For those that have worked with Star Power Systems, we all lost a friend late last week.

Always diligent, smart and reliable as a business partner, Jeff Wilner was even more a man of honor, respect and heart.
In the course of the last several years he became our trusted and true friend.

We will sincerely miss him.

In lieu of flowers, Jeff and his surviving wife Stephanie have asked that donations be made to Rocky Mountain Cancer Center Foundation, Rock the Earth or the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

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Google News has been a great service of Google.com for approx. 5 years. It allows for a searcher to query a news story and the engine will serve up different sources for that story. This is something to watch, as many Real Estate Agents regularly provide press releases to local news sources.

However, changes are coming. Google has signed licensing agreements with four large wholesale News Agencies – the Press Association of Britain, Canadian Press, Agence France-Presse and The A.P. At the moment current stories are supplied to online news sources – such as national news paper websites etc. Now, in addition to the online news source’s version of a story being found, the source Press Agency’s story will also be found.

Google say this will not make any difference on the ranking of news items; however, many feel that it could pave the way for interesting advertising avenues related to a news search. Google News, by licensing news stories, is using an approach that Microsoft’s MSNBC Online Portal and Yahoo have pursued for the last 10 years.

Despite the big change to the way that Google News functions, the change itself was ironically not covered in a big way.

As the cost of PPC rises [in many cases well over $1 per click], more Realtors will inevitably turn their attention toward organic search engine marketing. Considering we have clients seeing organic search home buyer & seller discovery to the tune of thousands per month, it’s only likely that better means for organic search indexing becomes incrementally important.

Our clients, who have relatively low fixed monthly costs and an unlimited ability to write about local real estate [homes, property, streets, subdivisions, developments, communities and general goings- on], would be paying thousands for those same clicks in a Pay Per Click environment. Take Gateway Land & Development of Edwards CO, who saw over 10,000 new Eagle County CO property seeking searchers find their Real Estate Blogsite™ in May of 2007. I’ll bet they’re overjoyed for their fixed monthly cost versus what would easily be several thousand dollars.

As local organic search awareness is raised, the competition for relevant or highly ranking organic index placement will heat up more and more. In order to establish rankings, it’s important to be proactive in developing a strategy now! It will certainly be easier [and less expensive] to maintain relevance than to try and catch up… so consider a consistent & subject- specific blogging initiative.

The solution one chooses depends on how important they feel Blogging can be for their business. A Real Estate Blogsite™ is meticulously designed for actual ‘business requirements.’

While those requirements may [?] include
1) comprehensive search engine feed visibility treatment(s)
2) instrumentation of traffic performance tracking analytics
3) search engine pinging and
4) negative comment moderation
it is highly unlikely most people would ever know to consider such items in advance of pursuing their initiative.

It’s highly unlikely they would ever consider the value of
5) a drilled- down content syndication capability ["I want the Brooklyn feed, but not Manhattan or Queens"]
6) an XML platform [the most machine- friendly computer language]
7) re- formatting of [human] content for machine indexing
detailed search index penetration [topic, keyword & key phrase preparation]
9) automated content quality assurance [24/7 content history monitoring]
10) outage contingencies
11) deep navigational page & post integration to base- website domains
12) relevant inbound syndication of content in specific channels
13) an array of web- service capabilities
14) extensive widget integration
15) corporate compliance monitoring
16) secure feed capabilities

17) secure knowledge management (for strategic monitoring of content)
and countless other useful features.

Depending on which configuration one chooses, with a Real Estate Blogsite™ they shouldn’t ever concern themselves

One of the most useful features of Blogging is content distribution, also known as RSS syndication.

This useful method of content distribution allows a prospective client to subscribe to the blogs content, including direct updates each time new content is posted. One of the best ways to view and organize feeds is to utilize a feed management system such as Google Reader. It allows you to view all your feed subscriptions in one place. This is also especially useful for the Realtor who wants to keep up to date on other local Neighborhood Blog content and/ or as a convenient source of potential blog subject matter.

Google Reader has NOW also added a new search feature, which allows users to search feed content for their favorite posts or for any posts containing key phrases. Additionally, there have been some minor changes and small feature improvements to make the platform more user friendly.

RSS feeds are a great way for reaching people with new information.

New statistics have shown that at least 75 million people use Feed Readers in the US and the UK; however, it’s notable that only 17-32% of those people actually know they are using RSS to receive the information. An example might be the MyYahoo user who isn’t aware they can use it to subscribe to any RSS feed. This is slightly worrying news, as people may not be aware they can use syndication to gather the latest news from their Realtor.

From a Realtor perspective, if the Blog is focused around community activities, new listings and other real estate news it may very well motivate interested home buyers & sellers in the area to subscribe to the Blogs RSS feed. This is potentially a great convenience, as it will eliminate their need to have to come looking for ‘what’s new.’  Once they have subscribed, they receive a continuous feed from the source. RSS is flexible and multi-platform and can make keeping oneself informed very easy.

If you do blog, consider trying to market and to educate readers on how this feature can benefit them. After all, 75 million users is nothing to sneeze at and potentially a large number of potential clients

With Google at the forefront of Web Technology it is no wonder that they are testing their own version of Municipal WiFi in their hometown of Mountain View, California. (wifi.google.com) They are currently attracting around 15,000 users a month and local residents love it.

There are many different ways of achieving Municipal Wifi, from satellite coverage – where an area is blanketed in WiFi access – this method has many advantages, such as the ability to provide access to remote parts of the world which are not hardwired for broadband or routers. However the major disadvantage is cost. Other more common methods involve using conventional technology such as attaching Wireless Routers to telephone poles and road signs in the manner which Google have in Mountain View or utilizing cell phone towers to provide wifi access in the similar way to getting a signal on your cell phone. – Called 4G technology. All of these methods are part of what is termed ‘WiMax‘ a standard of developing mass wireless broadband through some or a combination of these technologies.

Google is not the only company to test out its own model of providing wireless to a town, Norwich City Council in the UK have provided a service to the city service as a test bed, dubbed OpenLink.

The potential for use in the Real Estate Industry is great, agents would no longer be tied to desktop computers in the office – allowing a dynamic office environment no longer governed by the layout of offices and workstations. Similarly whilst on the road they would have complete access to a property’s tax records, MLS Data as well as update their blog and listing details whilst out at a property.

The hold in the development in this technological advance is financing, cities no longer want to shoulder the cost of developing and maintaining the network infrastructure alone and would like to spread the risk by bringing on board existing or new technology/communications companies.

Of course this will be one development which the Real Estate Industry will watch closely as it develops in the coming years.