positive real estate news in virginia 2007 How ’bout that?
Browsing Category sideblog
Got Pownce
And I got 6 invites to boot; let me know if you want one…. – start here) Who knows if this social network will be any better than the others?… One thing that Facebook, Twitter, Pownce and the like have done? Devalued what a “friend” means via the race to add as many “friends” as possible.
Two Carnivals
The Carnival of Real Estate #49 and the Carnival of the Green #85 make their appearances this week. There’s a carnival for everything.
Rivanna Trails map
Something I have been looking for for some time is a good map of the Rivanna Trail, a walking/biking trail around and through the City of Charlottesville. Finally, I stumbled upon this map today. I picked up several maps to give to clients.
kijiji in Cville
If Charlottesville hasn’t yet “gotten” craigslist, how long will it take for them to “get” kijiji? From a real estate marketing perspective, how long for vFlyer and Postlets to add kijiji to their distribution?
eNeighborhoods MLS Alliance – pros and cons?
Note: This is a post directed primarily at other Realtors and those who work with Realtors’ data.All the rage nowadays seems to be regionalization of MLS’.They work with Google Maps.eNeighborhoods has an MLS data sharing service called MLSAllianceâ„¢ that links together different MLS services, so that real estate professionals are able to make one search for properties and retrieve results from multiple MLS systems…. Google Maps for Enterprise will soon be added to MLSAlliance sites in California, Ohio, and Florida, giving real estate professionals in these markets access to all listings, with an equal amount of comprehensive data for each of those listings.I’ve read about them at CallClareity…. It minimizes the turf wars that seem to always be percolating between regions by not forcing data standards on various MLS.Some questions I have:- Do member Realtors have access to, and rights to use, all data – solds, withdrawns, expired, actives, Days on Market, etc.?- Partnering with a “for-profit†third-party such as eNeighborhoods smacks of the Move.com/Realtor.com alliance/fiasco, which is widely derided by Realtors as a frustrating failure – both for the Realtors providing the data and the consumers seeking information.- What control over the data display do Realtors have?… I haven’t found out yet if what they approved is the only the Realtor-side or not, but if they approved everything, I would be both shocked and hopeful that something productive could be done.** I was a member of the MLS NAR PAG, so am constrained by the NDA we signed.
Using mobile phones to track … pretty much everything
Courtesy of the BBC, and thanks to the ubiquity of cell phones:Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are using data from mobile-phone networks to create real time maps of people moving around the city….”This is really the first time that you can take an urban system, like a big city, and try to see in real time how it lives, how people move and what’s happening in (Rome),” says Carlo Ratti from MIT.”In the city for example you’ve got taxis with GPS, you’ve got buses with GPS, and also you’ve got mobile phones.”If you take that information and you apply artificial intelligence and algorithms to it, then you can understand very interesting things about the urban system,” he says.What’s it all mean? One result could be -Better route planning for buses and cars could mean less time standing in traffic, pumping out noxious fumes.Fascinating stuff. From Charlottesville’s perspective, analyzing traffic patterns could very well lead to smarter transportation methods. Shoot, if they’d just quit stopping the bus for five minutes on Route 29 during rush hour, that would be a success.Via TechCrunch.And a funny story (via VC) at Wired regarding hyperlocal and mobiles.