Ever since the age of the cassette tape the media industries across the globe have been “lobbying” and “contributing” to our politics in a way many of us do not even understand. We pretty much live in a world now where where just about all levels of government are enabled not by the people, but by corporations and PIPA and SOPA are just another two examples of how industries will stop at nothing to have control over what we can consume, when we can consume it and in what manner it is consumed!

Citizen politics these days are divided by extremes, almost entirely divided by motives and ideologies and not by critical self thinking of the the real issues that we face. One of the main drivers for my thinking on politics is to do this, I do not listen to politicians for advice or positions, nor do I listen solely to so called experts. I actually do a little thinking for myself, I completely distrust my motives for automatically taking one side, which is so easy to do. Things that matter to me, I research on my own.

We are lucky in this case that we have people that do this for us, a couple of bills that were just rejected by Congress in the US, will be back again very soon, for 20 years the media industries have been trying to these jam bills through levels of governments that will have a global effect and they will try again next year. I have attached a video from a TED talk on this issue, watch it and learn a little about it’s history and the effect these types of laws can have on our everyday life.

One of the more pathetic things about politics these days (believe me, there is a list) are bills that are introduced with brand names that have no recognition to the poisoned pills that are contained within. One such set is trying to get through Congress in the USA is SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act). On the surface with these brand names seem to be doing the right thing, but anyone who has read such bills (I actually took the time to read the presented version) know that these are poisonous to our online culture.

So who is behind this act? Well again, it’s the usual suspects, the same industry groups that wanted to place a levy every blank CD and DVD in the past decade, the same groups that wanted to make all copying of cassette tapes illegal in the 80′s and 90′s and the same ones that wanted to place limits on photo copying machines in the 70′s. By their reasoning everyone should pay for the acts of the few, citizens should be guilty until proven they are innocent.

As demonstrated in the past week, when people actually pirate and distribute copyright materials we already have laws that deal with these things and eventually many do get caught. There is a process of law that takes place for doing something illegal, that is evidence is gathered, charges are laid and then a trial takes place. This bill wants to reverse this process!

If you look at the Internet today, citizens across the globe are the ones that actually create the content. Large media companies account for far less than 1% of actual content on the Internet, it is we who create the majority of content, we mix the content, we share the content and in some cases media companies want this content we create. Media companies are shrinking by content produced, they employ less reporters, they employ more marketing and sales executives and they all encourage us to send them the ‘their’ news. The Arab Spring wasn’t brought to the globes attention by media companies, it was primarily produced and shared by citizens and the media companies lapped this content up and reproduced it as their own.

Fortunately we had some big guns in our corner, but for the most part only because they had a dog in the fight. Google, Wikipedia, Reddit and other online tech giants all made a big play to stop the bill, mainly because it will require them to pass on personal information to these private companies without recourse and will also require them to add DNS filtering to every user at a significant cost to them.

These media groups should have to go through the same law enforcement challenges citizens face when our home is burgled and our belongings stolen, they should not have laws passed that give them the gavel. My suggestion for them is to shut the hell up and accept it is a part of life and work out ways to profit from this! Of couse they will not do this, they will just massage the current bill, until they can get one that passes, and hopefully we will be ready to reject the next version as we were for this!

As a follow up to Dave Platters excellent, well articulated post on why anyone “is dreaming” that they can beat real estate.com.au, it made me revisit an idea I had a few years back. I think for the most part Dave is correct, however there is something that needs to be done about property content origination.

To me it has always been about control, if you go back to the early days on business2.com.au I wrote passionately about how agents will pay a price for putting all of their eggs in one basket and relying on one company for their web, marketing and portal needs, and it has pretty much played out in that manner. REA are top dog in many regions of Australia and can rightfully state their number one position. Agencies online property marketing budgets today are pretty much controlled by realestate.com.au and domain.com.au, annual fee increases continue at a clip and the limitations of each agents plans are pretty silly to say the least!

Realestate.com.au is all powerful because they have the listings and consumers will of course go to where the listings are. Consumers also know how to play with realestate.com.au and for the most part it is their favourite tool for browsing for real estate, domain certainly have the numbers on mobile devices but the browser is still king and this will not change in the short to mid term.

REA can pretty much do what they like with pricing, they are the market leader in an industry that is one of the most popular search pastimes in Australia, if you are an agent and you do not list on REA you will pretty much lose listings to other agents that are and REA had a brilliant strategy for agents early on, almost blackmailing agents into going for bigger packages. I lay much of the blame for this with real estate institutes who accepted ‘donations’ from REA in the early days to endorse their portal and put them in front of an eager audience – you!

The REA XML has also become somewhat of a de-facto standard for listings and pretty much all portals accept an REA XML feed to list with them.

If agents and competing portals want to to take that control away and place it back to agents they must do all of these things listed below pretty much in their entirety. Will they do this? Almost definitely not, but it is worth revisiting.

Open Source Listings System

Domain.com.au and all other portals, franchise groups, private agencies and private listing portals (yes they MUST be included) should band together and finance an open source system for managing property data. This must be fully inclusive, and that means REA can also use this system.

It must be built on open source infrastructure, be W3C compliant and define every single element useful to todays real estate agent. The system must have no stakeholders and be open to anyone. The system must be simple to sign up, simple to use and built on an open framework that can have multiple contributors. This would be controlled by a board of developers that have a wall of separation between them and any interested parties.

Agency
Agencies simply register with the system and are given a few tabs to work with (My Agency, My Portals, My Developers, My Apps). They manage all of their staff and can import their current listings into the system and the system takes care of the rest. They select what portals they want to be involved with, can give access to their web developers and can login and manage this information from their desktop, tablet or phone device.

Portals
Portals simply join the system and offer their portals with their standard terms and conditions clearly set out in the system. This will allow any agency to simply check a tick box to allow their data to be shared by that portal. If the portal is free then it simply starts the data transfer and updates instantaneously once changes are made to the data. If it is paid for then a simple code would need to be added to the system.

Developers
Web Developers are given tools to develop websites using this data and be given everything needed to do this effectively, including plugins, sample codes. Agencies can assign web developers to manage their web development by simply ticking a box next to that developer and that developer will have interface access to all they need to develop websites and applications for that agency.

Apps
Any product or service can offer their applications to agencies, be it, mobile phone apps, tablet apps, CRM software services etc. These apps can be free, paid or subscription based. Think of it like the Apple App store.

Cost + Revenue

Yes, to build this and maintain this service would be expensive, but nowhere near what agencies currently pay for the same services. The Real Open Source Community (ROSC) would be funded by annual verification. Initially it would need to be funded by portals and franchise groups with no strings attached (tall order) for two years from launch, but once launched each agency, portal, web developer, app would be encouraged to become verified, this verification would be a community trust system.

The annual report and all expenditure would be open and annual verification fees determined by the previous years revenues. This would ensure that the system was always in the black. The system would also have a constitution drawn up that can only be amended if 75% of all verified users voted up for that amendment – in other words each verified member has an equal vote.

ROSC Constitution

Part of the constitution would be that the data is owned by the listing agent and the text, photos, videos etc would be the copyright of the original author. Any breaches to this constitution would have impacts for any of the members. The terms and conditions that each portal, web developer and app developer disclose would be standardized, so agencies know the pricing, annual increases, sold data information etc from the beginning and as it is standardized there is nowhere to hide little clauses

Private Listing Portals

These would be treated just like anyone else. Yes, I hear you say this is a bad thing, complete nonsense! Over the next decade more and more people will list privately, it will take decades for this to become a powerful movement, and by this time agencies would have adapted their business models to suit It is important because they are an important part of the potential market for all agencies.

Original Sin

The reason for this system would not be too knock off any of the leaders, it would simply be to open the originator of the content and give control back to the agency, the people who create the content. REA and Domain would have access to the system just like anyone else and it is highly likely they would still be the dominant players in the market for the foreseeable future.

So, do you think that portals would get involved, do you think franchise groups would get behind this, even though not one of them will own one snippet of the system?

Domain.com.au’s recent blog entry highlighted a trend amongst an industry and governments that have run out of ideas on how to make housing more affordable. REIA thinking goes that allowing first home buyers to dip into their super savings to purchase their first home will allow them to purchase their first home and relive some stress.

This does nothing to address affordability, all it does is allow people to purchase a home, which I suppose is REIA major reason for existence, more homes sold equals more happy agents, which is fair enough.

In my opinion the problem is much deeper than this and for every good reason the REIA can put up with this scheme, there are an equal amount of reasons why this doesn’t work or is detrimental to housing affordability. My advice to REIA is to just be honest and say we want more young people owning homes and we know it will may make homes cheaper.

There are many reasons why homes are unaffordable to the majority of young middle Australia, supply & demand, urban drift and personal debts are just a number of many.

The biggest issue to me is personal debt and as I have said in the past, an over-priced property market (sighs ensue) that does nothing to help agents. The higher the prices, the less buyers, mainly because of holding debts amongst the young and wages which have a long way to go to compete with these price rises.

So why the debt? Well today it is easy to get into debt, buy this car on credit, but this TV on credit, get an awesome mobile phone for 99 cents (on a plan) and the biggest one of all, education debt.

Since 1989 the Hawke-Keating Government introduced HECS and since then public education costs have sky-rocketed, but it is all ok, you can pay this back later. This scheme was met with student protests across Australia and the idea that the government could not afford public education anymore and the fact that both sides of government supported the idea made this an easy passage through parliament.

But think about this, what we now do is educate our kids early on that some debt is a good thing, these young adults then enter a workforce where renumeration have not even closely kept pace with inflation and property prices over the same period. The effect of this is threefold, fresh workforce members have little to no liquid income, have high debt and monthly costs and therefore cannot save nearly enough to afford a deposit on a home that 30 years ago got you a whole house and educational costs (because you pay it back later) just keep rising well above inflation.

Over the past decade I have seen every single dumb idea pass through the lips of many so called experts but literally no-one looks at the real problems, everything is a stop gap measure. “We need more land”, “we need more incentives”, “we need more high rise development”, “we need less taxes”, etc. Every one of these measures have made little to no real difference to the problems we face and unless we can finally have some guts and take a little medicine, nothing will change and it will only get worse for real estate agents. Institues have got to be honest instead of continuing to roll out the same old cliches and begin discussion with industry groups and governments to make real changes – some that will need some intestinal fortitude and will fly against conventional wisdom.

At some stage governments are also going to need to make big changes and negative gearing is just one issue amongst many that needs to be discussed openly and without scare tactics, free university education for your first degree must also come back onto the agenda and a massive investment in self sustainable kit homes that are pre-approved for addition to land in suburban outskirt areas and some investment in high speed rail also needs to be discussed, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney.

Personally, we will continue to just get the same old short term fixes, industry groups self promoting measures that will only aid in the short term and banks that will soon offer inter generational loans.

We deserve better, here endeth the rant!

If I can impart a little wisdom nugget on us all in 2012 it would be to live a little, we now live in a world where we are overloaded with information, be it political, ideological or otherwise and sometimes we get so wrapped up in the luminously mundane we lose sight of the fact we are only here for a short time – so let’s all live a little!

Have a lived life instead of a career, put yourself in the safe keeping of good taste, lived freedom will compensate you for a few losses, if you don’t like the style of others – cultivate your own, get to know the tricks of reproduction, be a self publisher even in conversation and then the joy of working can fill your days, may it be so with you and may you keep your powder dry for the battles ahead and know when and how to recognize them. György Konrád

Merry Christmas

Some Inspiration for Living

Since the death of one Steve Jobs and release of the Steve Jobs book by Walter Isaacson rumors have been spreading like wildfire about a new television to be released by Apple sometime in 2012.

In this book, Isaacson quotes Steve Jobs: ‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told Isaacson. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’

So what will this be?
Personally I think you only have to look at the iPad or iPhone to understand where this may go and I think I might have some ideas on this. If you look at televisions today they are the slave to the incumbent lazy broadcasters and cable providers, basically every TV has a receiver that scans for channels and if you have cable it works a little the same albeit with a set top box. Nothing has changed for decades and TV manufacturers are stuck in loop of releasing the same tired systems and upgrading them with silly things like hacked on 3D (does anyone seriously think the whole family wearing 3D glasses would catch on?)

I think when Apple releases the new television it will revolutionize the industry and force TV networks, cable suppliers and television manufacturers to change the way we receive our channels, much like music producers were forced kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Channels as Apps
I think it will work like this, you buy the Apple television and it comes with all the free to air TV apps (think channels as Apps), you download an app (channel) and that is included in your lineup, each app (ABC as an example) has a list of shows that are regularly updated that you can subscribe to and add to your list of shows to watch when you want to watch them. You simply ignore the ones you do not want and they do not appear in your lineup. Newly released (upcoming) shows are showcased on your TV Dashboard.

Accounts
A family may have multiple accounts for different family members (restrictions included) and each login displays a different lineup on the TV Dashboard. This will allow owners to filter access for different users within their family.

Subscription Style Apps
Just like you pay for subscriptions to your favorite magazine and now some apps, you pay for subscriptions for TV/cable style channels, as an example Fox Sports may cost $4.95 per month and you will receive notifications of any Pay per View events from that channel.

iTunes
I think everything will be in iTunes and you will be able to sync watch this across multiple devices such as your iPad, iPhone, iMac, Laptop etc.

The Cloud
Everything will be stored in the cloud, so you take your TV with you on the road or in your hotel, by having everything stored in the cloud access is just a few clicks away.

Location Based Advertising
I have written about this multiple times in the past, but location based advertising is the only thing that will save free to air TV networks and will be a worldwide trillion dollar industry. This will mean if you live in Queens/New York you will not only see national chains advertising on your channels, but also local pizza stores, cafeterias, nightlife and local tourism operators, finally giving the networks access to small business again (watch TV now and advertising is almost entirely from the big boys).

Advertisers
Advertisers will be able to login and see what space is available to advertise their products and services in there own area or areas, they will be able to create ads using web based systems and ad templates and book spots, pay for commercials by credit card and Apple takes a chunk and distributes the rest back to the networks. It would almost make an ad agency/ buying group cry.

Open
I also think this will create a wave of new Tv shows, basically anyone can create a channel and obviously the success of these will depend on subscribers and social word of mouth, but how exciting would this be? Local realtors could create a channel on their local market, local tourism operators could create channels on local areas and attract their own advertisers, you create a channel that becomes popular and advertisers will follow.

Summary
I know this is fairly well departed from anything I have seen written on the web, but I truly think that this model would work if it had the power of Apple, then perhaps Google as a competitor behind it. Current free to air TV networks would get a lifeline – even though I think they are the last ones to deserve this and it would open up a world of opportunities for the little guys.

Then the only thing left for Apple to conquer would be the car stereo and you would easily see how they could change this tomorrow.

Your thoughts?

At Christmas this year it will be 10 years since I penned my first post on a Commodore PET…… well not really, but come January 12th 2012 it will be 10 years since we wrote that first post on a website powered by Movable Type, by 2003 I had a whopping 15 posts and received my first comment, you can only imagine my excitement! By late 2004 things certainly started to roll a certain Real Estate Portal CEO can be thanked for this, he politely took umbrage to a post and this garnered a few comments and from there things started to move along nicely. We have always welcome comments from people inside and out of the industry whose views may oppose our own, in fact the success of our site depends on those views.

Our Mantra

Simply put, we do not really have one, but our focus is and has always been on what is good for real estate agents both in the online world and in everyday business. We do not play favourites and as proof we have approved over 99.9% of all comments. In fact, out of more than 10,000 comments we have only had to hold back less than a handful (some for very obvious legal reasons). We do get quite a few complaints (including multiple threats of legal action) about certain comments but these are usually from pretty thin skinned people, however we always try to keep everything as sensible as possible. Our focus will remain the same… however….. Over the years we have added multiple authors and Ryan, Glenn, Dave, Greg and now Charlie have become regular contributors and are an invaluable asset to business2 and our community. We now have some 32 people who have contributed in one way or another to the site and we would like to see our regulars list continue to build over time.

We want you!

We want content contributors from across the real estate spectrum whether you are an agent specialising in certain areas, a software developer, service provider, portal or just a real estate enthusiast! Remember blogging just isn’t for Christmas, so we are looking for people who have ideas and want to share them with others. Click here to Apply

Note:Business2.com.au is not a chest thumping publicity forum, you and your company will get recognition by the quality of your articles (and your profile), self promotion or product promotion does not work anyway, so the focus can relate to your companies products or services but it cannot be the focus of the article.

Business2.com.au Version 5

We have had a number of iterations of Business2.com.au over the years and we will celebrate our 10th birthday early with a new release in the very near future. The focus of the new release will be on fostering deeper discussions, social integration, cleaner layout, better flow and cleaner typography and a nice little contributors section. We will also be releasing a new version of our supplier directory with a free area and also a premium area for companies that wish to further showcase their brand, products and services on a deeper level to real estate agents and professionals

If you have a Google Apps Account and you understand how to administer this account you can now enable Google Plus for Google Apps for each of the users in your organisation and they in turn can now finally have a Google Plus Profile.

Note: If you are logged into your Google Apps GMail click on Manage Account (should be top right)

A Note on Facebook Pages
Facebook Pages are terrible, admittedly they are getting better. As a company we have invested a considerable sum in building applications for pages with some success, but it is a hard road and the rules governing these developments can be quite limited, with changes looming, it may get better for developers, but for business without integrated apps it can still be a very manual – time consuming affair.

Google Plus for Business

Yes, you will need to be on this site and yes Google Plus for Business (pages, brands) will be rolled out in the coming weeks. Here are some things you will need to know.

Google Apps Users will get Special Treatment
If you are a power user or you want to be a power user you should already be using Google Places, Google Reader (you site must have rss feeds), Google Webmaster, Google Analytics, Google Calendar and possibly even Feedburner. If you have a Google Account you can sign into that account to get access to all of these services (after sign-in)

The above have little to do with what you can accomplish with Google Plus but they definitely will make life easier once Google Business Pages rolls out.

Google Plus Company Pages

Looking through the Google Plus source we can definitely see what is on the horizon and most of this is pretty cool indeed and will have Facebook rolling out updates (finally) for Facebook pages.

Google Meeting
Like Hangouts, but for business, Google Meeting will allow you to organise, record and store, phone, text and video meetings with groups of up to 10 people. Attendees will be able to be invited via Google Calendar, GMail and Google Chat. The possibilities with this will be pretty cool for people to collaborate and share information on projects and the like.

Google Screencasts
You will be able to record screens and share them with people within this meeting, you will possibly be able to create notes whilst you record your screen on the screen and archive all of these within a screencast.

Google WhiteBoard
Google Whiteboard is a document style process where users can collaborate on documents, share them amongst users and then post them via email.

Google Location
This one is a wild guess, but looking at the code, it seems that you can also track people within an organisation (users must opt in) to see where they are currently located on a map.

My feeling is business pages will take over Google Sites, which is very underwhelming, this would mean users can create multiple business pages and create circles for those pages.

All in all Google Plus is building into a substantial success for Google and my belief with Google Company Pages being released shortly it is going to cause some headaches for Facebook. Better yet, we will all benefit from the competition as more and more features are rolled out. Competition – don’t you just love it.

How to get Shortcut (Vanity URL)

www.Gplus.to allows this. This nifty little app lets you create a short URL for your Google+ page, making it easier to share with your friends. As an example, is Gplus.to/peterricci , is much easier to remember instead of digits e.g http://plus.google.com/117489371829741156604

Updated

Google Plus for Business is now released in a basic form, so you can now create pages for Google+ Brands

Here is the official Google Blog Post
People + pages, better together
Google+ has always been a place for real-life sharing, and Google+ Pages is no exception. After all: behind every page (or storefront, or four-door sedan) is a passionate group of individuals, and we think you should able to connect with them too.

For you and me, this means we can now hang out live with the local bike shop, or discuss our wardrobe with a favorite clothing line, or follow a band on tour. Google+ pages give life to everything we find in the real world. And by adding them to circles, we can create lasting bonds with the pages (and people) that matter most.

For businesses and brands, Google+ pages help you connect with the customers and fans who love you. Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face. All you need to do is start sharing, and you’ll soon find the super fans and loyal customers that want to say hello.

A number of pages are already available (see below), but any organization will soon be able to join the community at plus.google.com/pages/create.

• Anderson Cooper 360
• H&M
• Pepsi
• Business2

Direct Connect from Google search
People search on Google billions of times a day, and very often, they’re looking for businesses and brands. Today’s launch of Google+ Pages can help people transform their queries into meaningful connections, so we’re rolling out two ways to add pages to circles from Google search. The first is by including Google+ pages in search results, and the second is a new feature called Direct Connect.

Maybe you’re watching a movie trailer, or you just heard that your favorite band is coming to town. In both cases you want to connect with them right now, and Direct Connect makes it easy—even automatic. Just go to Google and search for [+], followed by the page you’re interested in (like +Angry Birds). We’ll take you to their Google+ page, and if you want, we’ll add them to your circles.

Direct Connect works for a limited number of pages today (like +Google, +Pepsi, and +Toyota), but many more are coming. In the meantime, organizations can learn more about Direct Connect in our Help Center.

I have just created my Google Apps Plus Account. You can add me here

Property Ad Guru has also “gone on Hiatus” recently as well, and we we only have to guess that this has also been closed permanently as not many companies go on ‘hiatus’ if things are going well.

At the launch Simon Baker the CEO of Classified Ad Ventures, said:

Social Media is an important marketing tool for Australian real estate agents and all agents should have a strong presence on the main sites – Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. We launched SOBOX to help Australian agents get the most from social media and to reduce their reliance on traditional and other online media when marketing themselves and their listings.

It seems SOBOX found the going a little tough and we received reports detailing how only a few agents had actually signed up for the service over the past 18 months. These customers have apparently since been notified of the closure and have received all of their data to export into a new service.

One of the problems with SOBOX is that agents could actually get most of the same or similar offerings for free or for a nominal monthly fee with little effort, which highlights another problem facing new companies feeding to social media websites. Most providers today actually do the same services as a part of their overall web design service as nearly all new real estate sites also have a blog and social media integrated.

Classified Ad Ventures Pty Ltd has seen a number of projects close over the past 12 months with many of the previous offerings no longer available or merged into a more streamlined service and it seems the company is now focussing on providing a smaller core suite of products to real estate agents, including search, web services, content delivery and also web development.

Another of their offerings List Globally (which I think is a great idea) may also be struggling to get the numbers needed – primarily because I think it is too expensive, I still cannot get my head around their pricing. For such a great idea, I would have thought if List Globally was a completely automated service they could drop the price dramatically and get the volume they needs to have the success it warrants.

No one doubts the talent and reach of the team and particularly Simon Baker, he has proven in the past he has the experience and connections to make things happen, however for every success in online technology we each experience a number of failures along the way and having success in one area doesn’t always guarantee success in another.

Property Portal Watch seems to be still growing strong with regular updates which I follow closely. It is a good website to follow if you are interested in all the happenings of real estate portals worldwide. They seem to have expended this service into directories as well.

Todays economic climate is not easy on new web service companies and hiring the right talent often is the biggest ongoing expense, you add servers, maintenance and traditional business costs you can find yourself needing revenues almost immediately.

At the recent F8 Conference Facebook revealed a new look at some new features to the world. The changes it brings in makes your profile look a little more snazzy and you can have a nice big header image. These new features will be rolled out over the coming weeks. As a Facebook developer (anyone can be one), I was able to get into the new feature immediately and take it for a test drive.

As mentioned in an earlier article, the point of a little competition driving innovation and regular updates shows us again that in every sector of life and business – competition is the key and Google Plus has certainly drivin Facebook to get off their backsides and provide many updates people have been screaming about for years.

Here are some of the new features:

Header Image
The first thing everyone will notice is you have control over what you profile will look like by managing and editing the main image header. I like this, it gives your profile a new personal look and feel.

Hide Updates by Third Party Apps
The worst feature of Facebook, is that when you like a celebrity or a page your newsfeed is then filled with junk mail and posts from these third party apps. So if you don’t want to see these or are tired of people who feed their twitter tweets in as Facebook updates you can get rid of them immediately! If you are viewing your newsfeed and see that an update is from an app you can click on the dropdown arrow next to the update and select the Hide All by fillthisspace. Nice!

Custom Lists
You can now sort your feeds into Custom Lists, Family, Friends, Wannabees etc. You can create a custom list and add it to your favorites and then click on those lists to get that lists news feed. It would be nice if you could make one of these your default news feed though!

Privacy Overhaul
Firstly, everything you do, forever and ever, is saved on Facebook. If you use Facebook, you must understand this. If you haven’t looked at this already, you should. Go to your Privacy Settings, and Edit Settings for How Tags Work. Turn on Profile Review and Tag Review.

You can review your tags, by visiting your profile page and, under Wall, you will see an option for Needs Review. You can then click on this to see any posts, photos, and other requests that need your approval.

Facebook is making you do the work with privacy, so you cannot complain (in their eyes) if people see things you do not want them to see.

Timeline Profile
As you can see from my screen capture your new Facebook profile features a timeline of you and your profiles events by year and month. A little creepy if you share life’s intimate secrets, like how many times you are in and out of a relationship etc, who has friended and unfriended you and when (ouch).

There are also more options for events in your life like relationships, children and the like. I prefer to keep all of this pretty private, but some people just love telling us these things. So for those of you who want to share life’s events in gory detail here are some other options. You can also create your own!

Other examples include:

• Got Engaged
• Got Married
• Add a Child
• Add a Pet
• Add a Job
• Graduated
• Military Service
• Moved
• Bought a Home
• Add a Roommate
• Add a Vehicle
• Broke a Bone
• Had Surgery
• Overcame an Illness
• Learned a Language
• Got a License
• Traveled
• Achievement or Award

To me most of these options are welcomed, but beware this is all recorded, so share what you want, but keep in mind it is forever As for business pages, it seems they are still being left a little behind, but you can be sure

Download Timeline PDF File

Apple CEO - Steve Jobs

Today, Steve Jobs has announced he is leaving Apple after probably the most successful stint as CEO in recent corporate history.

He has overseen the iPod, iPhone, iMac and iPad and many other products that have revolutionized the computer, mobile and entertainment industries. You might ask what has this got to do with real estate? Not a lot on the surface, but if you look at the simple mantra around his products we can all learn something.

• Looks: Everything released is of the utmost quality, both in store, package and product design. Many Real Estate Agents websites look like they were built in the late 1990′s. Quality interfaces leave a lasting impression.
• Usability: iPod, iPhone, iMac and iPad are all just brilliantly easy to use right out of the box. The chief designer Jonathan Ivy does not care about what anyone wants but the user, he leaves the scaling back to the corporates and business people at Apple. We all could learn lessons here, particularly agents when designing their web and mobile sites, if you want something on your home page, think first about whether your customers want the same thing – honestly.

Below is the Official Press Release

PRESS RELEASE: Letter from Steve Jobs

August 24, 2011–To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.