Archives

Jan
13

Free Video Syndication & Fun Video Facts

The first question you might have is why would I want to syndicate my videos? Syndicating allows you to upload a single video to one site while letting that one site upload your video everywhere else. It will save you hours of time uploading videos. The service I am talking about is TubeMogul.com

TubeMogul is a free service that will automatically syndicate any uploaded videos to the most popular video hosting services all for free. Tubemogul syndicates to AOL, Blip, Break, Brightcove, Crackle, DailyMotion, Google Video, Graspr, Howcast, Tellytopia, iMeem, Metacafe, MySpace, Revver, Sclipo, StupidVideos, WebCastr, Yahoo Video, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo and 5Min.

You probably will not want your videos syndicated to all the sites above so TubeMogul lets you decide what sites you want your videos uploaded to. I personally have my videos upload automatically to Google Video, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo and YouTube depending on what type of video it is. In order for TubeMogul to sydicate your videos to these pages you will have to have an account with the sites you’re uploading to but once they are created that’s all you have to do.

TubeMogul also takes it a step further and gives you great stats on your video views. The easy-to-use TubeMogul interface allows you to see what video sites are giving your videos the greatest exposure and shows you how many views each video gets from each service.

This means I will no longer have to manually upload my videos to all the different video hosting sites and then try and keep up with how many views each site shows. Now I only have to upload and check one site for everything.

If you’re not currently using video, here are some reasons you might want to jump on board.

-In 2008, over 120 BILLION videos were streamed in the U.S.
-About 15% of the WORLD watches web videos each day.
-50% of the U.S. population watches web videos each day.
-13 Hours of Web Video get uploaded to YouTube.com EVERY MINUTE
-YouTube.com’s bandwidth costs exceed 1 Million dollars EACH DAY
-YouTube.com consumed more bandwidth in 2008 than the ENTIRE INTERNET did in the year 2000
-Certain cable television shows have started broadcasting directly to the Internet because they were getting more viewers.
-For the first time, in 2008 the presidential candidates used the web as their primary campaign medium.
-PuppyCam became the most popular streaming video of all time. It consisted of 6 puppies in a crate?!?
-PuppyCam may sound stupid but in only 3 months 13 million people spent over 4 million hours watching those puppies!
-Of the over 23 billion dollars spent on advertising in 2008, over ONE BILLION dollars went into online video.

Funny stuff. It’s amazing how fast the video revolution has moved. I just hope agents are ready for it.

If you have any questions you can e-mail me at info@retechblog.com or visit my blog at www.RETechBlog.com

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
www.RETechSeminars.com

Jan
11

Free Blackberry Storm Give Away!

On January 15th in Miami we will be giving away a FREE Blackberry Storm to one lucky attendant of the Real Estate Technology Specialist Seminar. We are lucky enough to not only have the Blackberry Storm but also tons of accessories to go with it when we raffle it off. We love showing agents how to make money without spending money so much that we’re going to raffle off this $750 Blackberry package on the 15th of January at RAMB. The winner will walk away from the seminar with the device + accessories.

If your a real estate professional and you need to learn how to market yourself and your listings online correctly using proven methods that don’t cost you a penny you need to register for the Real Estate Technology Seminar on January 15th @ RAMB in Miami. We’ve already had hundreds of agents go through our seminar and not one single negative evaluation! If you don’t believe us and want to hear what other agents are saying about this seminar then see our Testimonials.

Don’t miss this course! Very Limited Seating Available!

REGISTER HERE!

Jan
10

Faster, Better, Stronger USB 3.0!

WATCH VIDEO HERE http://www.viddler.com/explore/engadget/videos/165/

Many of you or probably all of you have used a “usb 2.0″ device or you’ve heard “usb 2.0″ compatible related to printers, cameras, external hard drives and much more. USB is a wired interface that allows you to connect your computer to an external device for data transfer. The “2.0″ in “USB 2.0″ refers to the upgraded speed from the original USB 1.1 of the olden days. USB 2 has a max transfer rate of about 30 mega-bytes per seconds max. This means if you take listing pictures that are 1 mega-byte in size and you transfer 60 listing pictures from your camera to your computer it will take 2 seconds. 2 seconds is the speed based off the max transfer rate of USB 2, but in reality there are always bottle necks that take USB 2 down to about 10-15 mega-bytes per second. Don’t get me wrong USB 2 was fast enough for most anything the average computer user was doing, but with the bottle necks involved put a restraint on how far the hardware industry could go with new “toys”. It’s the same thing that happened with the internet. Until recently not everyone had a broadband connection so not everyone felt comfortable using streaming video or flash applications on their websites because they were afraid some people wouldn’t be able to see them. Now that (almost) everyone has a broadband connection those bottle necks are gone and streaming video & flash apps are all over the net.

Now enter the new USB 3.0! Transferring data at a MASSIVE 500 mega-bytes per second max. The new USB 3 technology can transfer data almost 17 times faster than the USB 2 everyone is using right now. What does this mean to you? This means we can get rid of a lot of bottle necks that we’re holding the industry back. Let’s take for example, hard drives. As of right now all commercially available hard drives can transfer data at around 80 mega-bytes per second max no matter what cable they’re using. **NERD COMMENT** Even if you’re using the newer SATA (300 mb/s) cables in your machine and running a RAPTOR HD, you’re not going much over 80mb/s **END NERD COMMENT** Hard drives can’t transfer data at speeds over 80 mega-bytes per second mainly because there was no interface that could support anything greater. Now that USB 3 is here hard drive manufactures can start to build hard drives that transfer data at rates of 300-500 mega-bytes per second. Another note is what they can now do with solid state flash storage. Flash storage transfers at around a snails speed (even in the mac air), but now that they have USB 3 to interface with we may see solid state flash drives reach speeds of 250-300 mega-bytes per second!

To put it in perspective, with this new USB 3 technology at max speed you’ll be able to copy an entire DVD movie from your hard drive to an external storage device in about 4 seconds. WOW!

I know this was a nerd post but thanks for reading along.
Matt Rains
www.RETechSeminars.com

Jan
07

Those Young Whipper Snappers! How can I sell them a home?

So you want to start working with that younger “internet” crowd, you just don’t know where to start. Well trying to work with the younger crowd seems like a good idea to me. I mean the majority of buyers that are going to absorb this market are going to be young renters and first time home buyers. I’m 25 years old and i’ve been around computers and different forms of technology since I can remeber so it doesn’t come as a problem when I need to communicate with a first time home buyer who is 21-30 years old. I know I can always find them on Facebook or MySpace and start up some type of conversation.

So what are you supposed to do if you’re not tech savvy, you don’t “do” Facebook or MySpace and you actually refer to them as “MyFace” and “SpaceBook” (Mom!)?

I would say the first thing you need to try and understand is the generation itself. You need to know what they are doing and what they are looking for. You need to know how they breathe, eat and sleep. You need to know everything.

It’s hard to do but in my experience young buyers are looking for that older responsible adult to help them with such a big decision and you might just be that adult.

I will leave you pondering how you can approach this new “first time home buyer” and walk away with the deal but if you need any help please watch this video by Guy Kawasaki. He interviews the “young” first time home buyer age group and what he finds might literally amaze you. It’s about an hour but WELL WORTH YOUR TIME! Also, If you had a chance to ask all of Facebook some questions about how they communicated and how they would like to be approached by an agent, what questions would you have for them?

http://www.veotag.com/player/?u=wgcqpthubc

Thanks to Guy and Chad Huck for showing me the video.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
www.RETechSeminars.com

Jan
05

Stream Live from your Cell Phone.

Hello Everyone,

Recently a company called Qik.com came onto the scene with a new technology that allowed people to stream live video directly from their cell phone. The idea was genius and the technology worked great. There was only one problem, Qik.com only supported a very limited number of phones. As of January 1st Qik.com now supports over 100 different types on phones so it’s more likely you can now pack this great idea into your little bag of tricks.

The first thing you need to do is sign up for a free account at Qik.com then make sure your phone is compliant and your phone has some type of data or internet plan (unlimited is recommended). Once you have an account and your phone passes all the required criteria you can install the free software onto your smartphone or iPhone. Now it’s as simple as running the application on your phone and pressing “stream”.

Once your streaming anyone who is on your Qik.com webpage can watch the live feed. Privacy controls are also available if you don’t want everyone watching.

Go ahead and play with it. I highly recommend you learn how it works and how you can use it in your everyday business.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
RETechBlog.com

Jan
01

Happy New Year!

2009newyearSo it’s 2009? It goes by faster every year and 2008 was no exception. There was a lot that happened in 2008 both good and bad; but I think for the most part it was a learning experience for most younger and even some older agents. I especially learned a lot as a young agent about how the market moves and how large of an impact certain factors have on the long term stability of the housing market.

2008 was an especcially great year for technology in real estate with so many forms of technology coming to the forefront of the industry like video, detailed web applications and more social networks than we can count and I guess saying “better late then never” kind of applies to some of the technology we have seen as well.

Well, it’s 2009 and I hope everyone takes this chance to “re-align” and grasp this new “RE.net” industry and run with it. There is so much opportunity for everyone in this new year I wish everyone the best.

Have a great year,
Matt Rains
RealEstateTechnologyOnline.com

Dec
16

We’re movin’ over.

If you’re returning to our blog, you may have noticed that it has undertaken a new design theme. We were previously using Blogger.com to host our blogging platform and it was great. The only problem we had with it was the blog design overall was kind of boring. Knowing the ever increasing need for blogs, we wanted to try something new so we could  stay up-to-date with all of the blogging agents out there.

Our new design was built by BlogDesignBlog.com with a few of my own custom tweaks. There’s still a lot that has to be done with it before we can actually call it the new home of RETechBlog.com and RETechSeminars.com, but it looks good enough for now to release to you, the reader. The picture at the top of the blog (under RETechBlog.com) was taken by my wife in downtown Savannah and is actually the restaurant of the famous cook on Food Network, Paula Dean. If you would like to look at more of her photography she can be found at annerains.blogspot.com .

So let me know what you think about the new blog design by leaving me a comment and if you need to find any of the old blog posts until I can get them put up just visit RETechBlog.com/blogger

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online
www.RETechSeminars.com

Dec
16

Wally World is getting the iPhone?

iphonetoasterShame on you Steve Jobs!  Sources are mumbling that the retail giant Wal-Mart will be carrying the iPhone right after Christmas. If our sources are correct Wal-Mart will not only be carrying the iPhone, but they will be selling it at a discounted price. Apple is allowing Wal-Mart to sell the iPhone at a limited number of 2,500 stores to start and even Wal-Mart’s little brother Sam’s Club will be getting them at 69 stores at an even deeper discount.

What I want to know is how are the millions of “mac-a-holics” going to take it when they find out their precious iPhone is being sold at Wal-Mart? I know Steve Jobs mentioned something about having to stay competitive with lower priced cellular devices, but Wal-Mart? This recent plea for sales could be because Wal-Mart just recently started selling the G1 (Google Phone) for T-Mobile at a $30 discount and maybe Mr. Jobs realizes that this new Android device from Google could be the one to de-thrown the current king?

All I know is I did not see this coming. As much pride as Apple takes in the iPhone and all the hoops Best Buy had to jump through to start carrying the “Mac” line of products I just didn’t think Wal-Mart would be a retailer Apple would look at seriously. Maybe this is a glimpse of the future with Apple? Maybe their business model is a little too close to the original Gateway plan? Only time can tell?

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to comment.

Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online
www.RETechSeminars.com

Nov
27

SEO Series | Part 3 Letting everyone know your here

We’re going to take a quick second to finish the series we we’re doing a couple of weeks ago because I don’t want to leave anyone in the dark.

Before we get into the last step (for this series) I want you to sit down and write several descriptions about what your site is about. Kinda like your keywords but more of a brief summary.

All there is left to do now that we are happy with our site/blog setup is to submit it to the search engines of your choice. Once your website is submitted it will be up to you to keep your website full of good content and keep the search engines coming back.

A good site to use when submitting your website to search engines is http://www.FreeWebSubmission.com This site lets you submit to multiple websites all at once and does a great job of it.

Just remember that because your website is submitted to search engines that doesn’t mean people will find it. It is mainly your job to keep your content good and to let people know what your blog is about and where they can find it through commenting on other blogs, emails and general socialization.

Have a great day,
Real Estate Technology Online

Oct
26

Live Video Screen Captures | Freebie!!

So you’ve seen Jeff Turners instructional videos and you’ve wondered to your self…”How does he capture his screen into a video like that?”

Well we have searched the internet universe up and down to bring you “Debut“. Debut is a free screen / video / audio capture software that can create very nice screen capture videos for your website or blog.

The features of Debut are listed below and you can read more and download the software from NCH Software

  • Records video in many different file formats including .avi, .wmv, .flv, .asf .mpg, .3gp, .mp4, .mov and more
  • Ability to record from:
    • Camera (webcam)
    • Video Input Sources with a USB Capture Device see here…
    • Screen. Almost anything you can see or play on your PC can be recorded.
  • Records audio with the video (optional).
  • Multiple video and audio encoder settings.
  • Snap-shot saving feature.
  • Text caption and timestamp features.
  • Ability to adjust resolution and framerate of the output video.
  • Color settings and video effects for the output video can be changed.
  • Lets you record for set specified durations (h:mm:ss).
  • When recording period is over, you can either stop recording or create a new recording and continue.
  • Mirror recordings to a network or backup drive to keep your video files safe.
  • Can be set to automatically send video via email once the recording is completed.
  • Can automatically transmit video files via the internet using FTP.
  • Find and play recordings ordered by name, date, format or size
  • Ability to burn directly to DVD with Express Burn Plus.
  • System wide hot-key assignment to control recording while working in other programs.
  • Debut Video Recorder has an incredibly intuitive and easy to use interface.
  • Compatible with BroadCam Streaming Video server to distribute your recording.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online