The first question you might have is why would I want to syndicate my videos? Syndicating allows you to upload a single video to one site while letting that one site upload your video everywhere else. It will save you hours of time uploading videos. The service I am talking about is TubeMogul.com

TubeMogul is a free service that will automatically syndicate any uploaded videos to the most popular video hosting services all for free. Tubemogul syndicates to AOL, Blip, Break, Brightcove, Crackle, DailyMotion, Google Video, Graspr, Howcast, Tellytopia, iMeem, Metacafe, MySpace, Revver, Sclipo, StupidVideos, WebCastr, Yahoo Video, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo and 5Min.

You probably will not want your videos syndicated to all the sites above so TubeMogul lets you decide what sites you want your videos uploaded to. I personally have my videos upload automatically to Google Video, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo and YouTube depending on what type of video it is. In order for TubeMogul to sydicate your videos to these pages you will have to have an account with the sites you’re uploading to but once they are created that’s all you have to do.

TubeMogul also takes it a step further and gives you great stats on your video views. The easy-to-use TubeMogul interface allows you to see what video sites are giving your videos the greatest exposure and shows you how many views each video gets from each service.

This means I will no longer have to manually upload my videos to all the different video hosting sites and then try and keep up with how many views each site shows. Now I only have to upload and check one site for everything.

If you’re not currently using video, here are some reasons you might want to jump on board.

-In 2008, over 120 BILLION videos were streamed in the U.S.
-About 15% of the WORLD watches web videos each day.
-50% of the U.S. population watches web videos each day.
-13 Hours of Web Video get uploaded to YouTube.com EVERY MINUTE
-YouTube.com’s bandwidth costs exceed 1 Million dollars EACH DAY
-YouTube.com consumed more bandwidth in 2008 than the ENTIRE INTERNET did in the year 2000
-Certain cable television shows have started broadcasting directly to the Internet because they were getting more viewers.
-For the first time, in 2008 the presidential candidates used the web as their primary campaign medium.
-PuppyCam became the most popular streaming video of all time. It consisted of 6 puppies in a crate?!?
-PuppyCam may sound stupid but in only 3 months 13 million people spent over 4 million hours watching those puppies!
-Of the over 23 billion dollars spent on advertising in 2008, over ONE BILLION dollars went into online video.

Funny stuff. It’s amazing how fast the video revolution has moved. I just hope agents are ready for it.

If you have any questions you can e-mail me at info@retechblog.com or visit my blog at www.RETechBlog.com

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
www.RETechSeminars.com

On January 15th in Miami we will be giving away a FREE Blackberry Storm to one lucky attendant of the Real Estate Technology Specialist Seminar. We are lucky enough to not only have the Blackberry Storm but also tons of accessories to go with it when we raffle it off. We love showing agents how to make money without spending money so much that we’re going to raffle off this $750 Blackberry package on the 15th of January at RAMB. The winner will walk away from the seminar with the device + accessories.

If your a real estate professional and you need to learn how to market yourself and your listings online correctly using proven methods that don’t cost you a penny you need to register for the Real Estate Technology Seminar on January 15th @ RAMB in Miami. We’ve already had hundreds of agents go through our seminar and not one single negative evaluation! If you don’t believe us and want to hear what other agents are saying about this seminar then see our Testimonials.

Don’t miss this course! Very Limited Seating Available!

REGISTER HERE!

WATCH VIDEO HERE http://www.viddler.com/explore/engadget/videos/165/

Many of you or probably all of you have used a “usb 2.0″ device or you’ve heard “usb 2.0″ compatible related to printers, cameras, external hard drives and much more. USB is a wired interface that allows you to connect your computer to an external device for data transfer. The “2.0″ in “USB 2.0″ refers to the upgraded speed from the original USB 1.1 of the olden days. USB 2 has a max transfer rate of about 30 mega-bytes per seconds max. This means if you take listing pictures that are 1 mega-byte in size and you transfer 60 listing pictures from your camera to your computer it will take 2 seconds. 2 seconds is the speed based off the max transfer rate of USB 2, but in reality there are always bottle necks that take USB 2 down to about 10-15 mega-bytes per second. Don’t get me wrong USB 2 was fast enough for most anything the average computer user was doing, but with the bottle necks involved put a restraint on how far the hardware industry could go with new “toys”. It’s the same thing that happened with the internet. Until recently not everyone had a broadband connection so not everyone felt comfortable using streaming video or flash applications on their websites because they were afraid some people wouldn’t be able to see them. Now that (almost) everyone has a broadband connection those bottle necks are gone and streaming video & flash apps are all over the net.

Now enter the new USB 3.0! Transferring data at a MASSIVE 500 mega-bytes per second max. The new USB 3 technology can transfer data almost 17 times faster than the USB 2 everyone is using right now. What does this mean to you? This means we can get rid of a lot of bottle necks that we’re holding the industry back. Let’s take for example, hard drives. As of right now all commercially available hard drives can transfer data at around 80 mega-bytes per second max no matter what cable they’re using. **NERD COMMENT** Even if you’re using the newer SATA (300 mb/s) cables in your machine and running a RAPTOR HD, you’re not going much over 80mb/s **END NERD COMMENT** Hard drives can’t transfer data at speeds over 80 mega-bytes per second mainly because there was no interface that could support anything greater. Now that USB 3 is here hard drive manufactures can start to build hard drives that transfer data at rates of 300-500 mega-bytes per second. Another note is what they can now do with solid state flash storage. Flash storage transfers at around a snails speed (even in the mac air), but now that they have USB 3 to interface with we may see solid state flash drives reach speeds of 250-300 mega-bytes per second!

To put it in perspective, with this new USB 3 technology at max speed you’ll be able to copy an entire DVD movie from your hard drive to an external storage device in about 4 seconds. WOW!

I know this was a nerd post but thanks for reading along.
Matt Rains
www.RETechSeminars.com

So you want to start working with that younger “internet” crowd, you just don’t know where to start. Well trying to work with the younger crowd seems like a good idea to me. I mean the majority of buyers that are going to absorb this market are going to be young renters and first time home buyers. I’m 25 years old and i’ve been around computers and different forms of technology since I can remeber so it doesn’t come as a problem when I need to communicate with a first time home buyer who is 21-30 years old. I know I can always find them on Facebook or MySpace and start up some type of conversation.

So what are you supposed to do if you’re not tech savvy, you don’t “do” Facebook or MySpace and you actually refer to them as “MyFace” and “SpaceBook” (Mom!)?

I would say the first thing you need to try and understand is the generation itself. You need to know what they are doing and what they are looking for. You need to know how they breathe, eat and sleep. You need to know everything.

It’s hard to do but in my experience young buyers are looking for that older responsible adult to help them with such a big decision and you might just be that adult.

I will leave you pondering how you can approach this new “first time home buyer” and walk away with the deal but if you need any help please watch this video by Guy Kawasaki. He interviews the “young” first time home buyer age group and what he finds might literally amaze you. It’s about an hour but WELL WORTH YOUR TIME! Also, If you had a chance to ask all of Facebook some questions about how they communicated and how they would like to be approached by an agent, what questions would you have for them?

http://www.veotag.com/player/?u=wgcqpthubc

Thanks to Guy and Chad Huck for showing me the video.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
www.RETechSeminars.com

Hello Everyone,

Recently a company called Qik.com came onto the scene with a new technology that allowed people to stream live video directly from their cell phone. The idea was genius and the technology worked great. There was only one problem, Qik.com only supported a very limited number of phones. As of January 1st Qik.com now supports over 100 different types on phones so it’s more likely you can now pack this great idea into your little bag of tricks.

The first thing you need to do is sign up for a free account at Qik.com then make sure your phone is compliant and your phone has some type of data or internet plan (unlimited is recommended). Once you have an account and your phone passes all the required criteria you can install the free software onto your smartphone or iPhone. Now it’s as simple as running the application on your phone and pressing “stream”.

Once your streaming anyone who is on your Qik.com webpage can watch the live feed. Privacy controls are also available if you don’t want everyone watching.

Go ahead and play with it. I highly recommend you learn how it works and how you can use it in your everyday business.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
RETechBlog.com

So it’s 2009? It goes by faster every year and 2008 was no exception. There was a lot that happened in 2008 both good and bad; but I think for the most part it was a learning experience for most younger and even some older agents. I especially learned a lot as a young agent about how the market moves and how large of an impact certain factors have on the long term stability of the housing market.

2008 was an especcially great year for technology in real estate with so many forms of technology coming to the forefront of the industry like video, detailed web applications and more social networks than we can count and I guess saying “better late then never” kind of applies to some of the technology we have seen as well.

Well, it’s 2009 and I hope everyone takes this chance to “re-align” and grasp this new “RE.net” industry and run with it. There is so much opportunity for everyone in this new year I wish everyone the best.

Have a great year,
Matt Rains
RealEstateTechnologyOnline.com

If you’re returning to our blog, you may have noticed that it has undertaken a new design theme. We were previously using Blogger.com to host our blogging platform and it was great. The only problem we had with it was the blog design overall was kind of boring. Knowing the ever increasing need for blogs, we wanted to try something new so we could  stay up-to-date with all of the blogging agents out there.

Our new design was built by BlogDesignBlog.com with a few of my own custom tweaks. There’s still a lot that has to be done with it before we can actually call it the new home of RETechBlog.com and RETechSeminars.com, but it looks good enough for now to release to you, the reader. The picture at the top of the blog (under RETechBlog.com) was taken by my wife in downtown Savannah and is actually the restaurant of the famous cook on Food Network, Paula Dean. If you would like to look at more of her photography she can be found at annerains.blogspot.com .

So let me know what you think about the new blog design by leaving me a comment and if you need to find any of the old blog posts until I can get them put up just visit RETechBlog.com/blogger

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online
www.RETechSeminars.com

Shame on you Steve Jobs!  Sources are mumbling that the retail giant Wal-Mart will be carrying the iPhone right after Christmas. If our sources are correct Wal-Mart will not only be carrying the iPhone, but they will be selling it at a discounted price. Apple is allowing Wal-Mart to sell the iPhone at a limited number of 2,500 stores to start and even Wal-Mart’s little brother Sam’s Club will be getting them at 69 stores at an even deeper discount.

What I want to know is how are the millions of “mac-a-holics” going to take it when they find out their precious iPhone is being sold at Wal-Mart? I know Steve Jobs mentioned something about having to stay competitive with lower priced cellular devices, but Wal-Mart? This recent plea for sales could be because Wal-Mart just recently started selling the G1 (Google Phone) for T-Mobile at a $30 discount and maybe Mr. Jobs realizes that this new Android device from Google could be the one to de-thrown the current king?

All I know is I did not see this coming. As much pride as Apple takes in the iPhone and all the hoops Best Buy had to jump through to start carrying the “Mac” line of products I just didn’t think Wal-Mart would be a retailer Apple would look at seriously. Maybe this is a glimpse of the future with Apple? Maybe their business model is a little too close to the original Gateway plan? Only time can tell?

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to comment.

Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online
www.RETechSeminars.com

Hello everyone,

Last post I talked about how important it is to make sure your property is correctly inserted into your local MLS system because it is syndicated to other national MLS’ within days and that sets the foundation for a successful online marketing plan.

This post I want to take it a step further and talk about where else you can post your listings and what you should do after your MLS syndicates your listings world wide.

Most large national and even world wide listing Websites such as Real Seekr, Trulia and Zillow will allow you to do what is called “claiming your listings.” Claiming your listings will allow you to receive up-to-date statistics on views and clicks, market yourself through those sites and let you edit any information they may have incorrect about your listing. The only way to know if a site allows you to claim your listings is by visiting the site and reading some of the Q&A sections about how and if it’s done.

Once you claim your listings you need to add any additional photos, descriptions etc to them to make sure they are correct and in order so when they are viewed the information is correct. Also, make sure to add information about yourself, a picture and links to your Website and blog so visitors can visit your local site.

As for where else to put your listing on the web I’m going to leave most of that to the comments on this post. I’ll tell you a few that I like and if you have one that you’ve had success with lately post it up so everyone can use it.

External Listing Sites:
RealSeekr.com
Trulia.com
Zillow.com
Craigslist.com
Backpage.com

Ok, so now that you’ve listed your property on MLS correctly and claimed your properties through external listing Websites, it’s time to go around the web and add your listings to other sites that aren’t syndicated to automatically.

PS - Sorry if this post was a little “off”– I’m currently sitting at a Christmas festival and there are elves running around singing songs by the Jackson 5. HAHA.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

As we move into 2009 marketing your listings online will be a very large portion of your business. Most sellers now are requiring that the agent they hire have the proficiency to market their home online effectively and if they can’t then they simply will not get hired.

I want to do a quick series on some ways to market a home on the internet appropriately. In this first part I want to go over an overlooked portion in which I call the “foundation”. The foundation to any online marketing campaign begins with your MLS. Hopefully you’re already putting your listing in your local MLS but I want to talk about why you should really take your time and make sure you’re listing on your MLS effectively.

What a lot of agents don’t know is that the listings they insert into MLS are syndicated to other national listing services such as Real Seekr, Trulia, Zillow and more. That means that the listing you’ve put into your local MLS will be shared and uploaded to these larger national listing systems to further help expose the property.

The reason I bring this up is because I see all to often where an agent will not even go as far as putting a single listing picture on their new listing until one or two weeks go by. So now when that listing is syndicated to these larger national listing services it has no picture and is worthless as a marketing piece.

So for now just know that everything you put into your MLS will syndicated to larger national listing companies and that it is a great way to set a foundation for marketing your property online.

Until the next post go into your MLS and really look over your listings to see what could be added or changed.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online