Testing – Check
Integration Issues – Unknown
Theme 2010 – Awesome!
Nothing else report at this time.

Welcome to WordPress 3.0.  So far I’m digging it and some of the features from the 2010 theme are awesome!  More to come…

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Here’s the latest and greatest from the Duluth mayor Don Ness.  Once again, WHY SHOULD DULUTH GET THIS STUPENDOUS PRIVILEGE!?!?  Next thing you know he’ll be asking his constituents to support taxes and other whims without reason.

The transformation of our economy – a call to action

I need your help!  By investing just a few moments of your time, you’ll be part of an incredible transformation of our regional economy.

We’re out to convince Google to build an ultra-high speed fiber network in the Twin Ports.  This system will bring fiber-optic connections to every home and business at speeds of one gigabit per second, up to 1000 times faster than existing “high-speed” Internet connections.

This changes everything.

It changes our economy, it changes how we do business, it puts Duluth and Superior at the forefront of the next great economic revolution in America.  And yes, you’ll be able to download an entire HD movie in 30 seconds.

Could it really happen?  Absolutely.  We fit Google’s criteria extremely well and we believe we have the most comprehensive campaign in the nation.  Ultimately, our success depends on the participation of folks like you.

Our success depends on YOU taking three simple steps:
1)    Go to www.googletwinports.com and join the team.

2)    There you can create a free Google account (if you don’t already have one):
www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount
and submit a nomination directly to Google:
www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi/public/options

3)    Join our Facebook group, www.googletwinports.com/facebook , and post your confirmation code from step 2 to Facebook.
4)    Business can place a GoogleTwinPorts supporter badge on their websites:
http://www.googletwinports.com/web-badges.php

Folks are fired up about this – Duluth is on the national map as a forerunner in this contest.  Don’t let up!  Let’s make this happen – we have just a few weeks until the deadline.

Thanks for your help!
Mayor Don Ness

Ok, I’m off my soapbox…

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Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

–

IE Logo from:  http://bit.ly/dxL2kT

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When an ice chunk falling at high speeds meets a parked Lexus, who wins?  The ice chunk…

This happened earlier this afternoon in downtown Minneapolis.  When there are signs saying “Watch out for falling ice” you might want to watch out…

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Hello World!

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While reading my random blogs I came across a beta web app called Radiusly.  The website was very simple, almost too simple.  There was the logo and then a “request invite” button/link.

Upon clicking it I was redirected to my twitter page and my status text box was populated with “What does @bestbuy @virginamerica and @intuit have in common? Send me an invite to Radiusly so I can find out: www.radiusly.com”. To request my invite I would simply have to click “update”.

So… How is this done?  Create a graphic, button, or even a simple HTML link and add the URL info: http://twitter.com/home?status=Hello World

Click here to change your status to “Hello World”.

Enjoy and remember… keep it under 140 characters

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Today I received some of my Levenger order.  When I saw the package I was ecstatic!  After opening I was then saddened…  I only received half of my order.  As you can see, the packaging is much much larger than the items in the box.  Thus, one would think that they got everything.  I think a padded envelope would have been sufficient.

Package Contents:

• Circa Discs – 1″
• Circa Page Finder x2
• Invoice

Items to be Shipped:

• Circa Desk Punch
• Circa Notebook Shell – Letter x2

Let’s see if I get a TV sized box for the rest of the goodies.  OK, I’m being a little sarcastic.  I’m sure they do flat rate shipping.  This would explain the “larger” boxes.

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Hola,

Please ignore this post as it is a test for the integration of WordPress, Twitter Tools, and Bit.ly.

Update: Didn’t work at first.. Note to self:  Don’t have a space at the end of you API key.

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Not having a real estate agent at the moment (we now have one )we’ve resorted to using some online tools for looking for houses.  Below are the ones we have used thus far along with some comments as to our experience.

Zillow.com

Overall Experience: Great place to get ideas for prices in certain neighborhoods and how many houses are for sale.  Easy to use and very interactive.  It’s also interesting to see what houses have sold for in the past.

Pros: Easy to use, interactive maps for neighborhoods (ability to focus on certain areas of the map), and I was able to get the results I wanted using the many different fields for defining your search.

Cons: It was easy to use but loading can sometimes be an issue.  Navigation back and for from page to page can also be a little clunky.

Zillow iPhone App

Overall Experience: Awesome!  This was a great tool when we were out and about driving around without any direction.  Very often there were houses for sale but there was not a flyer available.  With this app we were able to quickly load it and find out the house price using the GPS.  I would estimate that greater than 75% of the time the house was listed at the time.  However, the status of the house was not always correct as in, the house could have sold recently but the Zillow database was not yet updated.

Pros: Utilizes GPS to find your current location.  Same type of interface and options as the website.  Easy to use and would recommend for those random house hunts.

Cons: There were numerous times that I got frustrated because the app doesn’t save your search criteria or settings when closing the app.  (I may have missed this in the settings if it were available)…

Various Realty Websites

Sites: EdinaRealty.com, Century21.com, ColdwellBanker.com, etc

Overall Experience: More often than not, we were able to find all the same houses on all the realty websites.  The kicker was that each interface was a different experience.

Suggestions:

• Allow multiple zip codes, cities, or neighborhood queries.  There were times when we were limited to looking at one area at a time.
• Cleanup the layout of some of the content.  Some content was squished together, especially when maps were involved.  If possible, make the the layout a little wider, open up in a modal window, new window, etc.
• Better integration of maps.  I would say 80% of the time I found it easier to copy the address into Google Maps to see the street view of the house than to use the map that was integrated into the website.  If you are going to offer maps I would suggest using both Bing and Google Maps.  Bing has an awesome aerial view compared to Google Maps.  However, Google Maps has street view.

The MLS Online

Overall Experience: This is probably my favorite choice!  MLS Online has a some really great search options, easy to use, and gives you a ton of results.

Pros: Extremely easy to use.  Email notifications for new houses that meet your criteria (if you set it up).  Detailed house information and a clean layout.  Ability to save multiple search criterion.  Added the ability to search for foreclosures.

Cons: Does not provide the # of days on the market.

Sorry for the novel.  Hope this helps the fellow house hunters out there or even the developers for the above sites.

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For the past few weeks the process of finding a house has been in progress.  Some of the initial steps that we’ve tried before working with a real estate agent are:

• LMS/Zip Realty.
• Zillow – for those that have an iPhone, I would highly recommend their app.  The app allows you to use the build in GPS to navigate to that are listed with them.
• Edina Realty, Century 21, etc.
• Craigslist.
• Driving around neighborhoods we like.

I would like to share that we have had success finding houses for sale either through the web and just driving around looking for “for sale” signs.  Through some of this initial process I would like to share some of the struggles that we’ve had thus far.

• If you have a “brochure box” on the top of your “for sale” sign, please keep brochures handy.  I understand that printing in color might be a little pricey but there are alternatives (I’ll list a little later on).  Today, about 15% of the houses we wanted additional information via the brochure box was empty.  Dear sellers, consider this a possible lost customer.
• Not all websites were up-to-date with the status of each house.  There were many houses that were sold but the website was not updated accordingly.  Result, more time driving and more gas wasted.  Result, we found more houses to look at
• If you’re selling your house, please keep up with the landscaping and please clean up the crap around your house/garage (This also includes the banks that own foreclosed houses).  There were a number of houses Remember, curb appeal is HUGE!
• There nothing that can really be done about this but it was a tad confusing when there were the “services signs”, aka Bob’s Siding Co. Installed the Siding on this House.  This was kind of a false positive when looking.  “OH!, there’s one down that street. NOT!”

Enough griping.  Homeowners, here are some recommendations that would have hooked me in today or might help others.

• Keep up with landscaping and keep your yard neat.
• If you have low hanging branches are other foliage hiding your house, you might want to clean this up.  First impressions happen with houses too.
• If there’s paint pealing take a weekend to scrape and put a fresh coat on.  It helps!
• Keep plenty of extra brochures in the brochure box and check daily!
• If you want to go extra cheap on brochures but super informative consider having basic information on your brochure but have a website setup with additional information and pictures.  Creating a simple website can be done easily in an evening and in most cases free.  Some internet providers give website space for free to customers and other solutions such as Blogger and WordPress could be used.

Image Source: http://azbigmedia.com/tags-15

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