One of my favourite websites is called TED. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). There are some great talks and you really should indulge every now and then.

TED has now released the Top Ten Talks of all time, I am sure this will be updated in the future, but it brings together some great insights and I hope you enjoy watching these. There are hundreds of talks here but listed below are the TOP Ten as voted by readers. You will see a young guy  (Jeff Han) whose technology is now used in everything from Microsoft’s Surface Technology to the iPhone. (more…)

Realestate.com.au have released a range of locality guides for suburbs across Australia. I watched a couple of these and my first thought was that they are well produced, look good and are lo0ng enough to provide some decent data. However really not much information is forthcoming, more so a little bit of fluff, but hey, I like where this is going.

I think it could get better with maybe 5 year suburb trends with pricing included somewhere. Maybe a page with a host of information on it. This could lead REA to more revenues by providing basic data and then allowing users to pay for more precise information.

I would also like to see this on property pages, matched against locales.

My last thought was, where are the ads? I was expecting to be stopped half way through the video for an ad break, but no advertising! Well let’s not hold our breath, as soon as they become popular I am sure we will see advertising.

You can view these here. It is a little bit of a process to get to the information and this should be refined to get to your locale faster, but have a look and let us know. If you think the presenter should not use the whole bottle of ‘Loreal’ colour (my eyes hurt) then let me know!

Prop Vid (which has affiliations with REA) sent me a video last week of a shoot that they recently completed for a property in Queensland. I have to say that this is impressive. The shoot took one week and involved a pretty large team. I can see this kind of marketing really pushing forward in the coming years, at first with premium, top of the range listings but eventually moving down to major properties for sale.

Tell me what you think. You can view the video here.

I have only one complaint and that is the term ‘World Premiere’. We are used to seeing this on Australian Productions on ABC and the Commercial Networks. I hate the term because of course it is a world premiere if no one else buys it or it is the only place it can be shown. In fact this article is a World Premiere, don’t you feel lucky?

Domain.com.au has added videos to the mix when you view property listings images [view here]. However an agent I spoke to today informed me that there is nowhere in the administration back-end where you can add movies. Maybe this is a feature that is coming soon? Maybe it is a feature for Adore clients only?

Earlier reports of extra images also seem to be false as it seems only 5 images can be added. I must say the image viewer from Domain is far superior to that of REA which gives you a next and previous with print only. The only painful thing is the amount of ads on Domain’s image viewer (2 large banners) compared to REA’s one that is nicely placed below and not as in your face.

Domain allows you to view images, virtual tours, movies (maybe) and also a great map!
If videos do become available you can be sure REA will also be hard at work adding this capability…

Ok , there are not too many believers out there when it comes to property listing movies being downloaded by consumers, but my belief it will be the key differentiator for many top quality agents in the future and this is why.
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