Turner's Perspective

If you don't own a Mac, you can stop reading.
You can't use what I'm about to describe.

OK, now that all the PC folks are gone, us Mac lovers can chat a bit.

I found a great little trick today on the Realmac Software support pages. The trick was written for use in RapidWeaver, but it will work as a widget just about anywhere, including the sidebar here on ActiveRain. If you look at the sidebar on the right you're going to see a photo widget named "ActiveRain Photos." Does it look familiar? If you've ever embedded an iPhoto Web Gallery into an iWeb page it will. This is the Web Gallery widget they use as icons for the galleries you place.

The cool thing about iPhoto Web galleries is that when you add or delete a photo to them in iPhoto it adds or removes it from your gallery online when you tell it to. It's basically an RSS Feed. So, now I've got an ActiveRain Photos Widget that I can update without ever leaving iPhoto. I like that.

So, with special thanks to Gunter at Realmac Software, here is how you get it here on ActiveRain.

1. In iPhoto, create a new web gallery, name it and drag some photos into it.
2. Create a new, empty iWeb page.
3. Click on Web-Widgets and select your web gallery.
4. Publish.
   
5. Go to iDisk > Web > Sites > Site > Blank_files.
6. Open the resulting "widget_markup.html" files in a text editor
7. Select and copy the <script>.....</script> section and paste it into a new document.
8. Edit each place you see the Width="160" height="140" to width 215 and height 188. This occurs in four places.
9. Copy the edited text.
10. Go to your AcitveRain account and paste the code in My Settings > Blog Description (place the code in the order you want it to appear in the sidebar on the right)
11. Update and go enjoy your new widget.

As you can see on the right, at 215px wide and 188 pixels high, the widget looks great in the AR sidebar. Move your mouse over the images and watch what happens. You can even set the web gallery up so you can email photos to it or allow others to upload photos.

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Here is what the code should look like before you embed.

The short answer: NO. The long answer: Definitely not.

But to hear the new wave of video technologists talk, you’d think that all other media are officially dead. They’re telling us to throw away our digital cameras or be declared obsolete, even though these videos are just another form of virtual tour. These new videovangelists are even defying people to argue otherwise.

I hate when people defy me to do things. Especially people who don’t know what they’re talking about and prove it every time they open their mouths. Bill Leider is not too fond of this kind of empty rhetoric either. Bill's introduction to this topic is: The Whole World Is Going To Video - Or Not. So over the coming weeks we’re going to explore the depths of Internet marketing, analyze its various elements, define what makes for great and not so great presentations, connect all of it to what it needs to be in order to make you more successful and, most importantly, invite your input.

First, here’s a preview, expressed as three reasons why Video will not kill, or even hurt, good virtual tours:

1. Quality – communicating emotion vs. information.

I've written before about the importance of emotion in your Internet presentations. And Video has so much inherent potential to effectively communicate emotion. Done properly it is, experientially, the next best thing to being there. But good video production is complex. So its potential can only be achieved when all the elements of a good production are present. It’s a lot of work and it has to be done by people who really know what they’re doing.

You must have a good videographer or everything turns to garbage.

Whoever is doing the narrative must have a pleasing voice, a warm presence and a well-written script. The script content must communicate feeling - the joy of living in the space - not just a description of the rooms and the building materials and the prestigious brand names of the kitchen appliances. The narrator must communicate love, not the fact that he/she took voice lessons.

Lighting; appropriate background music; the timing and connection between the narrative, the music and what is being seen; the visual flow of all that is being shown; overall show length – all these must be flawlessly executed or the great potential is not only not achieved – but the viewers’ experience turns ugly and negative.

So far, great videos, much like truly great movies, rarely happen. Which brings us to…

2. Cost. It costs money to do video right. And cost has three components:

First, there is the cost of a video in absolute dollars. Even though we don't do video, I was one of three panelists on Video And Your Business at the Inman Real Estate Connect Conference in San Francisco. Both of the other panelists, when asked what a typical video presentation cost, replied that it depends on the cost of the videographer, and that cost ranges between $125 and $1,500 or more – per video.

Second, there is the relative cost of the video as a component or percentage of your overall marketing budget for a particular house. This, of course, must be reasonable as a percentage of the price of the house and should take into account the other kinds of advertising you must do to address the traditional audience of potential buyers who don’t rely heavily on the Internet.

And third, there is the cost of your time. If you believe that you can abdicate your responsibilities, hand them off to a Video production team/person and just ignore the process you are seriously mistaken. You’re the real estate professional. You are in charge of and responsible for marketing the home. You answer directly to the seller. You need to take an active role in achieving the desired result of the marketing campaign. And Video, well done, requires more time than all other forms of media presentation.

That's why video is the right solution in a relatively small number of situations. The right situation is where the price of the property allows for the highest quality video production or in situations where the video can have a relatively long shelf life without the potential need for post production modification. Ease of creation and the flexibility to change or modify post production is important - especially in today's market where property stays on the market longer.

If you think that you can save time and money by doing it yourself, and still create a good Video, go back and re-read Items 1 and 2 above. And finally…

3. Ease and Flexibility.

I hope I’ve given you a sense of the complexity and relative difficulty of doing a video well. And I hope you understand the importance of doing it well and the consequences of doing it badly.

Doing a video just to say you’ve done a video makes no sense. The result is the goal, not the medium. Well-done virtual tours can communicate far more positive emotion, positive energy and effective results than mediocre or bad videos. And they can be created with far greater ease because you can work on the components separately. You can focus on photography without simultaneously bringing in the narrative. Making text changes to the narrative does not require any re-shooting. The entire process is far easier.

Even more important is the flexibility. There is a flexibility you get with a well-architected virtual tour that will never exist with a video presentation.

In today’s buyers’ market, homes stay on the market far longer. That often triggers the need to periodically change, modify or update your Internet presentation. With video, you must re-shoot parts of, or even the entire Video. Cost. Time. Yuk.

Today’s virtual tours are not the difficult to produce 360 degree tours of yesterday. They are dynamically created from still images, and allow you to simply change out the photos you don’t want and insert new ones. Or change the narrative. Or add additional photos. Making a change takes a few minutes and zero dollars extra. Nice.

Lessons From Real Estate Connect.

At the recent Inman Real Estate Connect Conference, Christian Sterner, CEO of Wellcomemat, showed a video that is the perfect example of what I described above, although that was not his intent. Admittedly, the example he used was a sped up version of the actual video. However, his argument both at the conference and on their blog, is that this is far superior to any virtual tour. See for yourself.

Information with insufficient emotion.
Bad lighting.
Plain vanilla words with no real story.
All the cost with none of the benefits.

Now, if you’re going to respond by telling me: “Who cares, the client wants video,” then my answer is, I completely understand, and I intend to address that topic in a future post.

For all other issues, just look at the video and let me know what you see and what you don’t see.

Personally, I strongly believe that well-done video has an important role to play in Internet marketing. But it’s far narrower than the videovangelists would have you believe. Your job, as a professional, is to know which approach to use in which situation to give your clients and you the best results and the best return on investment.

Bill Leider's response to this post is here: http://activerain.com/blogsview/197334/To-V-Or-Not

Just days ago, Robert Morgan was flying Marine One.

He is now in Iraq.

He left his family here in the United States on August 2nd. Those lucky enough to be considered his friends received his first email from Iraq this morning. I just finished reading it. Rocky walked in and asked why I was crying and I could barely get the words through my constricted throat. I said, "I just can't imagine leaving you all here. I just don't know if I could make that sacrifice."

I know, intellectually, that thousands do this every day. But I don't know them. I know Robert. Robert is the Son-In-Law of Joe Fenton, our VP Sales and Marketing. Joe is extremely proud of Robert. As he should be. It takes a special person to be cleared to fly the President of The United States of America. Robert is special.

And Joe is extremely proud of his daughter. She has the unenviable responsibility of "holding down the fort" while he does his tour in Iraq. Like many others whose loved ones are sent off to foreign countries to serve, she is left without her soul mate, her partner. And their children are left without their father. I can't even think about it right now without welling up. Because I know her too.

Robert, will receive my email response soon. I wanted him to know I was thinking about him. I wanted him to know how much I appreciated the sacrifice. I wanted him to know that I'd NEVER be able to pay him back.

If you know someone like Robert, then you are as blessed as I am.

Join me in letting them know how much they are appreciated.

Anyone Who Happens By In the Next Few Minutes Is Likely To Be A Part Of This

This post is going to be written in pieces and posted every few minutes as I go along. Just scroll down a bit to the TokBox window in the sidebar. You should see me in my office, typing away. You should be able to hear me as well. Anyone who come by at this point will. So don't be afraid to hit the "Push To Talk" button. But know this, everyone will be able to hear what you say. :)

I have been testing RSS Feeds and haven't gotten to my own feed reader, so I missed the TechCrunch post about TokBox. So last night, while testing the feeds at Facebook, I noticed Joel Burslem had put up a link to his TokBox. I left him a video message, but he wasn't up last night after midnight. So, I emailed Loren Nason and Steve Zehngut. If you had been on this blog last night between 12:15am and 1:00am, you would have seen some interesting reality TV. :)

Ardell was the first to stop by. We're talking right now. She has some interesting ideas. I'll post a video of the chat in a minute. (Sorry, the sound didn't capture, so no video) Ines is on now. And Rick too! Now, that was fun.

But is it a business tool? Sure, but probably not live on your blog.

Someone is trying to get on voice only right now, probably to tell me to shut up. OK, I'm about to shut off the live version of this, edit the video and come back to add it to this post. (Well, that didn't happen.)

One of the software engineers from TokBox, Ron, just came by and I hope I am able to capture the video. Yep, here is our conversation. Ron joins in about 90 seconds into the video.

Marc Vitorillo just stopped by with a video camera as well. Thanks, Marc. I'm going to post our video chat here as well, so people can see some of the echo problems that people are talking about in the comments. He also sent me this after we were done. Marc's video email.

And perhaps the funniest moment of the live testing was David Podgursky, using Internet video to communicate with Post-it Notes! :) Hilarious.

It illustrates very well why this is still in beta. I think this may have some interesting potential applications. Marc Vitorillo mentioned GotVideo.tv and wrote about it last week here on Active Rain.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

EDIT: David attempted to leave me a video message, but the sound still didn't come through. It does give me the chance to show you that you can embed the video messages. However, it appears their embed code does not work here on AR.

Here's Why I Don't Trust Alexa Rankings

A spirited debate has been gong on recently around hits, visits and unique visitors. In the comment stream of Real Estate Blog Traffic, How Many Hits Should I Expect, Brad Carroll made the following comment.

"Does one blog get more traffic than another? Simply go to alexa.com and find out. Granted, it's not perfect and there are ways to "work the system" but it gives a great overview.

Brad certainly acknowledges it is not perfect and we both commented back and forth about this, but I felt an illustration of why I don't trust their numbers was in order. Especially since I think Brad is one of the smartest SEO guys I've ever read. So, this is not a knock on Brad in any way, shape or form. I know he's going to enjoy this comparison.

In my comments, I suggested we use a few real numbers and comparisons to test it out. So, I went to the real estate segment of topblogsites at Blogflux and pulled three sites from their rankings. I used TopBlogSites because in order to be on their rankings, you must insert code that sends messages to their data collection servers. This is a very accurate way to measure one site against another. There is no guess work.

The Three Blogs I Chose To Compare

I chose the number 1 ranked site, HousingPanic, the number 12 ranked site, BloodHoundBlog, and the number 43 ranked site, RSS Pieces. The one measure of true traffic, for me, is unique visitors. This is a measure of traffic that weeds out multiple visits by the same "person" using IP addresses. While visits is certainly important, unique visitors will more accurately measure the true reach of your blog. I could get 50 visits from my mom in one day, so I discount visits.

A Direct Comparison Of Unique Visitors For This Month / All Time

• Housing Panic - 65,931 / 968,694
  
• BloodhoundBlog - 8,985 / 176,033
  
• RSS Pieces - 2,216 / 48,073

As you can see, there is a large difference between the three blogs actual unique visitor counts. I have compared TopBlogSite's numbers with our own number at the Real Estate Shows Blog and they are right on target. So I have some degree of confidence in this comparison.

So, if Alexa is a good way to judge a blogs traffic, you would expect that the Alexa rankings would reflect the numbers above. But they do not. I wish I could embed the live graph of the Alexa traffic rank comparison, but AR doesn't allow Java embeds, so I have to embed this screen capture.

As you can see, for much of the last three months, RSS Pieces ranked much higher than BloodhoundBlog. HousingPanic doesn't even show up on the radar. HousingPanic has had more than 20 times the visits of RSS Pieces and more than 5.5 times the traffic of BloodhoundBlog, and it doesn't even show up in the Alexa comparison. Their traffic rank right now is 154,799. BloodhoundBlog's is 71,704 and RSS Pieces' is 41,890.

Alexa's Ranking Of These Three Blogs Is Completely The Opposite Of Their Unique Visitor Rankings.

This is why I don't trust Alexa's rankings.

UPDATE:

TechCrunch also wrote about Alexa today. They were even more harsh: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/13/alexa-says-youtube-is-now-bigger-than-google-theyre-wrong/

Carole Cohen tagged me.

I had just returned from my trip cross country with my family when I got her email letting me know that she had tagged me in You Show Me Yours and I'll Show You Mine. I'll have to admit, my first thought was, "Crap." I was feeling very disconnected from the world and tired from the drive with our kids and the thought of doing a meme post... well, let's just say it wasn't at the top of my priority list.

But I really like Carole. I like how she writes and I loved her Top Five Books Of All Time post. So here I am. I'm late to the party, but I did finally show up!

My Top Five Books Of All Time (In No Particular Order)

1. Leadership And The New Science, by Margaret Wheatley. I wrote about this book once before in Why ActiveRain Is Working Even When It Feels Like It's Not. The first time I read this book, i was on a plane home from a business trip. I read it from cover to cover without putting it down. It was at a time when I was questioning my business style and wondering if my ideas were out of line. I've never approached business in traditional ways, in the machine metaphor that governs most businesses, even today. Those organizations act on false notions that isolation and boundaries are the best way to make sure you stay unique . Margaret's book was a revelation. It changed how I viewed business and my relationship to it. Leadership And The New Science also made me a better human being. That's a powerful combination. I have given this book as a gift to more than 100 people. I am never disappointed by the result.

2. Orbiting The Giant Hairball, by Gordon MacKenzie. The subtitle to this book is "A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace." This book was given to me by Kevin O'Neill. After I sold my last company, I stayed on and was asked to be Group President of a much larger division. Kevin and I hit it off. At the time, he was the Creative Director at one of the companies that I had just inherited. I'm sure he could tell that I was struggling with the corporate world. I was an entrepreneur. I was used to free thinking, acting on instinct, shooting first and aiming later. The book was his way of helping me understand what I had gotten myself into. I was hooked after the first two pages where he illustrated how our schools were "participating in the suppression of creative genius." I loved it. I still love it.

3. Where The Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein. I will be 90 years old and reading this to my grandchildren and I know it will bring me just as much joy as it did last month when I read portions each night to my children. I will never tire of these poems.

4. The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr & E. B. White. I know this is going to seem like an odd choice, but my father gave me a copy of this book as I was heading off to college. He also gave me a slide rule and taught me how to use it on that same day, but we won't go into that. Looking back, it is one of the best gifts he ever gave me. It is widely regarded as one of the best books on writing. I made a habit of reading it before each semester in college and graduate school. I've read it cover to cover more times than I can count. And I need to read it again. It's been too long. Thanks, Carole.

5. The Bible, Multiple Authors. The Jack Daniel's tatoo on my left arm will tell you that at some point early in my adult life I abandoned my quest to be pastor. And I haven't sat down with The Bible in many years, but for many years, this was my main source of reading material. I was in numerous "preacher boy" competitions as a high school student and my second major in college was Biblical Studies. So even now, verses spring into my head that influence how I act. "As a man thinketh, so is he." Much of the way I think was shaped by those early years of intense study.

Like Carole, I'm almost afraid to hit the publish button. There are so many books that have had tremendous influence on my thinking, from the writings of Ken Wilber and The Dalai LLama, to Stephen Hawking and Peter Drucker. But I'm going to let these five stand.

And I'm not going to tag anyone. This took more careful thought than I imagined it would. But I encourage anyone to do it. And if you decide it's something you might enjoy, put a link to your post in the comments below. I'd love to be surprised with some good reading.

We are announcing the pending arrival of several new features for RealEstateShows.com today. Many of you have specifically requested these features and I'm happy to say that most, if not all, will be launching on August 21 23, 2007.

Flyers And Distribution - Coming August 21 23, 2007

On August 21 23, 2007 we will be launching the ability for you to instantly create and distribute a flyer from the photos and information already contained in your Real Estate Shows. Read more...

RSS Feeds For Each Show Category?

Wouldn’t it be nice to display all of your Neighborhood Shows in the sidebar of your blog or website? Or all of your active listings via a widget of your choosing?

Or maybe you live on the Internet edge. Wouldn’t it be nice to automatically post each new public Real Estate Show you create to Jaiku, Tumblr, Twitter or any other platform that automatically creates posts based on RSS feeds? Wouldn’t it be nice to let everyone in your Facebook network know about new Real Estate Shows instantly using Facebook Notes? Coming soon!

Full Screen Play - Coming August 21 23, 2007

On August 21 23, 2007, we will be launching a new version of our Real Estate Shows player that will include the ability to view the main Show in full screen mode.

This is a feature we’ve had numerous requests for and we’re happy to oblige. The new player has be redesigned to be more streamlined, and it has features similar to popular video players. We have introduced a new MENU button that will display important links to more photos, floorplans, video, panoramas and more as graphical buttons. These buttons will also display automatically at the end of a show. The consumer won’t be able to miss them.

In addition, the new player will make it easier for the Internet viewer to share the show with their friends on social bookmarking sites and social networks, like Facebook.

First, You Have To Delete Some Code.

I received the following email from Gary Smith a little while ago:

"Perhaps you can assist with this. http://widgets.trulia.com/truliastats.html

I'm able to embed, but no matter which size I choose there is some type of box that surrounds the entire AR blog posting section making it as wide as the screen and moves the right hand column of the blog down below the make a remark box.

Trulia does say AR has a problem.

Can you help?"

Well, when I pasted the TruliaStats embed code into this post and saved to draft, I got the same result he did. So, I deleted two portions of the HTML as highlighted in blue below. AR appears to be having trouble with the table tags they are using. As soon as they are gone, it works just fine.

This takes care of the problem. Here is an example using Santa Clarita, CA stats.

Sometimes Solutions Are Right In Front Of Your Nose.

In my review of the iPhone, I wrote this: "Can't photo blog with it. Why? No MMS. Why no MMS support? There are some good reasons posted here, but I'm missing the point."

Well...

Stumbling around the web this morning, I found this post about the new iMac - Can't be too thin. I might have skipped merrily on by, if it weren't for these words at the bottom of the post: Sent from my iPhone. That's the default signature that is set on the iPhone and this was a Typepad blog.

Hmm... I thought.

Maybe I allowed my Blogger focus to get in the way of trying something we had already installed on The JottBlog Experiment. To make posting to a Wordpress Blog from Jott function properly, we installed the Postie plugin.

I went in and looked at the Postie settings and found everything seemed like it might work. So, I just took a photo of the screen and sent an email to the JottBlog email address.

Voila... it worked. Piece of cake. What took me so long? Here's the first Photo post from the iPhone. That was taken in my dark office, so i found a better photo on my iPhone and did it again, just to be sure it worked. It did. ;)

You can bet there is a brand new photo blog in my future. 'Cause I want to be just like Teresa Boardman and Bob Carney.

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UPDATE: with major props to Bob Carney.

He is using email to Flickr to post to Wordpress.com and this will work with any blog platform that Flickr.com can access. This includes: Blogger, Typepad, Moveable Type, LiveJournal, Wordpress, Manila, Atom, Blogger API enabled, MetaWeblogAPI enabled and Vox blogs. I'm betting this is how the post above was done in Typepad. Flickr accepts the iPhone email with photo attachment [ http://www.flickr.com/photos/40518938@N00/1065004020/ ]and can give you a secondary email to use to post to the blog of your choice. This is a double win, since you can then tag your photos in Flickr as well. Nicely done, Bob!

This post should be titled, "It Was Only A Matter Of Time."

Online Media Daily is reporting this:
"Spending on Internet advertising will reach $61.98 Billion, and will surpass newspapers to become the nation's leading ad medium in 2011."

This is according to projections by the private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson.

That was destined to happen. It was only a matter of time. What is perhaps more interesting in the report, however, is the consumer move to digital media away from traditional media. For the first time since 1997, there was a per capita decrease in the amount of time people spent with media. This is a result of the YouTube, less is more, phenomenon.

What do you think the fastest growing ad category will be?

That's right. "Blog, Podcast and RSS advertising is projected to reach $1.138 billion by 2011, registering the fastest growth rate."

The entire article from Online Media Daily can be found here: Internet Ad Spending Set To Overtake All Other Media By 2011: VSS

I stopped caring about the points a long time ago.

It didn't take long to realize the the real value of this network went far beyond having my face move up the rankings. It's too simple to rack up meaningless points for that to even be a challenge, and lots have written about how to do that, so the points soon lost their appeal.

That's not to say the points don't matter. That's is clearly not true. The only folks who say points don't matter on ActiveRain are those who already have a lot of points. I'm not going to join that chorus.

The points matter.

• Points help distinguish you from the myriad who simply sign up here.
• Points put your face in front of new members and internet wanderers.
• Points will bring you increased exposure and random traffic, if only out of curiosity.
• And if you're lucky, those same points allow you to speak to people you might otherwise not be able to speak to, because you will simply be seen more often.

You engaging others matters more.

• Points don't make people subscribe to your posts.
• Points don't influence a Realtor 10 states away to send you a referral.
• Points won't drive a consumer to pick up the phone and call you after reading what you've written.
• Points won't create relationships so real, that when you finally meet that person for the first time you feel like you're meeting an old friend.
  
• Points won't tell your arms to reach out and hug them knowing that they truly are an old friend.

Yep, I've now got 200,000 points. And with each point that piles on, I care less and less. Because the relationships that I've developed here are cherished and authentic. They are relationships with people - real people - some of whom I've recently had the pleasure to greet, and hug. Sappy? I don't care. That's me.

So, while I can appreciate the value of these 200,000 points, I don't expect they'll be giving me a hug anytime soon.

:)

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Edit: I was just taking a trip down memory lane and found that the post I thought was the most visited, Sex And Real Estate :: Part 1, was not. The one listed below must have recently passed it, and it seemed appropriate to come back and link it here, since I called myself a newbie at the time.

According to Bloomberg.com, Flickr will be adding video sharing to Flickr.com.

"One of our strategies is to put video everywhere you are on the Internet,'' said Folgner, who joined the Sunnyvale, California-based company last year through Yahoo's acquisition of video site Jumpcut. ``We're going to build a much better destination for you to access all this different content."

Some may see this as a good thing, but I'm not so sure. One of the beauties of Flickr is it's simplicity. It does one thing and it does it very, very well. It's clean, easy to use and dominates the photo sharing landscape.

Yahoo! does have a decent video site already in Jumpcut. My guess is that most have never heard of it, however. Which is strange, since Yahoo! certainly has the resources to put it front and center. Jumpcut's upload is a bit slow, but the video is live the moment the upload is complete. It also has some interestng features after you upload. You can reorder, edit, add titles, music, transitions, etc. It's not the simplest interface, but it does work. I don't recommend editing video on the web yet. Unless you like pain, then sure, go right ahead.

To show you the quality of their video, compare the video below with this post using the same video uploaded to Brightcove.

Here is the Jumpcut sample:

Jumpcut also gives you code for a thumbnail, if you choose, and the ability to upload automatically to different blog platforms. It's certainly worth a look.