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Category: Casual Friday (page 17 of 25)

August 21, 2008

iPhone euphony: When you hear the beep, hang tough

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Seventeen months after Steve Jobs’ original announcement, Cathy and I finally got iPhones last night. Our Treo 650s were just about beaten to death, so the moment was right. We had known from the first that we were going to wait for 3G and extensibility. The immediate sell-out of the original inventory of 3G iPhones was like a sign from the gods. We are rarely early-adopters, preferring to let other people find the bugs in dot.oh.dot.oh releases. With luck, this week’s release of iPhone OS 2.0.2, which we installed last night, will be golden.

In the Googlefied world, everything is easy. The AT&T geeks knew nothing about how to convert from Palm Desktop the iPhone, but Apple has a fairly simple procedure. I got all my contacts and my calendar events going back to 2001 just like that. AT&T and Sprint are still squabbling over who gets to service my phone number — I can literally call myself, iPhone to Treo, on my own number. But, so far, everything has been easy and nothing has hurt.

Well, one thing is going to hurt. I’m losing the ability to record phone calls. Many of the podcasts you hear here were recorded directly on my Treo, and I will often use CallRec to “take notes” with clients or real estate news sources. That feature is unavailable, at least for now, on the iPhone. We’re gaining a lot, including a whole lot more power in the cloud, but I’ll miss being able to record calls.

I have a few iPhone plans for BloodhoundBlog, but they’ve been waiting for me to have a phone to test on. For now, if you want a BloodhoundBlog button on your iPhone home page, snag one. (Hit the plus sign at the bottom of your screen and follow the prompts.) Within the next couple of days, I’ll be adding an iPhone-only theme to make the blog easier to read on a small screen. But even now you’ll have one-click access to BHB — and Odysseus at his most glamorous on your home page.

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August 21, 2008

Splendor versus squalor: The part you throw away

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

[I wrote this in March of 2007. I’m revisiting it now because it fits so well with the essay I wrote last night about honesty. At just about the same time I wrote this post, I penned an essay about an idea I call The Implied Accusation — the elephant in the room. I lucked upon a sweet cover of the Tom Waits tune quoted below, so I’m adding that as well. –GSS]

 
I believe in integrity, but I believe in a very Latinly kind of integrity. It’s normal for me to translate words in and out of Latin, to write and think in those words in the way that they are composed from their Latin atoms. So when I think of the word “integrity,” what I think of is “all one thing.”

And I try to live that way, too, with my whole life, as best I can manage it, being the expression of one idea: Splendor.

I’ll give you a definition, which I will immediately qualify:

Splendor is the interior experience of being so enthralled by the act of creating the values that contribute to and ultimately comprise your idealized perfect self that, while you are experiencing it, you are your idealized perfect self.

What’s the qualification? Splendor is not words, and it is not merely thoughts or deeds. Splendor is the tone and the timbre, the warp and the weft of a life spent pursuing it. Words, deeds, thoughts, actions, hopes, dreams, plans, memories, work, leisure, solitude and companionship — everything you do in the pursuit of positive values and nothing that you do in quests for disvalues.

This is such a simple idea, and I love it better than anything. It is everything I want to be when I am being the best person I can be, and it is everything I want for everyone I see. It’s one of the reasons I love being a Realtor, because this job, at its best, is all about Splendor, helping people get the most and the best that life can offer.

I don’t talk to my clients directly about this, but they get the idea. We Read more

August 11, 2008

Unchained lullabies: Splendor, squalor and war…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Teri Lussier sent me this clip as a celebration of Unchained in Orlando:

That’s sweet, but I always think of this when I think of lullabies:

And that’s so brutal that it’s almost unimaginably brutal — until you look at this:

That’s the real face of war. Not well-turned-out soldiers with their bootlaces smartly tied, not bombers or aircraft carriers. War is your grandmother wailing because everything she has ever known has been burned to a cinder.

Julie Gold is a great songwriter. She wrote From a Distance, and Bette Midler couldn’t quite ruin it as a massively over-produced anthem. But Nancy Griffith, on her best days, can sing a simple song simply. This is a lullaby for the people who are not sleeping in Tbilisi.

August 7, 2008

Unchained melodies: Take Five

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m with John Rowles — and then some — on the true, mostly unrealized, power of branding in real estate. I’ve been meaning to write about it, but I’m sick for the second time this summer, and it’s left me beyond stupid at the end of the business day.

Other matters: We are that close to negotiating a space for Unchained Orlando, this despite the best efforts of the NAR to dominate every meeting space. I may have an announcement tomorrow.

But for tonight, Al Jarreau and three fingers of Irish cough syrup. G’night.


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August 1, 2008

Are You Making Music?

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

I recently attended a birthday party with my two beautiful boys (yes they are the most beautiful boys in the world and no, I am not biased).  The birthday guest of honor received a great many gifts and it was lots of fun.  Save for one interesting observation… an odd note that just might reflect a growing problem many agents face in real estate.  But I am ahead of myself.

In particular, the boys all gathered around a video game (I think it is called Guitar Hero) that comes with drums and a guitar.  You put the DVD in and the TV provides music and a video while the boys watch a visual cue telling them when to strum a chord or bang a drum.  Anyway, they all jumped in and so did I.  (Little kid at heart still…)

Now here is the interesting part.  I did well at that game. I did well because of my athleticism.  I still have very good eye-hand coordination and I pick things up pretty quickly.  In hindsight, maybe that is not so interesting.  But let me add this: I am completely tone deaf and possess no rhythm whatsoever.  My ex-wife used to laugh at me when I clapped my hands or tapped my foot along to some song.  Apparently I was never on the beat.  I tried to tell her I was keeping with the “back beat”… but she wasn’t buying.  In any case, I was the source for a good deal of amusement.  Now imagine: a guy with no beat excelling at a game involving music.

(Stay with me because I am going to tie this all together in a moment.)  A day or two later, I catch an episode of Gene Simmons’ Family Jewels on cable.  If you have not seen this you are missing out on insights from one of the greatest marketers of our time.  In this particular episode Gene’s son, along with some friends, challenge Gene to this very same video game… and kick his rock & roll butt.  Gene decides this is not right.  So he calls his buddies Tommy Read more

July 18, 2008

Will NAR’s Latest 3-Letter Word Be Another Failure?

by

CEO, PA Association of Realtors

Author website

NAR has just been set up for failure. I hope I’m wrong, but history is on failures side. As I reported in the past, NAR is developing a database of every possible piece of information on every property in the United State. Jim Duncan, who served on the task force that came up with the idea, first reported on this in December 07. This project has gone through several names. It started as the Gateway, then changed to the Real Estate Channel, then to the Library/Archive and now to the final and official name, the Realtor Property Resource (RPR).

I’m only half kidding about this – you get to decide which half – but I gave my input along the way as to what name we should use. I said call it whatever you want, but make sure it does not end up with a 3-letter acronym. You see NAR has a remarkable failure rate with things that have a 3-letter acronym. For instance, oldies like PRC and RIN and more recently IDX and VOW. Now, my definition of failure is debatable, but basically anything that involved a major lawsuit or loss of significant money, I consider a failure.

There have been no NAR initiatives with 3-letter acronyms that have succeeded since MLS and even that has faced many lawsuits. I still consider MLS a success because it is the number 1 member service NAR has ever come up with. Essentially, MLS was a killer application that brought order to the marketplace. Like it or not, MLS has been a success. I do not know the date MLS was coined, but it was a long time ago in relative terms to this post.

So, now the latest challenger to the 3-letter theory jinx is RPR. This concept is so BIG in concept that it may be a killer app in its own right. Time will tell, but I am optimistic that it can become a major resource for members.

July 17, 2008

How to tell a hawk from a handsaw…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“The shame of speaking unskilfully were small if the tongue onely thereby were disgrac’d: But as the Image of a King in his Seale ill-represented is not so much a blemish to the waxe, or the Signet that seal’d it, as to the Prince it representeth, so disordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. Neither can his Mind be thought to be in Tune, whose words do jarre; nor his reason in frame, whose sentence is preposterous; nor his Elocution clear and perfect, whose utterance breaks itself into fragments and uncertainties. Negligent speech doth not onely discredit the person of the Speaker, but it discrediteth the opinion of his reason and judgement; it discrediteth the force and uniformity of the matter and substance. If it be so then in words, which fly and ’scape censure, and where one good Phrase asks pardon for many incongruities and faults, how then shall he be thought wise whose penning is thin and shallow? How shall you look for wit from him whose leasure and head, assisted with the examination of his eyes, yeeld you no life or sharpnesse in his writing?” –Ben Jonson

July 4, 2008

A suite in the Augustus Tower with a view of the South Strip, a bucket of ice and a bottle of Old Bushmills — and a gorgeous blonde I was lucky enough to marry… But if you take away everything except Cathleen, we’ll still have a wonderful anniversary

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

It’s our wedding anniversary today, and normally we would be in Sin City, swimming and playing. But Q4 2007 and Q1 2008 were lean enough that Cathy insists on wasting our money paying bills, rather than wasting it in Las Vegas, where money is meant to be wasted.

It’s funny to me that I get such a charge out of Vegas. I’m not quite abstemious, but inebriation appeals to me not at all. I have nothing but contempt for negative expectation games — gambling, that is. And the Cirque de Soleil has yet to put on an extravaganza that can’t put me to sleep.

But give me a high perch with a view and I could stand there in jaw-dropped awe all day long. Out of everything that Sin City can be, what it is to me, more than anything, is a commercial real estate ant farm, a diorama where there is so much activity to be seen that the scene is never boring.

Caesars’ Palace, seen above, was built by Jay Sarno, who also built the original Circus Circus. Sarno lived and died as Las Vegas intended, losing both properties to his excesses. But he saw first and best what Vegas could become, and Caesars’ is still the best expression of the idea of the themed resort.

As it works out, Q2 didn’t suck, and Q3, three days old, is off to an auspicious start. It could be we’ll have a turkey buffet at Thanksgiving to make up for missing this trip. We need to work when there’s work — and I’m showing in the morning — but my Best Beloved and I need to make time — to take time — to concentrate on each other, without the unceasing distractions that come from selling real estate from our home.

We’ll have a great anniversary, anyway. We’re good at getting things right. But Vegas is the place where you just can’t have too many long-legged blondes, so we’ll have to make good this debt when we can.

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June 28, 2008

No static at all: Can Big Brother at the radio station foretell the future of the real estate industry?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

[This is a multi-stop time-travel journey. I’m writing this text, here within these brackets, on June 28th, 2008. I’m reprising a BloodhoundBlog post from September 15th, 2006, that in its turn reprises a PresenceOfMind.net post from September 14th, 2004, which in its turn is unearthing a rant I wrote in 1996. It will all make sense if you let it. This is more birthday celebration — the subject is disintermediation — but I happened to think of this because we latched onto Radio Paradise, today, an amazingly excellent Triple-A internet radio station in Paradise, CA. All of this fits together, I promise, and the argument about media from 1996 is still right on point. One of the things that I, personally, love about BloodhoundBlog, is that our audience has always been so outrageously bright. It’s very liberating for me to be able to be my whole self at work. Never doubt my gratitude. –GSS]

 
No static at all: Can Big Brother at the radio station foretell the future of the real estate industry?

I got XM Radio two years ago to the day, yesterday. Two years from now, the whole deal may be done: Between the iPod, streaming internet radio and Wi-Max, the eternal footman may already be snickering for satellite radio. Sic transit gloria mundi — and orbits nearby.

That’s a disintermediation story by itself, and we’re about to nest ourselves two layers deeper in order to talk about massive, earth-shaking cases of media disintermediation. The argument made here parallels the one made earlier this week by Jim Cronin at The Real Estate Tomato: The exponential growth of bandwidth increases the power of individuals at the expense of elites.

But: I could just as easily argue the contrary: Feeding Dan Rather to the lions is exactly what a Roman Emperor would do to sustain his power while seeming to placate the mob.

That’s a larger question than I’m prepared to settle on a Friday night. Instead, we can think about the future of real estate while we revisit the history of radio. There’s quite a lot here that relates to weblogging, as well — which Read more

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Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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