Welcome to the HomeServices of Nebraska Technology Blog!  This blog will be used by various members of the HomeServices team to give updates on our wide range of technology offerings, along with tips on how to use them.  You are welcome and encouraged to comment on postings, but in order to avoid “comment spam”, you will need to register before commenting.  This blog will be updated at least weekly, so add the RSS feed above, or make sure to visit on a regular basis for more tips, tricks and updates.

Website Updates!

Our team has been working hard on updating www.woodsbros.com and www.homerealestate.com to keep up with the changing market.  The updates we have to the sites are numerous, from a updated and faster map search to some tweaks on the property detail pages, but one we are all most exited about is the mobile site.  This is a site designed specifically for cell phones and PDA’s, as they have smaller screens and run web browsers that are generally much more limited than one you would find on an actual computer.  With this in mind, the new mobile site has been designed to run fast on nearly any mobile phone or PDA out on the market.

Of course I say “Nearly any” mobile phone or PDA because there are on occasion ones that it will not work on.  I’ve personally tested it on a Windows Mobile phone, Palm Treo, Motorola Razr, and a Nokia on Sprint, Alltel and AT&T networks.  Every phone loaded it very well, and fast, which the site was optimized for as well.  To make it load quickly on phones, which many times have very limited processing, memory, and bandwidth compared to a “normal” computer, which in turn makes it look very “bare” compared to our main sites.  With that in mind, here are some screenshots from the mobile site.  You can visit the site by going to www.woodsbros.com or www.homerealestate.com from your mobile phone, no special address is needed as the site automatically detects that you are visiting from a mobile phone.

This is the mobile homepage.  Note that at the bottom is an option to click for the Full site, as some iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Treo users may prefer that to the mobile site.

A single search result from a mobile open house search.  We’ve made it basic, but included such things as links to email the agent, and the agent’s phone number along with the main picture of the home.

Mobile property detail.  Again, the information presented had to be limited in order to assure it would work correctly on a variety of devices, but we try to keep the most used information by consumers available.

Mobile open house search.  Your consumer can now search opens from their phone, while they are out looking!

We are very excited about this new feature, as it gives you – our agents – another competitive advantage over our competition.  Your consumer can now search for properties while they are nearly anywhere with nearly any device.  Just think, if you drive by a home and find it interesting, right from your mobile phone you can pull up details about it, and the contact info for the agent.  With many phones, by clicking the email link you can email the listing agent – again, from your car, sitting in front of a listing!

Many more enhancements are coming soon, and are ready now, but this post can only be so big.  We’re working to improve the mobile site, so any comments you may have are greatly appreciated!

UPDATE 11/17/08: It has been brought to my attention that on some versions of the Palm Treo there is a pop-up error that is occuring when certain fields are used on the mobile search.  This seems to be occuring on the Treo 755p, 700p, and Sprint or Alltel 650’s due to a specific version of the web browser used in those models.  We are working to find what needs to be done to make them compatible.