Microsoft launched a Send to GPS feature, MSN Direct Enables Web Sites to Deliver Location Information to GPS Navigation Devices.
Interesting. This certainly would be nice to add to our favorites experience. I wonder what GPS devices are users have? Or are most popular?
How Accurate Are Listings On Real Estate Sites?
Which I think is a great question to ask and surprising it has taken TechCrunch and the like so long to ask.
Why? Because a consumer searching for a home in San Diego doesn’t care that Trulia/Zillow has 3 million listings nationwide; they care how many listings the search sites in their area have.
Unfortunately for Redfin we’re not in every market but the markets we are in we have almost all the listings.
Where do we get our listings from?
What’s missing? Craigslist which gets a large number of FSBOs.
We’re also up front about what our listing inventory includes with the statement, Do I see all the homes for sale on our map page.
Here’s the Inman wrap up of our panel on building a better brokerage website, Clients can tell you how to build ‘killer’ Web site.
Tech Crunch, Microsoft Exits Classified Listings Business.
Guess we don’t have to worry about syndicating to Live now…
Say you’re a Firefox user considering switching to Internet Explorer. If you Google download internet explorer you end up at the Get It Now page.
You would think clicking the “Get It Now” button would initiate a download of what you are looking for. But it doesn’t. You would think clicking any of the items circled in red might initiate a download; they don’t. Instead you need to look all the way below the fold to find the drop down I’ve circled in black.
This page is different than the one presented to Internet Explorer users but yet isn’t optimized around the user scenario of “so you’re a Firefox user looking to make the switch back.” There is no easy download button, no automatic OS detection, no messaging around why IE is better (is it?)
FAIL.
And if you think this is the only case of bad download design on Microsoft.com it is. The other day I had to download Virtual PC and I had to ASK SOMEONE how to download it.
The fatal and common flaw their pages share is the third hierarchy of tabs uses a button visual instead of a tab visual.
From Janelle comes the best listing photo ever.
The listing is 123 Orange Grove Ave:
And yes, that’s the primary photo. The second, and last photo, is of the kitchen which is missing a fridge.
CondoDomain runs afoul of MLS PIN in Boston, CondoDomain Gets Slapped.
Yeah, we don’t require registration and sign in for Boston just for kicks :).
I was also pleased to read another post about similar issues, Silly MLS IDX Rules.
Now we just need to hear from the brokers who actually want all these rules. It appears that the tech folks and the users certainly don’t want em and Zillow and Trulia love them as it puts them at an advantage over those who actually do the buying and selling.
This is great news!
Hopefully more MLSes follow their lead, NWMLS to Allow Brokerages to share more Data:
he Northwest Multiple Listing Service has announced policy changes that will allow brokerages to display more information on their websites. This means that if brokerages choose to, people will be able to see the length of time a property has been on the market, referred to as days-on-market (DOM), as well as cumulative-days-on-market (CDOM), along with the listing price adjustment history. The NWMLS will only allow the DOM to be shown if the CDOM is also displayed in order to insure that consumers are not mislead.
Zillow finally migrates from their own map platform to Virtual Earth. I’m surprised they waited as long as they did to do this. We certainly should have done it before we expanded beyond Seattle.
In our Virtual Earth news, Eric Jorgensen has been promoted to VP. Eric ran the group which Virtual Earth was a part of. It looks like Stephen Lawler is now the top guy on Virtual Earth.