Color Me Happy

With yesterday's release of RapidWeaver 3.6, it reminded me how important it is to have a good color scheme for your site. If you're a designer, you've no doubt run into the issue of choosing a good color scheme, and today's post is about Adobe's site that helps pick colors for your site. The site is Kuler, and it does a great job at one thing - making color schemes. The site is a little on the slow side, but the service is fantastic. There are tons of applications that exist that can help with this, but for online color choosing, Kuler is the best - and it's FREE!

Visit the site and see what others have submitted, or make your own and submit it for others to use. It has a very web 2.0 feel to it, and should simplify a major part of your design process. If you know of better sites like this, list them in the comments section.

Mac Users Rejoice! RapidWeaver 3.6 released TODAY

Calling all Mac Web Designers - The bast web design software ever created for the Mac has just gotten better!

Say hello to RapidWeaver. He's a revolutionary, but friendly piece of web design software made exclusively for the Mac. He'll help you create and publish beautiful, modern sites, compliant with today's web standards.

All of my sites are built with RapidWeaver! If you are a Mac user, make sure and visit Realmac Software and test drive RapidWeaver. If you still use a PC and are considering making the switch, this might be what you needed to push you over the edge.

Namaste!

You Don't Want To Be Included!

How can you have a website beauty page without ugly sites? Ugly websites are what make Posh'd sites look so nice, right? So here's the scoop - Posh'd is on the lookout for the 50 ugliest real estate websites. It shouldn't be hard to find them. As Greg Swann from BloodhoundBlog said about real estate websites, they are, "the ugliest stuff on the web."

Our plan is to feature 10 ugly sites each week for 5 weeks. Will we piss some people off? Oh yeah! Will it be fun? Absolutely! Can anyone learn from this experiment? If you realize that the point is to show what NOT to do on a real estate website, then yes.

We're starting our search tomorrow, so if you know you're in the bottom 50, get to updating.

Know any really ugly sites? Email us and let us know.

Start checking back next week for the first group of uglies, and subscribe to this blog so you can see the whole list.

Video Killed the 360 Tour Star!

A feature many agents are adding to their sites are video tours. The discussion of whether video tours are better than 360 tours is almost as heated as Who's the hottest Jessica - Biel or Simpson (and we all know it's Biel). If you decide to go down the video road, you'll be faced with tons of options. As video seems to be the web 2.0 media of choice, there are a TON of video upload sites for you to choose from. How do you decide on the right site to upload and embed your video? You take a trip to Posh'd Alum, The Future of Real Estate Blog's post called Real Estate Video Shoot Out. Joel has done the dirty work for all of us, and it should help make your decision a little easier. You can also read my take on this in the comments section. I discuss another site that has helped me keep track of my videos that I'll discuss here soon.

Side note: Yes, I know the picture here is for iChat, but it has a video camera in it. Get it?

Let's Have A Chat!

As web 2.0 steamrolls its way through our daily lives, and changes the face of business daily, you might be left wondering how you can add a little web 2.0 goodness to your real estate site.

There are a million ways to define web 2.0, but one of the undeniable features is bringing people together (community if you will). So how does your current website achieve this? Do you offer a "10 tips you need to know when buying a house" brochure when people register? Do you have an "Email Me" link on your page? Oh, maybe you have that fancy "Find out your home's value" (not talking to you Zillow or eppraisal). What I'm trying to get at is that all of these are fine, but they really don't allow you to connect with your clients - and we all know how they can be...."We want to talk to you on OUR time."

The best way I've found to be available at all times (well, almost all times - I do sleep occasionally) is to include a chat box, or an IM box, on my homepage. They are nothing fancy, but to your clients, they are gold. It's almost comical when a client uses it. The first message you get is usually, "hello?," or the best, "Is this real?" The second you respond, they are blown away that A) it IS real, and that B) they are able to talk to you, but without having to be face-to-face.

If you decide (and you really should) to add a chat box, the first thing you need to figure out is which one you want to use. Currently, there are two plug-ins that are very popular - Meebo and Plugoo.

MEEBO

I would have to say that Meebo is the most popular of the two, but I'm not sure why. Most times I run across a Meebo on a page, it says "Away." My guess is that there are not enough ways to use Meebo, but I only played with it for a few minutes to test it, so I could be wrong. If you use Meebo and have more info, please share it in the comments.

I'm going to break a blogging rule here, and use verbiage directly from the Meebo site, but it's their About section, and it gives a great description of how the product works.

meebo.com is a website for instant messaging from absolutely anywhere. Whether you’re at home, on campus, at work, or traveling foreign lands, hop over to meebo.com on any computer to access all of your buddies (on AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ and Jabber) and chat with them, no downloads or installs required, for free!meebo launched in September 2005 and received funding from Sequoia Capital in December 2005 and Draper Fisher Jurvetson in January 2007. Today, our users exchange over 80 million instant messages daily. We (the meebo team) are just a fun bunch of people trying to bring IM to the web!

Now, as amazing as meebo looks, I'm still not in love with it for one simple reason. As far as I can tell, you must be signed in to your meebo account on your computer to view your buddy list. So, unless you're at your computer, and logged in to meebo, your plug-in will say "Away," and you've defeated the whole purpose of being there for your clients.

So how else would you chat if you weren't at your computer? I'll explain in a second, but first let's discuss Plugoo.

Plugoo

I'm going to start the talk about Plugoo by sharing their, "What is Plugoo" section:

Thanks to Plugoo, visitors on your webpage, friends or family, can easily chat with you while visiting your website!Plugoo enables you to chat directly from your Instant Messenger with any visitor of your blog, personal webpage or e-sales site.When you’re logged into your Instant Messenger (Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, GoogleTalk, Jabber or ICQ), you can receive in real time all the comments of your visitors or any question they might ask, and answer instantly!

Did you see the difference? Look closely, it's subtle, but it's there. Ok, so maybe you see it, maybe you don't, but the difference is, Plugoo works WITH your existing Instant Messaging service, so you can receive your client's messages anywhere you can receive IMs. Still confused? No problem. Here's a real world scenario:

Real World Scenario

I have plugoo installed on my homepage, and I am a huge fan of Google and their products. Google has a product called Google Talk (they also have an amazing web based email called gmail). I use Google Talk to chat with friends, etc. If you're familiar with AOL, it's just like AIM.

The very important part of making all this work for you and your clients is to have a smartphone. Most Realtors carry these already, so you probably already have this. Treos, Blackberrys, and every Windows Mobile phone will allow you to use instant messaging. When you sign into your IM program on your phone, one of your friends is now "Plugoo." This way, when you are away from your computer, and a client wants to reach you, the message goes to your phone. they have no idea, nor do they care as long as you're there to answer their questions. Plus, having this on your cell means the plug-in almost always shows, "Available." How cool is that? One other thing to note...if you use gmail, it can sign you in to gtalk at the same time. So now, it's on your phone, and on your computer, and you don't have to remember to sign into a seperate site just for the chat to work.

It couldn't be easier to have one of these up and running for you tonight. Just visit the site you're interested in and follow their instructions. Keep in mind, your site needs to be a site that you have access to dumping a few lines of code into, but if you're visiting Posh'd, chances are, you've got that covered.

If you have any questions, you can reach me at shaun76 on google talk, or visit HERE and chat with me through Plugoo.

Twitter!

I told you we'd get to this later, and I guess now's as good a time as any to get this out of the way.

So what is Twitter? Here's the boring Wikipedia definition:

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific. Twitter was founded in October 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp.Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and also instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, or through an application. For SMS, currently two gateway numbers are available: one for the USA and a UK number for international use. While the Twitter service is free, posting and receiving updates via SMS may incur charges from the wireless carrier.

Why do you care? If you're taking the time to build a Posh real estate website - you want people to see it. I think of Twitter as more of a tool for a large group chat. If I post a new blog entry that I think people might like, I Twit it. The people that are watching my Tweets (these are actual words, I promise), will see I have a new post, and they can click on the link to go directly to it. It's just one more way to share information.

Here's the how and why of my Twitter life:

Why - I had been hearing about Twitter for months on the net. I signed up, and invited all my friends - most of which said, "What the hell is this?" I posted about 5 tweets, and thought it was pointless. A few months later I was reading about SXSW, and they were talking about how Twitter was the most talked about thing there. I also noticed a lot of the Mac community that develops their sites with RapidWeaver (Easily the best webdesign tool for Mac - EVER) were using Twitter, so I gave it another try. This time it stuck. I am able to discuss web design tips with other developers, as well as chat with my real estate clients about their houses, or other Realtors about whatever we talk about. It's an interesting look into people's daily lives, and becomes quite addictive.

How - I use Twitter a few ways. I can sign in to twitter.com and watch the posts from there, or you can download any number of twitter plug-ins to use with your new browser - Firefox :-). I also use it on my cell. This is probably the easiest. I have unlimited text messages, so the tweets just come straight to my phone, and I'm able to update what I'm doing by posting "eating lunch (or whatever)" to 40404 (and it's free if you have unlimited text). When I'm on my Mac, I use Twitterrific. Very cool app to keep up with your friends.

If you do sign-up for a Twitter account, feel free to look me up. I can be found at http://twitter.com/ekday

If a Site Looks Bad, It's Probably YOUR Fault

This post is only for 48% of my readers - the rest of you are off the hook.

Let's face it, most of you are adults. Try to remember back to being a kid and learning how to ride a bike. More than likely, you started with training wheels. It's nothing to be embarrassed about, we all did it. How long did you keep your training wheels on? Probably not too long - maybe a couple of years. But, once they were off, you realized riding a bike was so much more fun, and the freedom was incredible.

Why are we talking about this? Because 48% of the people that have viewed posh'd have viewed it with Internet Explorer. I'm guessing many of you didn't even know there were other ways to get on the internet, you just know you're supposed to click that little blue "E." It's ok. Like the training wheels, we've all been there. Time to take the training wheels off though. If you'e using Internet Explorer (especially IE6), you're truly missing out on some of the most amazing websites ever created.

All browsers are NOT created equally. Most developers use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to create dramatic effects on their sites. It's nothing new, but sadly, Internet Explorer has a very hard time displaying CSS (I know this isn't a technical explanation, but if you understand CSS, you're probably already using Firefox).

It's probably easier for me to just show you how different browsers handle CSS. If you want to see how your browser performs, check out the Acid Test. It's a test designed to help browser vendors ensure proper support for web standards in their products. I've done a few tests for you:

This is how the test results should look:




Now, here are a few results:

Safari for Mac OSX. Most of you are using a PC, so you are not able to use this browser. It ships on Macs, and is a fantastic browser choice (although there are other mac browsers just as good, if not better - I'm talking about you Camino)




Acid Test Performed on Firefox 2.0



It's not perfect, but considering the amount of CSS used in the acid test, this is actually a very good result.

Internet Explorer 6 (this is for 80% of the 48% of IE users)




WTF? If that doesn't make you cringe, and start searching Google for Firefox, I don't know what will. Like I said...it's time to take off the training wheels.

Take a look at the red ribbon to the left of this post. You'll see a Firefox Block that will take you immediately to the FF download page. Do it know. We'll wait.

It's my opinion that Firefox is hands-down the BEST browser for Windows users. It offers so much more than just a decent acid test. It gives you tabbed browsing (just try it, you'll like it) as well as a ton of plug-ins to simplify your day - one of which is the Google Toolbar.

Currently, I am using Firefox (actually BonEcho) on a Mac Pro. When I'm on the road meeting with clients, I carry a Sony XP laptop, and use Firefox 2. I'd go into the plug-ins I have installed, but there are a ton of them, so here's a brief description of a few. I have the weather in the bottom right of my status bar, I have a Twitter (we'll talk about this later) plug-in so I can view tweets in the sidebar, I have FireFTP so I can easily upload files for webdesign, and about 30 more. Do yourself a favor and download it today. I imagine a few of the sites on Poshd (including Poshd itself) don't look nearly as good to you as they should. Download Firefox, and revisit Poshd to see what I'm talking about. It's ok, you can thank me in the comments section.

Murphy Found Posh'd One Hour After Launch!

It seemed too good to be true. Our launch was going very smoothly, and everyone seemed to be having fun....unitl (insert cheesy dramatic music here) Murphy showed up to the part and spoiled everyone's fun.

You know Murphy, he's the guy with his own law. Well, an hour after launching, the blinking fun-lights on my DSL box went dark. No big deal, I'll sit and wait for them to come back on............still waiting................and waiting.................hmmmm............this is strange. Let's call Sprint (this is after 2 hours of waiting). The nice guy at Sprint was in a great mood - too good. He said he knew about the problem, but that I wouldn't be happy. He told me about how Sprint uses fiber optic cables instead of copper, blah, blah, blah...and then he said

THE OPTIC LINE WAS CUT! Your service will be restored tomorrow at 6pm at the earliest. Sorry for any complications this may cause you.

I didn't panic, but with only 1 hour of promoting the launch of Posh'd, I figured I'd have to call it a soft launch, and try again in a few days. I picked up my cell to call my Posh'd partner in crime, and it wouldn't dial out. I live in a very rural part of central Florida, so I started my "signal search," trying to pick up at least one bar. Nothing. So, I picked up the house phone (also Sprint) and it was dead. Luckily, we're neighbors, so I walked next door to use his phone, and it worked fine, although his DSL was out too.

I called T-Mob, and was pleased to find out they chose the Posh'd launch day to readjust their Orlando towers, and I could expect my service to be restored in about 24 hours.

Launch day - no blackberry service to check emails - no internet connection to upload new sites or answer emails. Thanks Murphy, come back real soon.

Turns out, it didn't matter.

My one hour of self-promotion landed us on a few blogs, and helped us achieve 147 Unique Visitors, and 459 page views. Not stellar, but pretty damn good considering.

Here are the blogs having fun with Posh'd so far:

POSH'D TWICE - HOW VERY VERY NICE!!! - Activerain
If you were the cutest dog at the dog show, would you work for world peace, or would you just go for the contact info? - BloodhoundBlog
FOREM got Posh’d - Future of Real Estate Blog
BlueRoof Gets POSH’D - BlueRoof Blog
LakePlace.com - Posh’d - LakePlace Blog

There a re a few others, but these are the guys pulling in some serious action! Thanks to everyone that is helping spread the word about Posh'd. We were StumbledUpon too, which drove traffic through the roof yesterday.

Rules to Follow

I have to admit, I'm a HUGE fan of RSS Pieces. If you are a blogger, and haven't already found them, stop right now, and add them to your feedreader. If you're new to blogging, and are thinking of launching your own blog, make sure and read, "Guide To a Successful Blog Launch" on their site. Right now, I'm trying to follow Rule #1: Launch with no less than 5 fresh articles.


2 Down, 3 to go!

H3LL0 WOR1D!

I know what you're think: Just what the world needs....another blog. Well, it's not my fault.

Posh'd launched 48 hours ago, and I have no less than 10 requests for a blog to be added. Why? What could I possible blog about?

After kicking and screaming about not wanting to do this, I settled down enough to think about what I could possible fill these pages with, and here are the results:

#1 - I will post about anything related to Poshd.com's development
#2 - Since this is a site aimed at better looking real estate websites, I will offer resources, tools, and anything else I can find to help you step up your game.
#3 - hmmm...haven't thought of a #3 yet. Maybe it will come to me, but for now, you'll have to just settle for the other 2.

Let's start the insanity!