However…
BtoB:
One day someone will be driving through a neighborhood and they’ll see a sign with a podcast URL. A few minutes later they could be sitting in front of the property, watching a video tour on their cell phone.
When you create a brand new category, you’re a category-killer by default…
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing
Todd Carpenter says:
I doubt that day is far off. Considering how robust Apple’s new iPhone is, this might be an idea worth developing right now.
February 23, 2007 — 2:29 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Considering how robust Apple’s new iPhone is, this might be an idea worth developing right now.
That was my thought, too. I’ll bet Mike Price has thoughts on the subject, also…
February 23, 2007 — 2:35 pm
Michael Price says:
You bet we do! Right now there are a few ways to get video to handhelds other than the iPod, some less cumbersome than others. That will all change soon. The iPhone will certainly have a great deal to do with it. Stay tuned!
February 23, 2007 — 5:01 pm
Fred Light says:
Actually, Adobe just announced the support of Flash playback on mobile devices – which will definitely make this a reality – soon.
February 23, 2007 — 9:34 pm
Greg Swann says:
> which will definitely make this a reality – soon.
That was my thinking, too. My Treo 650 has every bit of the hardware needed to do this, so the hurdle to be leapt is software to stream an MP4 file. Even if that’s not yet available, our weblogs come through the phone fine — not as .mob sites, but just as web sites.
February 23, 2007 — 10:34 pm
Mike Price says:
The new Treo supports .mp4 and if you want to get files to a 650 its relatively easy with the smart card. We have a few clients that demo their files with the 650.
If you want to stream with your 650 I highly recommend the Kinoma Player for the Treo, it is awesome software and at $25 is a steal.
http://www.kinoma.com/index/Player4
It will even do Quicktime VR.
February 24, 2007 — 1:19 pm
Richard Cook says:
This is already a reality with our Knockbox technology. The Knockbox supports multiple web pages allowing for an entire website for each listing. This can open up a whole new world of content and possibly even revenue for you. A few ideas that come to mind are additional pages that include the rest of your listing inventory to be viewable on each Knockbox. Or provide information about the community around each listing. The ability to include advertising pages paid for by your service providers on each of your Knockboxes is an exciting way to get the costs down.
To give you an idea of the growing list of devices that can connect to the Knockbox. Any device that can get a wifi signal and has a browser can view the website that is on the Knockbox. This list is growing fast and includes:
Laptop and Notebook Computers
WiFi capable cell phones (iPhone, Mylo, Helio, SDA, MDA, iPAQ, PPC, etc.)
Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs; Palm, Dell, some GPS devices)
Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPC: Origami, OQO)
Portable gaming systems (Nintendo DS, Sony Play Station Portable)
‘Tweener devices like the N800 from Nokia, these are a new type of internet device that is between a phone and a PDA.
To give you a glimpse of what the future holds for the Knockbox. We are working hard on providing the ability to edit the content yourself for each of your Knockboxes. You will be able to change photos, text and add additional pages.
Check us out at http://www.knockboxhome.com.
February 24, 2007 — 2:32 pm
Tim Bondy says:
I’m not sure why a potential buyer would want to watch a video of a 2000 square foot home on a 12 “square inch” screen? To me, it’s not much different than looking at a picture in the classifieds.
Cell phone technology has a long way to go before I go investing in this type of over-hyped marketing. I have a perfectly good 17 inch monitor at work and a great 19 inch monitor at home. When I see a home I like, I would rather see the pictures on a real website. Heck, if you look at the pictures posted on most real estate websites, it’s hard to tell if you are looking at the living room or the basement. What does it look like on a cell phone?
Technology is great and it has helped the real estate industry greatly. Don’t fall into the trap of buying into a technology long before it becomes viable.
I’m sure you will tell me that plenty of people have already made a prelimanary decision on buying a home just from the cell phone pictures. I will tell you the vast majority of buyers will not buy into this marketing ploy.
February 24, 2007 — 2:59 pm
Tony - bienesraicesvideo.com says:
I have to agree with Tim Bondy.
Our site has over 350 real estate videos posted. We coded what we needed to display all of the videos available on our web site to cell phones. From a technical perspective, everything worked fine. We needed to tweak sizes a bit for various phone models but the videos played without other issues.
The problem was the user experience – the tiny screens that we tested on various models of phones just didnt provide the experience what we were hoping for. The interviews were the worst as they are filmed to be viewed online in widescreen (16×9) mode in preparation for the upcoming devices like AppleTV, not for tiny cell phones.
However, we kept the solution in our code base – it can be activated in about 5 minutes if the need arises.
Tony
http://bienesraicesvideo.com
March 3, 2007 — 7:18 am