This is a nice video to share with your members/subscribers if you offer Sentrilock in your marketplace.

REALTORS® on the SentriLock system can now complete full SentriCard® renewals on the go, anytime and anywhere their busy day takes them, by using any BlackBerry phone* and BlackBerry SmartCard Reader.

System users can purchase a BlackBerry SmartCard Reader V2 directly from SentriLock for $199. The SentriLock BlackBerry Card Utility Program is free. Please fill out the form below to order a BlackBerry SmartCard Reader.WAV Group has long suggested that the Blackberry phones are the best choice of smart phones for the professional REALTOR®.

Click here to read our Smartphone study.

Big news from Googel

Googles Android OS overtook the Apple iphone in US smartphone market share during the first quarter of 2010. Real Estate application developers should take note.  Many real estate technology providers have been quick to lead with iPhone apps, but have lagged in support for the Android or Blackberry.  This is not universally true - for example, GE led with their support for Palm, followed by Blackberry.  GE Announced this week that eKey support for iPhone.

According to the NPD Group, Google now enjoys 28 percent of the smartphone market, earning the company the second-place spot behind Research in Motion (36 percent) and pushing Apple to third place (21 percent). NPD asserts Androids success to carrier promotions, such as Verizons buy-one-get-one-free offer on RIM and Android OS devices. AT&T remained on top of the smartphone carrier market with 32% market share. Verizon was close behind with 30%, while T-Mobile and Sprint both ended the quarter hovering near the 15 percent mark.  It appears that companies with strong product marketing efforts will be able to assert ample pressure on Apple to continue to be competitive.

Apple may always trail in terms of market share. Under Steve Jobs, Apple has not been willing to license its OS out to third parties, and that’s the exact strategy that Google has used with Android to vault it to the top spot. On top of that, Apple currently limits the iPhone to one carrier (AT&T) while Android devices are carried by several different providers. AT&T has suffered a horrible reputation for the quality of data and voice connectivity on the iphone.  This issues combine to give Google and Android a position on quality of core mobile services. Even when or if Apple finally moves to a multiple carrier model, Android will continue to be available on a wide variety of phones at a wide variety of price points, while iPhone OS will only be on a select number. 

The National Association of REALTORS yielded to requests to allow agent and broker IDX listings to be “spidered” or “indexed” by search engines last year.  Prior to this ruling, the suggested NAR rules and regulations for IDX was to not allow this activity.  This change plays a significant role in search engine optimization whereby a search engine will ‘index’ every listing in an MLS along with all of the content associated with each listing and attribute that to the website.

Most agent websites were previously only being indexed for 20 or so pages of content by search engines - examples would include the home page, about us page, buyer and seller resources pages, and contact pages.  Now, with an indexable property search solution, the search engines will look at every page of every listing presented on the site - so in some cases, that could lift the number of pages on an agent site from 20 to 20,000 or more.  This is a big lift for agents, and we have begun to see more vendors offer these solutions into the marketplace.

Below you will find a press release from Dynamic Page Solutions, a vendor who is offering an indexable property search solution.  WAV Group suggests that the feature of INDEXABLE listing data is a key criteria in selecting a property search solution for MLS public facing websites, Broker Websites, and Agent websites.  This is the advantage that REALTOR.com, Trulia, Zillow and others have had for years, which has enhanced the SEO of those websites over sites that could not be indexed.  This should level the playing field and allow practitioners to gain the same SEO foothold as these other sites and become more competitive for search engine relevance.  

The question remaining has to do with Content Spamming.  When publishers reprint the same thing on their website as other websites, the search engine spiders do not know who was the original author of the content.  Typically, the first site to publish the data gets the SEO credit.  Since there can only be one “first” publisher, it will be interesting to see what happens.  It may well have the effect of unwinding the benefit that NAR was seeking to offer to in their ruling to allow indexing.

Anyway - check out the press release.  I will be curious to see if they are successful at obtaining a patent.

Read more »

For sale: Slightly used, slightly abused, completely iconic mobile phone brand. Real fixer-upper, tons of potential.

Yes, in a move that has been suspected by fans of the brand for some time now, Palm has put itself up for acquisition. The move comes after recent sales numbers for Palm’s Pixi and Pre units disappointed already low expectations, making the company’s independent survival all but impossible. Existing mobile brands HTC and Lenovo are rumored to be interested. Some question the wisdom of HTC buying the brand, as Palm’s operating system, WebOS, would clash with HTC’s Android system.

Read more »

Smarter Agent, provider of mobile search services for the real estate industry filed a law suit on March 26, 2010 in Delaware District Court to sue the following companies for infringement of their patent 35:271.

Boopsie Inc.
Classified Ventures LLC
Hotpads Inc.
IDX Inc.
Move Inc.
RealSelect Inc.
Primedia Inc.
Consumer Source Inc.
Trulia Inc.
Zillow Inc.
ZipRealty Inc.
Multifamily Technology Solutions Inc. dba MyNewPlace
TRSoft Inc. dba Planetre

Read more »