While it’s not “street view” in the traditional sense (Google) and in spite of some questions about how they’re doing the display of IDX data, but what CurbPlaces is doing is pretty cool. … We’ve started with Downtown and the City and our slowly making our way across the map (as fast as our intern can ride his bike carrying a laptop, digital camera, and GPS device…)
Browsing Category Technology
What’s outside the window?
I’ll be adding these photos to my listings soon – what’s outside the window of the house, what the street looks like, what’s to the left and right … not just because a client mentioned it to me the other day, but also because Google just released Panoramio : Have you ever looked at a photo and wondered what was beyond its edges – just what was left of that castle or what the facade of Notre Dame looks like from close up? … I only wish we could integrate this into the MLS … but we’re relatively limited in the photos we can upload and then we’d likely run into the “you can’t have your own branding!”
One thing that absolutely must be fixed on the new Realtor.com
Spell ” separate ” correctly, for goodness sakes. I guess that’s why it’s a beta. 
Also, in the message sent to the Realtor, why have pre-written text advertising to the Realtor ?
Policy Maps for today’s real estate consumer
They have data layers for Real Estate Analysis, Neighborhood Conditions, Mortgage Originations, Education, Money & Income, Demographics, Owners and Renters, Jobs, Energy (wind and solar aren’t options – yet) – and dozens of subsets under each respective data layer. … Thanks to RWW for finding this site and for highlighting some of the data that he found interesting I’ll be moving next month, just six blocks away from where I live right now, but that part of the neighborhood is quite different.
A 30 second review of the new Realtor dot com
Not sure why a featured listing asking $995k shows at the top of the screen when I’m searching for houses between $250k and $350k. … I still want GIS, crime, school, etc, but this is a decent start (as well it should be – Realtor.com has continually redefined the standard of “underwhelmingly underperforming” for YEARS.
What will MLS data standards do for the consumers?
With the recent talk of how forthcoming data standards are going to make property data sharing more efficient and thus better for consumers and Realtors, here is one of my requests – I’d love to see a (Google) Mashup (or the MLS would be even better, and I think a no-brainer) providing an overlay of school districts. … Even better, make it so that registered users could make their own pages with all their important locations to help them organize their thoughts and help their Realtor representatives better understand their thoughts and thought processes.
The Social Internet
In light of the discussion at the end of ZebraTalk at today’s VAR BloggerCon , this is a very timely and appropriate segment from the Colbert Report. Focusing on the “social” part of social media will bring great rewards, even if you can’t draw a line from A to B.