You are here: Home / Archives for microsoft outlook
post

New Feature from MyBlogLog Builds Your Contact Manager

By: NikNik · Posted on April 25, 2008 · 2 Comments

So, you just discovered a rockin’ new real estate blog and want to know more about the author. What about adding the author to your contact manager? If you are a MyBlogLog member, you are in luck! MyBlogLog recently added a new feature that allows you to easily add your favorite bloggers contact information to your address book via vCard and hCard.

vCards are commonly used in eSignatures or attached to business emails. They are standard electronic business card files that usually include an address, phone number, email, Website or blog URL, etc. vCards can be added to the Mac OS X Address Book, Microsoft Outlook, and other applications.

Now, I hadn’t heard of the hCard so this gave me a chance to learn more. Apparently an hCard is a microformat for publishing contact information, as well as for extracting details to be used in other applications or  [Read more...]

post

Viral Tools to Boost Your Real Estate Blog’s Readership

By: Reggie · Posted on March 5, 2008 · 7 Comments

Over the past few years we have all witnessed the explosive growth of social networking. One could argue this growth has been achieved with viral marketing tools. Think about it every time we sign up for a new network or add a new application we are given the option to spread the message (or application) to our network. By having the option to easily broadcast a message to your database, without having to retype your contacts email address, you are more likely to spread their word…right? Would that type of viral element work on your real estate website or blog?

Introducing Octazen Solutions a contacts importer and address grabber for PHP, .Net, Java, and Ruby. Octazen has built in support for all the major Webmail systems (Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, & AOL) also including Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and Mozilla. For their complete list of supported services, click here to review. Are you wondering if your server is compatible with the address book importer? Try this PHP test script? Try the contact importer demo.

Perhaps rather than importing contacts from an address book, you’d like to spread your message through a social network. With Octazen’s Invite Sender Script, your visitors can message their friend list in Friendster, MySpace, Hi5, Facebook, Orkut, Xing, BlackPlanet and Bebo. Your visitors with enter their login information and the Invite Sender script will compile a list of contacts to invite. Once the message is sent it will arrive as a social network email. Try the Social Network Friends finder

These scripts could be placed before the download of an eBook or other value added item. It would allow those interested parties to also help spread the word with other that share similar interest…easy!

post

New Email Stationery Technology for Real Estate Agents

By: Reggie · Posted on July 6, 2007 · 8 Comments
Email stationery has been growing in popularity over the past few years. Real Estate agents like this particular technology because it allows them to brand each email with their photo, logo and website links to drive consumers back to key features on their website such as search the MLS and featured properties. Even prospecting features like newly listed homes by email, buyer/seller tips, ask the expert, etc. Think of email stationery as a simplistic form of viral marketing!

The email stationery technology became largely popular because of Microsoft Outlook support. However the challenge has always been that if you send emails from a blackberry, cell phone or other text email client you will not be able to take advantage of email stationery because of its HTML requirements. That is until now! inboxFX has created a very interesting web-based technology to tackle this very issue.

inboxFX, a Canadian company, has designed their technology to wrap their custom email stationery around your plain text email message after it’s been sent, but before it arrives in the recipients inbox. The inboxFX solution works in two ways. First you can choose to use the inboxFX SMTP mail server as your outgoing email server and it will automatically wrap your stationery immediately after you click the send button. However if you use Microsoft exchange technology, or would like to selectively choose who can see the email stationery, you may want to use their second option.

For this simplistic approach you can send to any email address and simply add “.inboxfx.com” to the end of the recipients email address. For example if I wanted to send my stationery to john@acme.com, I would send the email to john@acme.com.inboxfx.com and the template email stationery would be added before delivery. This solution will work with any email system…even from your MLS.

inboxFX pricing is volume-based, to see the pricing matrix click here. For a series of inboxFX email stationery examples, click here.

post

Online Meeting Solutions for Real Estate Agents

By: NikNik · Posted on June 20, 2007 · 10 Comments

Online meetings have become quite a fabulous technology solution for those real estate agents who present, train, or meet with clients abroad. Much time and money can be saved when cutting out travel. And for real estate agents working with clients from nearby cities to across the country, online meetings can prove to be highly efficient. There are several online meeting solutions out there, 2 of my favorites options for real estate agents being iLinc and GoToMeeting. Check out my expanded list below:

GoToMeeting

  • Price: $49.00 a month or $468.00 a year (unlimited meetings)
  • Free 30 day trial
  • Host unlimited online meetings for up to 10 attendees
  • Features Include: desktop viewing, share keyboard & mouse control, email & instant messaging integration, chat, free voice conferencing, application sharing, drawing tools
  • Easy 2 minute automatic set-up
  • For large seminars & events check out GoToMeetingCorporate

iLinc: MeetingLinc & ConferenceLinc

  • Price: Contact Sales @ 1-800-767-7145
  • Free 15 day trial download
  • Personalized guided tour
  • Host online meetings for small groups to large events
  • Features Include: voice over IP, audio & video conferencing, application & desktop sharing, interactive whiteboards, synchronized Web browsing, breakout groups, floor control to anyone in session, text chat, electronic hand raising, feedback, Q & As, recording & playback, etc.
  • Invitations and reminders linked to Microsoft Outlook

iVisit Plus

  • Price: $49 for 1 year of unlimited use
  • Host live conferencing for up to 16 attendees
  • Features Include: video conferencing, voice calls, instant messaging, AVMessaging, file sharing and web co-browsing for richer online meetings with family, colleagues or customers for live video chat.
  • iVisit™ Lite FREE (try out video conferencing)

Microsoft Office Live Meeting

  • Price: Varied, contact sales
  • Free 14 day trial
  • Hosting for groups of all sizes (from one on one meetings to an audience of a 1,000)
  • Attendees receive personalized invitations with a unique meeting URL and password.
  • Demo

Voxwire Web Conferencing

  • Price: Varied (from 3 person room @ $17 per month to 200 Person Room @ $417 per month)
  • Free 7 day trial
  • Host online conferencing between 2 or hundreds of participants
    Features Include: moderator controls, visual tools, new presentation & whiteboarding tools, instant text chat
  • Room owners can modify their capacity any time they wish Online Meeting Invitations by iBizGrams.com

WebEx MeetMeNow

  • Price: $49 / month no commitment ($39 / month with annual commitment (20% discount)
  • Free 14 day trial
  • Host unlimited online meetings for up to 10 attendees
  • Features Include: desktop sharing, control granting, rich annotation, email & instant messaging integration, private chat, conference calling, conduct remote support.
  • Easy 2 minute automatic set-up
  • Trial
post

Personal assistant for dollars a day: E.V.A.

By: Reggie · Posted on November 22, 2006 · 3 Comments

I recently started using a new personal assistant service, and I’m blown away by its value. It’s no secret day-to-day business can generate countless tasks and action items. This is important stuff, but can easily distract us from the top goal which is income or income related activities…right? So what options do we have? Hiring someone to help can be costly. Let me introduce you to E.V.A. (Electronic Virtual Assistant). Simply speak to their system to add calendar events, client details, track expenses, log car mileage or even send emails. I know what you’re thinking “Voice recognition does not work!” E.V.A. does not use voice-recognition. A real-live human transcriptionist reviews and enters your data as directed from you!

This all happens from their call center. You can communicate with E.V.A. by simply talking into your phone or by using “E.V.A. Ear” which is an ordinary digital voice recorder that interfaces with E.V.A.’s Software. With this option you sync the “E.V.A. Ear” with your PC and the E.V.A. software transmits that data to the U.S.-based transcribers for completion. Everything that E.V.A. adds to their system (i.e. Expenses, Mileage, Calendar Items, Client data etc.) can sync with Microsoft Outlook.

You may be asking yourself “How’s the accuracy”? As I found it, E.V.A. is right-on. When they have a question, they ask before going forward. For example, I sent an email, and the transcriptionist did not understand a word I used. As a result, the email was simply sent to me for clarification. Once I did they sent it out. If you’re the type that wants to review everything, just let them know and you can review all emails before they are delivered.

OK, I know you curious about pricing. I was too! Pricing is similar to a cell phone plan. You can use minutes or get an unlimited plan. Take a look at pricing here.

Also there are many notable advocates (Steven Covey, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins) click here to read more.