I was reminded today of a great service I had heard of (but then it got lost in the mix as tech tools can). I am very glad it came back up as I am going to start using it and suggest you look at it too.
Posterous.com offers a service that syndicates your social world. Syndication is not new, many companies, including Canadian great Hootsuite will link twitter and facebook. Posterous, however, takes this to the next level. It syncs facebook, twitter, youtube, flikr, linkedin, reddit,digg, your blog and a bunch of other social spots. Apparently you can even have your posterous page "skinned" to look just like your website to keep your bran consistent. Please give me feedback on how this is working.
Facebook - Another reminder (both this and posterous were via RE/MAX University) today about a cool trick in facebook. If you search for something in facebook like "moving to vancouver" "mortgage rates" "need a realtor" and you'll get a results page that is mostly people who have made fan pages about that topic. However, if you look along the left side of the results page, you see a button that says "public posts" - That will give you the posts of anyone on facebook (yes anyone of its 750 million users) who used that word or term recently in a status update. I'll shut up a second while you think about how great a tool this is.
fillanypdf.com - We are a little spoiled with webforms in that we are used to being able to open up a contract and fill in data before printing and having clients sign. The fact of the matter is that we sometimes deal with PDFs that are not from webforms and they can be a pain. FillanyPDF allows you to make any PDF work and feel like a contract with editable fields. Very handy.
Iphone and Ipad print screen. This is not an app but a handy little feature. looking to share something on your phone with someone? If you press the top and front button at the same time, your ipad or iphone will snap a picture of what is on your screen and save it in your camera roll. It is a handy way to share text conversations, maps, contacts, etc.
Walkscore - Walkscore is a website (there is also an app) that rates an address based on its walkability to amenities. It is a very cool tool. When you have clients who are concerned about such things, enter the address in and have a look at the "walk score" for the house or building.
Holidays 2012-2014 - This app has a list of Holidays and what day they are on. Is this something you could use when writing contracts?
iLiving This $3 app isn't as good as it could be and will be followed by others I am sure. However, if you want to be cutting edge it is worth a download. With iLiving, you snap and picture of a room and then digitally furnish it to see what it would look like with the bed over there or TV on that wall. RE/MAX has a much more full featured "designer" that is done on a floorplan, but it is only available on a PC (not a mobile device ... yet_
Remember to send your ideas to me for future tech tuesday emails.
Cory Raven
Managing Broker
RE/MAX Select Realty