League tables for suburb performance based on medians can make for popular reading. However the results should often be challenged, especially where sample sizes are small, property sales not representative or where the price ‘distribution curve’ is skewed.

For an agent working in one of these ‘worst’ suburbs, it is always good to know the ‘true’ growth figure, especially when questions or concerns are raised by vendors or purchasers. Sometimes the truth may be that one of your local suburbs is performing poorly, however if it is the result of some statistical anomaly, you certainly do not want to be troubled by it when already facing tough market conditions.

Let’s look at two recently published ‘worst’ suburbs:

Bellara 4507 QLD Units

The published figure states a ‘minus 65%’ growth rate. The suburb has around 10 sales per quarter currently, giving us a median of around $116,000. Back in Q2, 2010 we saw just 4 sales, which returned a median of $360k.

Neither the current samples of 10 or the prior sample of 4 are large enough to rely upon. If we changed our sample time period from 3 months to 6 months, we see an entirely different result. Using 6 months to October 2011 gives us a median of $115k and a sample size of 15. The same period 12 months earlier returns a median of $110k and a sample of 15 as well. The growth rate using this approach returns a plus 5% result. This result is very different from the minus 65%.

Whilst the sample size of 15 is much more reliable than the quarterly sample size, the reliability of the data should probably be questioned due to the ‘distribution’. Using a ‘price segmentation graph’ we would prefer to see something that looks a little bit like a bell-shaped curve in the current sample and also the prior year sample. Without both periods offering us an approximately normal distribution of values, we can’t rely on the plus 5% result.

East Melbourne Houses

The league table states this suburb has fallen in value by 43% in the last 12 months. When we look at the total number of sales in the last 6 months (to October 2011) we count just 2 sales! It is hardly a representative sample size. Even if we expand the sample period to 12 months till Oct’ 2011 we still only have 8 sales.

Using the full 12 month sample period returns an entirely different result. The median for the last 12 months was $1.88m. Compared to the year prior (median of $1.67m) we can arrive at a positive growth rate of nearly +13%.

As per our Bellara sample, the price distribution hardly resembles a bell shaped curve and indicates that the result may be unreliable.

Tips:

Whilst by no means an exhaustive list, here are a few tips for agents when reviewing median prices.

• As a general rule, try and work with sample sizes of around 20
• If comparing time periods, ensure you maintain apples with apples (e.g. 6 month sample periods)
• Look at the price segmentation graph – it ideally should a little like a bell-curve
• Watch out for new unit developments or new house and land releases. They will boost medians short-term and can often have the reverse effect long term.
• Expand your sample from suburb to postcode if required. If sales volumes still too low, you may have to expand to LGA.

Kent Lardner

www.pricefinder.com.au

AVM basics
Dozens of white-papers and books are available online on both AVMs and home price index methods. However with the exception of a few books written specifically for appraisers in the US, most of the material is written in statistician speak using complex language and symbols. The authors seem to be more interested in impressing their geeky peers than to explain the topics in simple terms.

A computer generated AVM (automated valuation model) uses sales data and one of 3 main techniques to produce a price estimate. The first is a simple ‘Index’ approach, taking the last sale date and sale price and adjusting its value according to market movement. If the last sale price was ‘right’ and occurred within the last 7 years, it is often one or the more accurate models. However in volatile markets or suburbs with few sales to work with, the index can be less reliable. The same data problems that impact AVMs can also impact the Index itself, making it hard to accurately measure how much a market price has changed. So if you combine a dodgy last sale price and a low-turnover market, the Index method can return poor results.

The next method is often referred to as an ‘hedonic’ or ‘regression’ model. Think of this model as estimating a square metre rate for the lot size and a value per bedroom and bathroom. By fitting a straight line to the data, we expect lower prices for smaller homes and higher prices for larger homes, returning a slope value. Once we know the ‘coefficient’ values for lot size and house size, we can estimate the price of the subject property. In homogenous markets with high volumes of sales, the regression model can often work well. However where the quality of dwellings varies significantly or where some streets are more valuable than others, this model starts to struggle.

The third model seeks to match a handful of properties to the subject property. Many AVM companies around the world refer to this approach as the ‘expert model’, as it endeavours to emulate the process used by a professional valuer or real estate expert. This can include looking at sales from the same street and similar streets, matching similar sized lot sizes and house sizes. This approach can also leverage aspects of the two earlier models, using the index to adjust older sales that enter the final comparables list according to any market movement. Size differences may exist, even after the comparables have been selected based on how well they match the subject property (lot size and house size). For example, if one of the comparables is 50 sqm larger in lot size than the subject, the computer can automatically adjust the sale price by the coefficient value ($n x 50 sqm).

Whilst often superior to the regression model, the expert model also has its limitations. The computer will only ever match sales based on what it can measure; this includes time, distance from the subject property, street type, lot size and house size. But as any real-estate agent would know, these measures can often only account for part of the price. Factors such as views, construction quality and street appeal are just a few of the variables that can determine prices in your area.

Challenges for agents
Agent web sites in the US are great sources for stories about ‘Zestimates’ and how they can often adversely impact a listing or sale.

As one first-time buying couple discovered, the Zillow’s ZEstimated value range on a potential new home was $1,100,000 to $1,200,000. SO, while the listed price on the home was over $1.4 million, these buyers cited the Zillow ZEstimate as the reason for their low-ball offer of $1.2 million. Needless to say, the property was sold to another buyer, and at a price well over the Zillow estimate

The problems most commonly highlighted include buyers or sellers not using the AVM as the starting point in the review process. In the case of buyers – some will gravitate to the AVM that is below the value of the listing to support a low ball offer. In the case of sellers, some are drawn to the AVM result that is higher than the true market value. Both situations have the potential to become tricky for agents.

On the whole, most buyers and sellers are smart enough to know the limitations of the models. However agents really need to be equipped to handle every situation.

Tips

• As you prepare for a listing presentation, run one or two AVMs. If included in your data subscription, you won’t need to worry about transactional costs. If the AVM is available for free online via a portal, this should not be too hard to do. Check if the AVM result is accurate or not relative to the price you think is right.
• Know your local market and how AVMs perform in your area. If the models are always ‘low confidence’ the AVM report will usually display a red traffic light. Know how to explain this to buyers and sellers who may not notice or appreciate its meaning.
• Be aware of how unique properties perform via an AVM.
• Keep of file of AVM reports that show high errors. Showing a few dud results will come in handy when explaining the limitations of AVMs to a vendor.
• Consider adding property data and AVM methods to your team training.

Kent Lardner
COO PriceFinder

All websites are based around a content management system (CMS) which is the platform that your real estate website is structured/built-on and which allows you to update website content. In real estate, basically all products offered by real estate web development companies are built from the software company’s own in-house CMS. A CMS they have spent years building and one they will not easily change and never hand the IP over to their clients.

From my experience the average real estate website costs around $6,000 to produce and then requires a monthly hosting and support charge of around $150 per month. If you decide you’d like to end your relationship with this company then your $6,000 is a sunk cost. Lets assume you stay 2 years with that software company then the actual cost of your solution is $400 per month. So you’re leasing (at a ridiculous price) a website from the software company indefinitely and at the end of the lease you receive nothing.

It does not stop there, as the web development company will find other ways to bleed money from you. If you require any type of change to the site then the company will quote what ever fee they feel fit (and some of the fees i’ve heard have been outrageous). As a site owner you either pay this fee or go without the site enhancement. As you can imagine this type of arrangement is very counter-productive for your online solution, as you can’t tweak SEO (or have specialist 3rd companies complete this), you can’t install 3rd party software on your site, and your likely to avoid enhancements because of the excessive cost involved.

So what are the alternatives? Unfortunately because of the technology involved in powering a real estate website and also maintaining the data exports means there are not too many solutions. However, there are a few companies in Australia who offer alternatives to an in-house CMS.

One alternative is to have the software development company build your own CMS. This way you own the IP of the CMS and have the ability to move your site if the relationship ever ends. In most cases your site will be build from a popular frameworks (eg .NET, PHP, ColdFusion) so finding another developer will not be an issue. The only downside to this solution is that it will be costly to build your own CMS system, in the proximity of $20,000 to $70,000.

There is one solution which is cost effective and will provide you with freedom and choice. That is to use an open source CMS which is free to use on a General Public License. These open source CMS are usually owned by a not for profit organization of web developers and designers, who’s goal is to share code amongst a worldwide community of developers in an effort to provide a free and powerful CMS for websites. PHP is an open source language and a few CMS build upon PHP include Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, CakePHP and Codeigniter.

Pro’s from using an Open Source CMS over an in-house CMS:

1. It’s FREE – Open source CMS are free so you never have to pay for the core software which your website is built on. You then never need to pay for an upgrade to the open source CMS.
2. You own your site – Because open source CMS are free means your website will work on any server located anywhere. This means once your site is build and you decide to end your relationship with your development company you can easily copy your website and install it on another server.
3. Far Superior – Open source CMS systems have 100’s of developers and designers Worldwide who contribute code and ideas to the system. On a monthly basis the organisation running the CMS will decide on what pieces of code are to be added in the next update. In-house CMS usually have 1 to 2 developers who work full time on improving the software.
4. Open source CMS are upgraded every 2 to 3 months – The best ideas from the 100’s of developers who have contributed code will be added to the CMS core, tested by the organisation and deployed in the next update. This means you can continually update your CMS with a stronger more powerful and feature rich CMS.
5. Less bugs – All of the 100’s developers who have contributed by adding code to the core CMS will then thoroughly test the updated Beta version of the CMS and quickly find any bugs it includes. Once again an in-house CMS might have 1 – 2 people testing it before it goes to market.
6. Endless Supply of Functionality – The way an open-source CMS works is that the CMS provides the core structure for the website. You then install plugins,  add-ons and widgets which provide additional functionality which the core CMS does not include.
7. Endless supply of developers and designers – If you end your relationship with your web developer then you can easily find 1000’s of developers and designers who can take over managing your website.
8. Freedom to Update – You or 3rd parties can have access to update the files for your site, meaning you can source cheap enhancements to your site through your existing developer or other developers.
9. Choices for pre designed Themes – If you have a budget and require a website for less than $100 (with no ongoing fees) then this is possible through an open source CMS. Check out Woo Themes a CMS theme selling site.

My advice for next time you’re looking around for a new real estate website is to make sure you’re first question is…….Do you use an in-house CMS? If they answer yes then hangup, if they answer no ask…..Do I own the IP for our site and if we end our relationship am I free to take our website at no cost?

If they answer yes to the last question then you’re onto a winner and you are truly undertaking an investment when you purchase a new website.

Domain last week released it’s first entry into the realm of iPad apps and it appears to be an awesome app at that!

The app is of course available free and bears no resemblance to the boring, slightly useful but very slow iPhone apps released previously by Domain and REA. This app makes searching for property for sale, rent, sold and share listings intuitive, fast and interesting.

The user interface is map based and you’re immediately greeted with a map of your current surroundings (presuming you allow the use of location services on your iPad) along with the properties around you for sale marked on the map and listed down the right hand side of the screen. Each listing is shown on the map with a location marker and properties not showing an address simply come up in the property summary area. Showing property locations on a map can sometimes be very confusing when you have say 10 units for sale in the one complex. Many systems will simply have 10 place markers and most will become hidden and therefore useless. Fairfax has addressed this by showing on the one place marker how many properties are available at that location and by pressing on the location marker you are given a list of the addresses and prices with a link to each property.

You can change to search for rentals, sold listings or share accommodation at the top of the screen and can refine listings via price range, features, property type, land size or inspection details at the bottom left of the screen. By pressing twice on the property summary a detail page opens up covering the map with all property details much the same as the property detail page on the web and you can save multiple properties as favourites to reference again later. From the property detail page you make an email enquiry and view photo’s and floor plans.

This app will help to make agents uploading listings without addresses a thing of the past. With tools for sorting by inspections and the ability to genuinely follow listings around the streets you like, agents will now; more than ever before need to ensure full listing details are uploaded to guarantee the highest possible exposure to buyers/renters. Possibly for the first time, a buyer/renter could plan their day house hunting directly from mobile technology.

I love the layout of the user interface and if I was having an app designed to showcase our listings today I’d be replicating a lot of what is in this app (there’s a hint for Peter & Ryan). The app seems to be genuinely optimized for displaying results on the iPad; it’s fast, clear and eye catching.

What are you going  to come out with REA? It better be good because Domain has a great head start here!

You can download the app on iTunes or visit it here.

There’s no denying that the Apple iPhone has dominated the mobile telephone market in recent times and tech heads seem to have created apps for pretty much every purpose imaginable. Now an app has been released suitable for Australian real estate agents to perform quick calculations.

Agent Calculator has been developed by Tasmanian real estate agent, Patrick Berry in association with Panotasmania.com

Agent Calculator gives four categories of calculations; Agents Commission, Stamp Duty, Area Conversion and Rental Yield calculator.

When you first start the app you select which State you’re operating in (the app also supports New Zealand) and the state can be changed at any time.

The app is very easy to use and navigate with just four ‘menu’ choices at the bottom of the screen to switch between the four types of calculation.

The Commission calculator is quite basic, providing a total package including commission, GST and advertising costs. The only downside I see to this calculation is that the App assumes that all commission rates you enter are GST exclusive, so adds GST on. I’d suggest a tick box be added where you can select whether the commission percentage you’ve entered is GST inclusive or exclusive, this would be handy for agents charging say three percent including GST. The commission calculator provides different options for different states ie. Allows for a sliding scale commission rate for Queensland for example. There are two commission calculators for New Zealand, fixed percentage and sliding scale.

The Stamp Duty calculator allows different options reflecting the various differences between states. For NSW, the calculator asks whether the purchase is for a ‘first home buyer’ and whether the home is a ‘brand new home’ in order to give a correct total. In Victoria, the app asks whether the property is to be the ‘principal residence’.

The Area Converters are again basic as they should be. Squares to Square Metres and Acres to Hectares. Each calculation can of course be done in reverse.

The Rental Yield calculator is the function I liked best as I, like many agents are hopeless when it comes to anything more difficult than simple arithmatic. Simply enter the property price, the rent and whether the rent is weekly, fortnightly, monthly or yearly and you get the yield. The Rental Yield calculator is simple, clean and completed in a second.

The cost to download Agent Calculator is just $1.99. I think the app would provide value to many agents and let’s face it, you can’t get much for under two dollars that’ll provide any productivity benefit. Clearly, Apple feels the same way, ranking the app as ‘new and noteworthy’ and there have reportedly been plenty of downloads so far with the app being featured as one of the top 5 paid apps within 3 days of its release.

With more and more agents using iPhones and a huge predicted take-up of the iPad amongst agents over the coming year, tools like Agent Calculator could be seen as almost ‘necessary’.

All in all, Agent Calculator is a very useful app that does everything it claims to do!

Agent Calculator can be downloaded at the app store http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/agent-calculator/id443102280?mt=8#

Let us begin with one of the basic essentials that everyone needs, but few really put much thought in to.

Web Hosting

Some agents will never have to worry about web hosting, because their provider handles it for them, and often their website cannot even be moved to different hosting. Sites built by providers like HubOnline fall in to this category and they handle all technical issues.

Other real estate websites can choose their own hosting, which can give the agency a bit more flexibility and possibly even save some money. You do have to be cautious however because web hosts vary from professional companies run by people who have plenty of experience to sole traders working from their garage with no staff.

What to look for in a web host:

• Beware unlimited hosting. Avoid any hosts that say that they give you unlimited storage or bandwidth (data transfer). It is impossible for either of those to be unlimited (unfortunately no one has invented the infinite hard drive yet) so it is just a gimmick to pull you in and is a bad sign about the quality of the host. Unlimited email addresses or databases however are fine.
• You get what you pay for. You could pay as little as $2/month for your hosting, but when it is your business’s online presence at stake, is it really that important to save a few bucks? These hosts overfill their servers so your site is fighting against all the others to try and serve pages. For a standard agent’s website you should expect to pay between $10 and $15 per month for standard hosting.
  Many hosts offer business hosting which is usually more reliable and has better support. If you put a lot of effort in to your site it may be worth looking in to for added peace of mind. Expect to pay $20 – $35 per month.
• Host Locally. It is generally a good idea to host your website in Australia, rather than the US or Europe. Since most or even all of your visitors will be Australian, they will view a website which loads faster if their request do not have to go halfway across the globe. Despite this, International hosting can be cheaper because domestic bandwidth is more expensive than in other countries.
• Do not pay too much for your domains! There are some ‘reputable’ companies that sell .com domains for over $75/year and .au domains for $140/2 years. You should not be paying more than $15/year for a .com, .net or .org domain and no more than $30/2 years for a .au domain.
• Backup, Backup, Backup! Always perform your own backups. Most web hosts do say that they perform backups however there is no way to know if they actually do, or if the backups will work when you need them. There are far too many horror stories of people losing their entire websites because a server failed and wiped all their data. Most web hosting control panels make it easy to download a backup of your site so there is no excuse not to create a backup from time to time. You should do it after any major changes and at least once every month or two. For larger sites I usually configure backups to run every night automatically and store the backup in offsite storage.
  If you don’t have a recent backup, now is a good time to get one. If you have trouble, ask your host for help.

If you have any questions about the issues this article raises, feel free to comment on the article or email nick@luxuryhomesaustralia.com.au and I will try to answer your web hosting questions.

Here is what Jonathan has to say about this week’s launch of Property Observer “I have been writing about property for more than 25 years, and I’ve learnt that getting passionate about property is easy. Getting it right is trickier. I intend for Property Observer to be property central, providing the essential news and analysis on the ins and outs of property. We will cover the capital cities, up and down the coast, and inland to the regional towns and the bush.

We will offer plenty of authoritative coverage about the homes we live in and the investments that top up our incomes.

Property Observer will showcase the best houses and apartments and all the big-name buyers and sellers. We will also keep a watchful eye on new developments, and the plush over-55 developments that seek out the growing band of empty nesters.

Property Observer will capture the changing seasons – we will write about snow homes, vineyards, fishing lodges, marinas and even the occasional beach bathing box. We aim to be of interest to the owner-occupier and the investor, given that population and investment funds are more fluid than ever.

I intend for commercial investment property to be a key component, especially the opportunities on high street – retail neighbourhood shops, small strata offices, pubs and industrial strata. All are suitable for the self-managed super fund investor.

The website will offer wisdom on winning ways with property commentary from key economic and industry practitioners. We won’t overlook the property fundamentals, conveyancing clues, legal rulings and tax advice.

We want input from readers on market prices in their local patches, facilitating shared knowledge through dialogue, so let us know about your stories, insights and properties.”

It’s not just about bricks and mortar, as Property Observer will personalise property with interviews of the movers and shakers.

We want our readers to get wisdom, not clichés. And that way we’ll all be the wealthier.”

The content is excellent and a great assistance for real estate agents writing blogs as it is full of relevant data, analysis and commentaries.

You can also follow Property Observer on Twitter – @Propertyobs Make sure you subscribe to the email alerts too.

A broad range of real estate industry professionals attended the event including executives from The Professionals, Ray White, Laing & Simmons, RP Data, Fairfax, RE Uncut, real estate portals, software companies, mortgage brokers, real estate trainers and agents from across Australia and New Zealand. To help launch the event Jeff Turner a very popular real estate and social media presenters in the US and a seasoned American RE BarCamp contributor attended the event.

The day started with the attendees getting together and deciding what would be the topics for the morning’s 8 breakout groups. Moderators were then decided and 4 groups ran for 1 hour followed by the next 4 topics for another hour. After lunch the afternoon group topics were set, moderators allocated and the groups ran again for 1 hour each.

Some popular real estate topics included:

• CRM Systems
• Mobile phone technology
• WordPress
• Real estate portals
• Sold data sharing
• Social Media
• Lead Generation
• SEO
• Online marketing

I discussed the event with numerous attendees and the feedback was amazing, most commenting the event was relaxed, informative and they couldn’t wait for the next BarCamp. At this stage the organises are thinking (but are open to any suggestions) it will be a bi-annual event and are hoping to expand it to other Australian cities later in the year. Special thanks is needed to those who put the event together and include:

• Peter Brewer
• Lara Scott
• Tatiana Mijalica
• Peter Fletcher
• Ben Stockdale
• Greg Vincent

What’s important about these BarCamps is that they’re not for profit and community run, meaning anyone is welcome to be involved and help with planing and running BarCamps. If you’d like to help with the next Sydney event or bring RE BarCamp to your city then feel free to contact any of the guys and get involved.

Well done to all and I look forward to the next RE BarCamp!

OzHomevalue is a Realestate.com.au owned website for property vendors providing them with sales data information in relation to the suburb where the vendor’s property is located. From their homepage:

OzHomeValue provides a comprehensive property report to help find the value of your home. Try our easy to use, obligation free system and receive your FREE property report.

Well, it is not entirely obligation free given after a vendor fills in the form and receives a free property report, their contact details are then sold to local agents who contact the vendor regarding a appraisal.

But what’s more interesting about OzHomevalue is the sold data provided in the free property report. These property reports showcase recently sold properties and a Price Range for each property in the suburb where the vendor’s property is located. It’s this Price Range which is provided for sold properties which raises the question as to whether a property vendor’s privacy is being breached. Given most vendors explicitly request their agents do not publish sold prices, why then do all of these prices appear?

Given Ozhomevalue is owned by Realestate.com.au then a reasonable assumption is that REA are providing Ozhomesvalue with this sold data. As the sold dates of the properties in the report are between April 4 and April 12, 2011 than this sold data has not been sourced from the Valuers Generals office (because settlement has not occurred). Therefore more likley than not, this sold data is what has been reported on Realestate.com.au by agents once a property has sold. What’s interesting is, if you look at the sold properties on Realestate.com.au which are listed in the Ozhomevalue property report, you will see the price (for most properties) is not displayed on Realestate.com.au but is displayed on Ozhomevalue.com.au.

A perfect example of this is if you click on the sample property report on the Ozhomevalue.com.au website (after this post was published they updated their report to change the results but you can see a ozhomevalue_sample_report.)

You will see there are 12 recently sold properties in the report. Now if you search the sold properties on Realestate.com.au you will see that 11 out of the 12 properties do not have the sold price displayed. Below are the 12 properties in the report. Although the report outlines the property prices I have substituted the price with $X  to maintain the vendor’s privacy.

1. 197-199 Castlereagh Street SYDNEY – $X (REA No Price)*
2. 612/2 York Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)*
3. 3701/129 Harrington Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)*
4. 324/298 – 300 Sussex Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)
5. 1307/98 Gloucester Street, THE ROCKS – $X (REA NO Price)
6. 1809/183 Kent Street, SYDNEY – $525,000 (REA Price $525,000)
7. 303/420 Pitt Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)
8. 2007/98 Gloucester Street, THE ROCKS – $X (REA NO Price)*
9. 2007/98 Gloucester Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)*
10. 1409/168 Kent Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA No Price)*
11. 129 Harrington Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)*
12. 129 Harrington Street, THE ROCKS – $X (REA NO Price)*

*I decided to cross reference the 12 properties against the Australian Property Monitors database and the properties marked with * appeared in APM. All of these properties have the price withheld in APM.

Ozhomevalue refer to this price as a Price Range but make no reference to what this Price Range figure means. If it is the sold price of the property, then vendors (along with agents) would be outraged and should have every right to demand the sold price removed immediately.

After further examination it appears that Homeguru.com.au another Realestate.com.au owned company is displaying exactly the same sold property data as what Ozhomevalue does in a similar Sales Reports. However, instead of displaying the price as ‘Price Range’ Homeguru.com.au simply has it displayed as Price.

I use Skype regularly and it has become a replacement for the home phone (and business phone) for me and my team.

Skype to me is a great success story and its business model is perfect for exponential growth – getting users to reach out to all of their friends to become members and contacts and saving everyone time and money to connect from almost any location.

Skype also reaches out on just about any platform including Mac, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and the like, even set top boxes and DVD players and some televisions.

Yes, this is a big price and Skype does compete with a few of Microsofts products such as Windows Live Messenger, but very few people use this software for making calls.

The Skype software is continually evolving with group conferencing and other additional features, you can call anyone, create group chats, share screens and with add ons even record calls. Skype still has a way to go to be the perfect solution for larger businesses, but all in all I think it is a good deal that only the likes of large unwieldy companies like Microsoft could screw up. (Telstra could too, but thats a whole other story)

What will this mean for the current Skype users and software? I doubt Microsoft would be foolish to make any large changes immediately, they could expand the API for users to connect to other services and could also create advanced screen capturing for giving demos or lessons and publishing those on the web, much like Screenr.com

If Microsoft continue to integrate, innovate and grow the software it could mean the end for many a fixed line Telco worldwide. Microsoft will no doubt expand its integration into many of its products including office but the deal to me is all about stopping Google.

Google Voice
Google Voice operates in the US only at this stage, but this deal should see Google get off its backside and introduce other countries and to Australia and New Zealand sooner rather than later.

With Google Voice you simply create a new phone number and match it with your Mobile Phone number (from a large range of providers). All calls are routed to your existing mobile phone.

The power of Google Voice lies in its messaging and translation. If you miss the call it then translates the voice message into text and SMS’s and/or emails you the translated text, you can also play the message from your phone or through a browser on your connected device/desktop.

The transcription is not always accurate, but you get the gist of most messages by just the reading the translated text.

In the US I use Google Voice for all of my SMS messaging and it plays beautifully with Email, SMS, Browsers and is supported on all iPhone, iPad and Android Devices.

All in all a good fit and smart move by Microsoft, let’s just see if they stuff it up!