  I’ll have a longer blog post on this subject in the future, but for now – download Picasa and have fun!

Yesterday evening we rolled out a pretty substantial new release to our public websites, www.homerealestate.com and www.woodsbros.com.  We’re really excited about the changes here at HSN, so I’m going to get right into it!

Property Details page

The details page for each of your individual listings has been completely revamped. Here is the new one you’ll see today (click for a larger version):

Why was this page redesigned?  Simply put, we want to make it easier for the consumer of today to get to the information that matters to them as well as accommodate for the future.  Across you’ll see very large buttons for the consumer to Request Information (from you), Schedule a Showing, Save that property, or view their saved properties.

Previously the consumer had to scroll down to begin viewing details about the property, no longer is that the case – the pictures and the content share the area immediately to the left, while your information is all easily accessible to the right.  The picture gallery has been completely redesigned, and it’s MUCH easier to use than before.  Right on the main property details page you’ll see the map of the particular property, as well as the links we added last year to share it on social networking sites.

We’ve “widgetized” a portion of the property details page, and part of that area contains a really nice new feature – the Walk  Score.  This is a fantastic service that maps nearby businesses to your property, and one that has been found in other markets to be very beneficial.  With the rise in gas prices and the green movement, our consumers are getting more interested in this as well – and it’s something we’re happy to provide for them.

This is by far the largest new piece of today’s release, but there are some other smaller releases that are really helpful:

• rDesk lead enhancement: the sync between our website and rDesk is now more robust, automatically adding any clients you have in fnistools as contacts on rDesk, and routing leads from your mobile website to rDesk
• Google Analytics integration: Want to do robust tracking of your agent website using Google Analytics?  Let me know and I’ll help you get it setup on your agent website.  This is more of a “stats geek” feature, for those who are interested in visits and bounce rates and all that jazz.
• Featured Listings widget/Carousel: Want a little rotating widget on your website with selected featured listings?  Let me know – I’ll help you add it:
• Website customization – Pure HTML agent homepage: Want to do a website design completely “out of the box” for your HOME or Woods agent homepage?  We now have that ability – but it will be up to you to provide the page.  Contact me for more info if this interests you.

As always, let me know of any input you have.  In the coming year we’re going to be doing quite a bit to make the site more robust and easier to use for our consumers in Lincoln, along with gaining the flexibility to move the design in the direction that our agents (not some developer in California!) and our consumers see fit!

There is a Craigslist Scam that we want to make you aware of. Con artists have been targeting renters to try to collect rental deposits on homes they do not own.

Homeowners list their homes for sale with real estate agents, who will list the homes for sale in the MLS and also with public search websites, which allow individuals to query homes for sale via the Internet. The scammers find homes listed for sale on these public search sites, copy the pictures and listings verbatim, and then post the information onto Craigslist under available housing rentals, without the consent or knowledge of Craigslist, who has been notified.

After the posting is listed, unsuspecting individuals contact the poster, who is the con artist, for more information on the “rental.” The scammer will state that they had to leave the country very quickly to do missionary or contract work in another country, and many other excuses and were unable to rent their house before leaving, therefore they have to take care of this remotely. The “homeowner” (scammer) sends the prospective renter an application and tells them to send them first and last month’s rent to the scammer via Western Union. The prospective renter is further told If they “qualify,” they will send them the keys for their house. Once the money is wired to the scammer, they show up at the house, see the home is still for sale, are unable to access the property, and their money is gone.

For these reasons, we strongly discourage our sellers from placing their listing on third party websites, along with the company policy of adding a watermark to all of our listing photos. This watermark adds a “digital stamp”, so to speak, letting consumers know where the photo came from – and is quite common on most websites. HomeServices of Nebraska takes Internet security very seriously, which is one of the reasons we keep our listings strictly on our company websites – where we can control the content, and ensure the watermark is applied. While this certainly does not guarantee the safety of the listing data, it’s much more safe than a listing sent out to many different third party sites, sites that many times retain the data after the listing has expired (check the terms of use carefully!).

See the e-mail correspondence below for an example of this with one of our HomeServices listings.

Consumer Inquiry…
From: Consumer inquiring about the property
Subject: 123 Main home
To: Craig’s List Scammer (using one of our agents names)
Date: Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 11:58 PM
I saw this ad on craigslist and was a little surprised about the price of $600 for rent I would love to see the place if possible.
Give me a call at 555-1212. My name is Mary Consumer.

Thanks and have a great day!
Consumer

Spammer’s response….

From: Craig’s List Scammer (using one of our agents names)
Subject: 123 Main home
To: Consumer inquiring about the property
Date: Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 6:10 PM
Hi,
How are you? Thanks for the interest in my House, my house is still available for rent and is located at 123 Main Street, Lincoln, NE 68506 quite and safe I only need someone that can take good care of the house at my absence because right now am not around i just secured a contract in London .of which i will not be back until after 2years. And am here with the house keys and document, i tried to look for management before i left but couldn’t get any in time. If you know that you have a good reference and a good credential you can email me back to secure and occupy my house at my absent.

General house description:
3 Beds, 2 Bath Square Footage (Approx) 1,708 sq. ft. Large 3 bedrooms, 2 bath level on Liberty Point. Natural landscaping on this huge corner lot. Great price There is also high speed wireless internet access.Pets acceptable (deposit required) which is $450,References a must. Hope you are Okay with the rent fee of $600 per month, get back to me asap because i need a tenant urgently and i can also forward the application form to you, if you are interested. Have a nice day.

Consumer responds to scammer and asks for walk through…
From: Consumer inquiring about the property
Subject: 123 Main home
To: Craig’s List Scammer (using one of our agents names)
Date: Wednesday, January 27, 2010, 1:02 AM
Everything sounds really great. Would it be a possibility to have a walk through on the house? I would love to fill out a application but my husband and I would like to take a look at it first. I would be happy to do all this quickly since you are on a tight schedule. Just let me know when would work best for you..

Thank you!

Spammer’s response to walk through….

From: Craig’s List Scammer (using one of our agents names)
Subject: 123 Main home
To: Consumer inquiring about the property
Date: Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 7:07 PM
Alright presently am in London you can drive by and have a view at it But how can you see the inside when the key is with me here, well if you don’t mind i can email you the pictures of the inside for you to see how beautiful the inside his i hope you can understand, well kindly let me know if is okay with you that way then i will email them to you together with the application form as well.

Consumer responds to scammer again…
From: Consumer inquiring about the property
Subject: 123 Main home
To: Craig’s List Scammer (using one of our agents names)
Date: Wednesday, January 27, 2010, 1:11 AM
I will drive by and take a look at it tomorrow and the pics of the inside would be great!

Spammer’s final response before Broker reported it to the Lincoln Police Department and the Nebraska State Attorney General’s Consumer Fraud Division….

From: Craig’s List Scammer (using one of our agents names)
Subject: 123 Main home
To: Consumer inquiring about the property
Date: Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 7:23 PM

Ok, just let me know if you decide to rent the place tomorrow so i can secure it for you.

The spammer did send pictures (from the Agent’s MLS listing) the following day.

This is a classic Craig’s List scam and one of the reasons we don’t do advertising there. Please contact your Broker if you have any questions or concerns about this topic.

Authored By: Connie Hain

Edit (1/30/2010): Cynthia Garton emailed me to point out how this further reinforces the need for the traditional sign in the yard (thanks Cynthia!):

Shows importance of having signs in front of your listings. When people do drive by and there isn’t a sign it just helps a scammer carry off a rental scam. If your seller doesn’t want a sign you might point out how it protects them from scammers using the house in a rental scam. I don’t see how scammers can tell people to drive by and take a look if there is a sign in front of the house.

Social networking is the newest thing to hit mainstream popularity on the Internet.  Now we all have Facebook accounts, twitter accounts, blogs (some of us have a few of each), and are immersed in the middle of the social networking explosion.  Here’s a question for you – what is social networking?

Not so easy to answer, right?

Well, that’s the problem.  It, in and of itself, isn’t the easiest thing to define yet at the same time is almost brutally simple.  Social networking is not trying to sell something.  Social networking is a new form of communication.  It’s the new cellphone, the new radio, the new TV, and the new dinner out with friends – all boiled in to one pot with about 8 billion other things mixed in just for fun.  I came across this video, and it’s really neat, take a second to watch it and then I’ll type some more:

Events like he described happen every single day online.  For years I’ve been reading fatcyclist.com, a blog about a guy who likes to ride bikes.  Here’s the reader’s digest version of a backstory: several years ago his wife was diagnosed with cancer and during that time Elden (aka “Fatty”) made it his mission to fight cancer.  He started raising money for Livestrong, and last year became the single largest Livestrong team.. ever, raising quite near $1 million.  It doesn’t end there.  Two weeks ago Fatty made a post in jest about trying out for Team Radio Shack (i.e. Lance Armstrong’s new team).  A week later he was in Arizona riding with the team (prelude, Part I, Part II), and had raised $120,000 for Livestrong and another charity, and gave away some absolutely drool-worthy prizes – just through his blog and social media.

How’d he do it?  He tells a genuine story, and then engages his readers.  It’s pretty simple, right?

You may remember even I’ve had some personal good fortune with blogging.  Have you checked Facebook lately?  No debates on the views of our President, or the bill being proposed but I just saw this:

In 2 hours that’s about 5 thousand comments and “likes”.  Jeez, I thought I was a popular guy! I’m guessing the switchboard operators at the Capitol aren’t the biggest fans of Facebook right now.  By the end of the day he got his 1 million calls.

Here’s where we’re going with this social media thing.  What did both of these folks do?  They engaged the community and called them to action in a brilliant manner.  They don’t sell (necessarily, it could be argued in the President’s case), they are themselves.  What’s the summary?  Don’t sell a house on Facebook, don’t even sell yourself.  Post pictures of your cats, kids, grandkids, and post them often.  Connect with old friends and send them messages or write on their wells.  Comment on your friends’ status often.  Offer advice, have fun, but don’t be a salesperson – just be fun.

That’s the secret to social media.  Easy, right?

New Facebook Privacy Settings

Did you see the popup on Facebook about their new privacy settings?  Let’s put it this way, they aren’t so easy to understand.  In fact, I could make a doctoral dissertation on them – without even trying too hard.  Instead I HIGHLY reccommend you read the following two posts, and apply the settings as they suggest:

• 10 New Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know (Thanks Elizabeth Katt!)
• The Valleywag Guide to Restoring Your Privacy on Facebook
• The Facebook privacy settings you’ve lost forever

That’s all, folks!  Have a Merry Christmas!

Like many of you, I have a voicemail problem.  I get quite a few voicemails during the course of the average day on my work phone, then I also have a personal phone that I have to keep track of as well.  There’s nothing worse than dialing your voicemail after a long meeting and hearing the automated voice say “You have eight unheard messages.  First message..” – you know you’re going to be spending some time writing down numbers, calling folks back, or just plain listening.

I was doing the same, until this thing named Google Voice came into my life:

I’ve had a Google Voice account for about six months and I’ll be honest, up until a couple days ago I didn’t use it much – mainly I used it for free text messaging.  That is, until I read a really awesome post (it gets kind of nerdy/technical, just warning), which in turn made me say to myself “I bet our agents would love this thing.. how about I make a post of my own?”

Note: This is going to be a really long post, but in the end you’ll be able to have your voicemail transcribed to text, delivered as a text to your phone or email after it’s left, and you can have a bunch of phones (bunch being a technical term for “as many as you want”) going to the same voicemail box.  Oh, and you can view and listen to those voicemails from any browser, anywhere, anytime.

It’s, you know, worth it. Big time.

Okay, so here we go.  First things first, you need to actually obtain a Google Voice account which right now is a bit of pain since it’s invite only.  Click this link to request an invite, which you should get sometime between 48hours and 2 weeks (most I’ve seen are running in the 24-48 hour range).  Once you have the invite, select the option to “Get a new Google number”, do not move your existing number to Google Voice.. yet.

Next up it will ask you to pick a number, select area code 402 and search for a number – don’t be surprised, there are no Lincoln numbers available.  There should be some Bellevue’s or Omaha, go ahead and pick one of those – remember, we’re just using this as a voicemail box for now.

Okay, you’re in – now you need to add some phones.  Click “settings” at the top right, then click the link to add a new phone – simply put in the number of the phone and a name for it, then Google Voice bring up a new window with a two or three digit code displayed.  When you hit connect Google Voice will call you and ask for that two digit number – after which the phone is setup.  Do this for all phones you want to share one voicemail box.

Now we’re going to set up Google Voice just to act as a voicemail-on-steroids.  This is the fun part, where we replace the standard voicemailbox from your carrier with Google Voice.  No more dialing in, listening to one after the other – nope, now you can actually manage your voicemail.  It’s really that good.  So, in settings you want to be on the phones tab:

You see how both of my phones are unchecked?  Make sure to do that first.  Next click the link that says “Activate Google voicemail on this phone”.  It will give you a new prompt with instructions on setting up your specific phone to use Google voicemail as it’s voicemail.

Next up, click the Voicemail & SMS tab:

Obviously right off the bat you’ll want to click “Record New” off to the right of the voicemail greeting, which will call your phone and let you add a new voicemail greeting.  Best part about this?  When someone calls you now, they won’t get the absurdly long voicemail prompts after you message – just a simple beep.

Okay, back on track.  Here’s where the really cool stuff lies.  Under “Voicemail Notifications” you can setup Google Voice to send a text transcript (yes, it transcribes the message for you, fast) as a email or text message right away.  I have mine setup just to send a text message with the transcript to my work phone, as that’s primarily what I use Google voicemail for.

Next up, make sure at the bottom to check the box next to “Transcribe Voicemails”.  Then click Save Changes, and you’re done.

Okay, so how do I actually check my voicemail?

First off, since you set it up the way I showed Google Voice will send you a text message with a transcription of the voicemail 15-30 seconds after the voicemail is left. Right there in your text you can view a somewhat accurate transcription of what they sent.  It’s, seriously, awesome.  But it doesn’t stop there.

If you are in your Google Voice inbox in your browser you’ll see what I see above in my first post – your voicemail suddenly becomes manageable like email.  See that first message?  Let’s say I want to call the Dell rep back to reschedule, I just click the “call” link, and here’s what I get:

I select which of my phones I want to ring, which at first you may wonder why – I did too.. until I forgot my work phone at work the other night.  That night I selected “iPhone” for my personal phone, and it connected me right up.  Play with it once or twice it’s really nice for those of us with multiple phones.  Or even one phone!

On my second message, Steve asked that I just text him back with my recommedation.  I can do that too, right from my Google voice inbox by clicking “SMS”:

That will send a text message straight to his phone, and I don’t get charged against my monthly allotment of texts.  Want to really have some fun?  Click the “More” link, you can email that voicemail to someone else, you can download it to your computer, or embed it into another webpage.  The other day I had a voicemail from an agent that was thanking several folks around here for good work, I had to walk to each of their desks and hold my phone up to their ear as they listened.  Now, I could just email that message to them.

And now from the “one more thing..” department:

It gets better.  Have a Blackberry or Android phone?  Click Here to download a mobile app that will allow you to manage your voicemail from an app on your mobile phone – read voicemails, listen to them.. yeah.  It’s great.  Other phones (including the iPhone, thanks to the ridiculousness of AT&T) can use a pretty nice web interface to view it:

Remember where we were setting up Google Voice to send text messages and emails of certain notifications to certain phones or email addresses?  Here’s my Quick Tip Of The Day: you can change those phones or email addresses on the fly.  So if I knew I was going to be outside of Sprint coverage, but would have AT&T coverage – I could set Google Voice to send notifications to my personal phone.  If I knew I wouldn’t have either phone, but might have a computer – I could send it to my email.  Just check the box, save the setting and go.  It’s really that easy.

Okay, we’re done.  There’s lots more to it, so if I went too fast feel free to stop by the Orwell office and I’ll be happy to demo it for you, or help you get it setup (after you get the invite code, of course). Enjoy, and remember to shoot the helpdesk an email if you need help with this or any other issue.

We’ve had a lot of great questions lately about what to buy for new laptops and desktops, right now is a GREAT time to buy – as long as you buy the right thing.  With that in mind, here’s a little buyers guide for laptops and desktops.

Laptops:

When you see specs, you’ll see a page similar to this:

Here’s what to look for, in english:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i5 or Core i7 are the only way to go for full-size notebooks.  Avoid the Pentium-D, Celeron-D and AMD Athlon X2’s – they all get a bit too hot and power hungry in my experience.  Stick with the Core 2 Duo, and you’ll be quite happy. With a netbook look at the Intel Atom N270.

Memory: Go with a absolute minimum of 3GB for a full sized laptop when using Windows 7.  Netbooks can get by with 1 or 2GB, but 4GB is the sweet spot for memory, and will “future proof” you for at least the next year or two.  Anything above 3 or 4 GB, really, is excess unless you are using intensive applications or gaming.

Screen: Look for “LED” in the description of the screen, the LED backlights are easier on the batteries by a long shot, and easier on your eyes.  They are by far the better technology, and should be a key requirement in your next purchase.

Hard Drive: I’d go with a bare minimum of 160GB, ideally 320GB or above.  Programs are getting memory and storage hungry, and storage is cheap – look for as much Memory you can get.

Battery: A 6 cell lithium-ion is the minimum I’d go with, unless you are looking at a small form factor laptop or netbook.  A 6 hour battery in a full size laptop with a Core 2 Duo and a LED backlight will get you around 3-3.5 hours of battery life (maybe more, maybe less), so it’s a “sweet spot”.  Only get a 3 cell if you don’t care about battery life at all – because you won’t have much.

Operating System: There’s only one choice, Windows 7 Home Premium.  Avoid “Starter” if you see it, and avoid Vista.  Vista Professional is nice, but again, don’t pay extra for it or Ultimate – unless you know the features they have that you want.

Optical Drive: Double Layer DVD+-RW is the best cost option, but there are Blu-Ray drives out there (BD-ROM).  They’re nice, very nice, but watch the cost premium.

Brands: Dell, Apple, Toshiba, and Acer all have been decent in my experience.  HP is good in my experience, but I hear lots of complaints from others – so keep that in mind.

Desktops:

You’ll see spec sheets similar to the above.  Generally you’ll get a better deal if you buy a new monitor with a new desktop, but that’s not always the case – don’t let it be a deal-breaker for you.  Monitors are cheap, really cheap – I just picked up a 24 inch HD widescreen for under $200.  Bear that in mind!

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo (again), Core 2 Quad, AMD Athlon II, AMD Phenom or Intel Core i5/i7.  The Core 2 Duo and Athlon II are going to be plenty for most everyone, power users will like the speed boost with a Phenom or Core i7 though – but they come at a premium.

Memory: I’m going to again go with 4GB, just to save costs in the future.

Hard Drive: Stick with a minimum of 320GB and you should be good, most are coming with double that.

Optical Drive: Again, DVD+-RW unless you’d like a Blu-Ray drive.  My caveat with that, however, if you get a machine with a Blu-Ray drive and have an old CRT monitor – it somewhat defeats the purpose. 

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium again gets my nod

Graphics: If you have kids that will be playing games, look for the word “discrete” graphics, that is a dedicated video card as opposed to most relying on integrated graphics.  Otherwise integrated graphics from Intel, nVidia and ATI will suffice for most.

Monitor: Again, if  you get a great deal on a package deal, go for it – but bear in mind LCD monitors are REALLY cheap right now.  Don’t pay over a $150 premium for a machine with a monitor.

Brands: Dell and HP are the most common, but don’t turn away from Acer or Sony.

Miscellaneous Notes:

Keep a close eye on any value adds that really may make a difference, in my opinion the two to keep an eye out are additional warranty options and the addition of Microsoft Office.  Aside from that, avoid bundled software and bundled printers or other hardware – my experience is they are rarely worth it.

Buying on “Black Friday”?  Here’s a run-down of all the deals that will be out there and man there are some good ones:

http://gizmodo.com/5409460/black-friday-deals-the-only-list-you-need

That’s all I have for today, if you have any questions or need help buying shoot the IT department or I a line and we’ll be happy to help.

Quick Tip of the Day: Dropbox is my new favorite utility, 2GB of online storage that will keep files in sync between multiple computers.  Not only that, but you can access those files from any web browser, or a iPhone app that just rocks.  One Mac, one PC?  No problem!  The first 2GB of storage is free, or you can get 50GB for $10/mo.  Give it a shot, it’s really really good.

We just released another update to WoodsBros.com and HomeRealEstate.com today, packed with a bunch of backend enhancements and some very nice customer-facing updates.  The first of which has been heavily requested, and that’s the addition of social networking “buttons” to your profile on your agent website.  They look something like this:

We can add them to your profile for you, and the best part is that we can add only the social networks that YOU want added.  In my case, you can check it out in action here where I have my linkedin, facebook, twitter, and blog all added.  I guess the BEST part really is that it stays on the left side of every page on your agent website, giving the consumer one-click access to your various social networking resources. I like this one, a lot.  Thanks to everyone who requested it, we’re happy it (finally!) came to fruition.

Next up, the map search got a look and feel overhaul.  It looks like this now (from HOME’s website):

The options are the same, but the redesign is aimed at enhancing consumer experience, one big suggestion was that gold box in the middle, which helps let the consumer know they need to narrow down their search parameters – this was a major complaint of the previous release.  It’s also aimed at the future, giving us a more modern modular design that we can customize a bit better.  Finally, it got a bit of a speed boost – if you remember the first map search we rolled out, let’s face it – it was a bit slow.  The latest verison is fast, fast, fast – and will continue to get better.  As a whole the buyer prefers the map search, and we’re doing everything we can to enhance it for them.

Those buttons at the top of the map search are designed to streamline the results that you get.  In particular, the “list view” was focused heavily on, and it looks great:

Finally, the listing report graphs will now show up when you email the listing report to your consumer.  I’m sure several out there (me included!!) are pretty happy about that one, previously it showed the graphs – but they didn’t show up in email. Lots of other minor updates to the “backend” of the site to make it faster and more reliable – and as always, let me know of any suggestions.  Two of the three major parts of this release were requests from our agents – you folks are out there doing the work and know exactly what the consumer wants.

Tech Explosion Recap:

Wow, great turnout!  Thanks to everyone who came to the Club last Wednesday, and definitely thanks to all the vendors.  Every vendor was blown away at the turnout, and they all learned something from it.  Sprint was ready to order new devices and plans for those who showed up, but he said from the second we started that there was just no way – he had no idea there would be that many folks!  The Verizon reps, yup, they were bummed too that they couldn’t bring functional phones – but my guess is next time they’re going to correct that problem.  Microsoft’s partner, Sogeti, who came on their behalf (our MS rep had a last-minute meeting come up in Minnesota) was blown away by the questions and the interest for Windows 7.  Next time you can bet they’ll have a larger presence!

So.. I know everyone is a tad miffed that there were no laptops or cameras there.  Our two big vendors on that front, Best Buy and Rockbrook, seem to have lost out big time by deciding at the 11th hour (literally) to pull out.  I know I ordered a laptop for one agent online, and a desktop for another with several who were going to go home and order them on their own.  Yikes!  That’s a lot of sales!  Obviously I have my opinion about it, and next time we do it we’ll secure a more reliable vendor to bring in some really cool toys.

Yes, we’re definitely going to do this again, and we’re going to space the time out a bit longer so that you can buy actual devices/plans/etc while there.  We’re going to secure more reliable vendors to bring some tech in, and we’re going to expand it to include some speakers.  Stay tuned in 2010, but in the meantime, thank you everyone for coming!  Below the pics are several links discussed at the show.

Speaking of staying tuned, how about that Schaefer’s display?  Wow, that TV and Sonos system really got my interest!

Sogeti/Microsoft brought out some great giveaways, I’m guessing I’ll be seeing some Windows 7 bags around the offices!

And Trevor from Sprint had quite the crowd (I had to hold the camera over my head!):

Sprint HomeServices online ordering page

Mission Bean Coffee gift baskets – order form

Again, thanks for coming out!  If you have suggestions for next year, let me know!

Quick Tip of the Day: Have you kept up with our Twitter account?  I try to post at least one good computer/tech deal a day on it, along with other random info.  It can be found here: http://www.twitter.com/hsne

Lots of things going on here at the orwell office – wow!  First, I’ve done some updates to the blogs to align them with some of our core online marketing focuses.  Did you know that our blogs have been quoted in the Lincoln Journal-Star twice in the past month, once on the homepage?  This is a great time to submit an article to Angela, and get yourself out there!

If you’ve noticed on the HOME and Woods Blogs (click the names, they’ll take you there ) we now have the author’s picture, name, and if you click the name it takes you to their website.  GREAT exposure for you on the blogs, and it helps your search engine rankings.  Here’s what it looks like on the HOME blog:

Next up, our Twitter feeds are now all syndicated on to the blog homepage.  Here’s how it looks on Woods’ Blog:

Got a tidbit you’d like us to tweet?  Shoot it to Angela or I via email, and we’ll send it out!  We know the mobile device is the future, just ask the 20-ish million plus (some estimates put this number closer to 50 million currently) iPhone owners.  To help this trend out, I added mobile support to all of our blogs (Home, Woods, HSNE Techblog) so that the site will automatically give a mobile device user a experience optimized for their device – just like our public websites do.  The user doesn’t have to do anything special, they just visit our blogs like they normally would.  Here’s how it looks on an iPhone:

Finally, did you notice the techblog got a design makeover?  I like it a lot, and think a similar design may make it’s way to the HOME and Woods blogs soon – I just like to test the “bleeding edge” stuff here first.  Lots more to come on a variety of topics!

Quick Tip of the Day: Looking for a new laptop or smartphone?  I’d wait until November 18th when we have our Tech Explosion from 1pm to 3pm at the Country Club of Lincoln.  Vendors will be on-hand with a vast variety of devices that you can see, touch, and fiddle with – some will even have specials that they will give you that day.  If you can’t make it (you should!) I’d wait for the day after Thanksgiving.  There are rumblings that the tech deals will be outstanding this year, and yes I’ll be posting a guide no later than the day before on what deals you should check out!  But.. don’t miss the tech explosion, we have a lot of vendors lined up and ready to show off their newest stuff!