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The best external battery for your portable gadgets, ever!

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:00:34 +0000

I will freely admit that I am addicted to my gadgets. My iPhone and my iPad have become so integrated with my life that they are never too far from me. I’ve even been known to drive back home from my office when I have gone off and forgotten one or the other. And that’s a 30 minute round trip!

Since having these devices ready to go when I need them is important to me, I have chargers at home, my office and my car. I don’t ever want them to be dead because they ran out of power.

So, when I was faced with a 14 and 1/2 hour flight to Australia in December I realized that I needed to come up with a portable battery solution. After much research, I found a little company in Fremont, CA (New Trent) that offered the perfect solution.

They offer a variety of batteries that will charge almost any phone or tablet. The one I chose was the most powerful they offered, the New Trent iCruiser IMP1000, as it would recharge my iPad completely one time, or recharge my phone 6 times.

Here is a partial list of what it is compatible with from their website:

New Trent iCruiser IMP1000 ~ 11000mAh External Battery Pack and Charger for iPad 2, iPad, iPhone (4S 4 3Gs 3G for both AT&T and Verizon phones), iPod Touch (1G 2G 3G 4G 5G), HTC Android EVO, Blackberry, Samsung Galaxy Tablet, Samsung Galaxy S, Droid, Nintendo, Sony PSP and much more!

I paid $99.95 for mine, but I see that it is currently being offered (as of 2-5-12) for $76.95. Here is the link: http://www.newtrent.com/Best-iPad-Battery-Pack-iPhone-Battery-Extender-p/imp1000.htm

This battery gets my highest endorsement as it performed flawlessly in my tests. After all, I was able to use my iPad on the plane for the entire trip!

Realtytechbytes.com by Jerry Kidd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.Realtytechbytes.com. Did you know that I have arranged for readers of my blog to receive licensed software for free? And that there is something new everyday? Click on the link to go to the blog and look for Give Away of the day in the sidebar.

The best external battery for your portable gadgets, ever!

I just love this infographic! (History of the Internet)

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:00:15 +0000

Time for a little fun! You may have heard the term “infographic” being bandied about. It refers to a collection of facts on a topic that are presented in place of or in conjunction with the facts being discussed.

While noodling around on the interwebs the other night, I ran across this one on the history of the Internet. I looked real hard, but I could find no mention of Al Gore….

At any rate, I hope that you enjoy it!

[Source: OnlineMBA.com]

Realtytechbytes.com by Jerry Kidd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.Realtytechbytes.com. Did you know that I have arranged for readers of my blog to receive licensed software for free? And that there is something new everyday? Click on the link to go to the blog and look for Give Away of the day in the sidebar.

I just love this infographic! (History of the Internet)

Facebook Business Page Opportunity Slipping Away…

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 03:00:04 +0000

If you never take the time to implement the things I tell you about here, now might be the time to change that behavior because I am going to tell you about something that is time sensitive.

You probably know that Facebook has become the most powerful social force on the planet. If that wasn’t apparent before, I think that you would have to agree that the recent events in Egypt have shown just how pervasive the reach of Facebook has become.

Facebook has connected people in ways that were never possible before and smart business people have been taking advantage of that through the use of Fan Pages also known as business pages. Facebook created fan pages specifically for businesses, bands, public figures and brands to have a place on Facebook where they can promote themselves without violating the Terms of service.

Unlike personal profiles, you can add custom sections on your Facebook fan page. Up until last Thursday (2-10-11) they were called Tabs and you could use something called Facebook Markup Language (FBML) to create custom tabs that mimicked the look, feel and functionality of web pages.

This was a tremendous boon to anyone who wanted to have a business presence on the world’s best known social network…and for free to boot.

FBML was not all that hard to master, and anyone with a bit of web page building skill could create custom fan page tabs. Heck, even I was able to do that!. But, there were limitations on what you could with FBML and Facebook had made the decision sometime in 2010 that FBML would eventually go away in favor of iFrames which will allow much more functionality.

But here is the rub. As of now, in order to use iFrames, you have to create a Facebook application that will be used to host and display your iFrame…this is no trivial task and I believe that it will be beyond the skill set of most of the people offering to build Facebook custom tabs.

The good news is that we have until March 11, 2011 to add FBML tabs to our Facebook business pages. Facebook has said that on the 11th you will not be able to add FBML to your page. They went on to say that existing FBML tabs will still work beyond that date. They did not give a date that FBML would be disabled on existing pages, but did urge everyone to migrate to iFrames as soon as possible.

So, having said all of that, here is what I suggest that you do. If you have an existing fan/business page, add the FBML app and several FBML boxes right now. If you don’t have a business page, go ahead and create several pages (even though you don’t have an immediate need for them) and add some FBML tabs to them.

I can’t imagine that FBML will be taken away anytime soon due to the vast number of them that are currently in use. And I do believe that creating similar functionality in iFrames will cost far more than doing the same thing in FBML.

Having a few pages pre-loaded with FBML tabs may turn out to be a “life saver” for you.

Here are three videos that will show you how to add a Fan/Business page, and also how to add FBML boxes to those pages.

Video One ~ How to create a Facebook Fan/Business Page

Video Two ~ Intro to Facebook Markup Language (FBML) This is audio only!

Video Three ~ How to add the FBML Application

If you are reading this on Facebook, your RSS Reader, or in your email and can’t see the videos, click here to view this post on my blog.

And, if you want somebody to do this for you, get in touch right away…don’t wait until March 10, 2011 to do it…you will be out of time and out of luck!

Realtytechbytes.com by Jerry Kidd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.Realtytechbytes.com. Did you know that I have arranged for readers of my blog to receive licensed software for free? And that there is something new everyday? Click on the link to go to the blog and look for Give Away of the day in the sidebar.

Facebook Business Page Opportunity Slipping Away…

How can you use social media in business?

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 03:00:59 +0000

The other day I was having a conversation with a new client (I consult with small businesses to help them market their business via social media) about using social tools in their business.

When I asked them why they wanted to use social media. I got a strange look from them. They asked me to explain why I asked that question.

I assumed that everyone would know the answer to that question, but you know what happens when you assume!

So, I thought I’d just look at a few of the reasons why your businesses might want to explore the use of these tools. For the purposes of this article, I am going to limit the discussion to Facebook and LinkedIn. Even though YouTube, Twitter, Yelp and others are perfectly good tools to use, the majority of small business owners are going to find that Facebook and LinkedIn will suit their needs best. You can adopt the ideas here to other channels as well.

Three of the most obvious uses of social media are to reconnect with past clients, deepen existing relationships with present clients and look for new clients. Both Facebook and LinkedIn lend themselves to all three uses, but are executed differently.

The process of reconnecting with past clients starts with having a complete profile. The more information that you share about yourself and your past jobs, schools and activities, the easier you make it for people from your past to find you. This is something that a lot of people have trouble doing due to privacy concerns. The more info you make available online the easier you make it for the identity theft bozos and creepy stalkers to latch on to you.

So, you could always turn this around and use the search features built in to Facebook and LinkedIn to look people up from your past so that YOU could reach out to them. This requires that you know something about the people that you are looking for, such as maiden names or past or current residence information. If you are going to initiate contact and ask someone to be your friend on Facebook or to connect with your network on LinkedIn I think it’s highly advisable to include a personal message in the invitation to connect. Both Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to include a personal message in the invitations. Just give a quick reminder on how they know you and you will increase the chances of a favorable reply!

What about current clients? I think it’s a great idea to include a “Look us up on Facebook” or “Connect with us on LinkedIn” message on your print ads, or if you use email, include those as links in your signature and take people directly to your profile pages so that they can find you easily.

These two methods are what I have heard described as the “unicorn and rainbow” methods of using social media in business. I like to refer to this as the kumbaya method. Both terms merely mean that you are going to conduct yourself on Facebook (and to a lesser extent on LinkedIn) in an open, friendly manner by sharing a lot of personal “slice of life” vignettes about you. This can be very powerful when used properly, but if you have privacy concerns, then the chances of you actually being able to use these methods is slim.

So, here is where the third method of using social media comes in. This method has you searching for clients among people that you don’t already know or with whom you have no previous relationship.

How is this possible? Both Facebook and LinkedIn have tremendous knowledge of their users. Facebook is more socially deep in their knowledge, and LinkedIn has more business depth knowledge of their users. But, you mine that data the same way in both platforms…you run ads on the respective platforms!

The ability to run ads successfully requires that you have an in depth knowledge of who you want to reach AND that you have the ability to quantify or describe that target person in terms that can be used with the Facebook and LinkedIn ad platforms. In a future article, I will explore ways that you can quantify your own ideal clients.

So, that was our discussion. Once I was able to clear that up for the client, they were able to tell me how they planned to use social media to grow their business.

How about you? Why do you want to use social media in a business? How is it working out for you?

Two things that you REALLY need to do…right now!

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 03:00:34 +0000

If you aren’t a REALTOR®, this week’s post may be of little value to you, but go ahead and take a look anyway. And if you ARE a REALTOR®, this is one that you REALLY need to read all the way through. (And click on the links too!)

To start with, if you haven’t downloaded the 2010 Profile of Homebuyers and Sellers yet you really need to do that now. Here is a link to the page where you can find it: http://www.realtor.org/prodser.nsf/products/186-45-10?OpenDocument You can pay $150.00 for it if you are not a member of NAR or you can log in if you are a member and pay $50.00. Either option gets you the printed version. But, why not just download the PDF version for $12.95? Then go and memorize Chapter 3 and you’ll never have to pay for a newspaper ad again (assuming that you can communicate what you have learned about how buyers really find the homes they buy to a seller).

The Profile has a ton of other useful information that will help you figure out how to locate new buyers and sellers and how to best work with them once you do locate them.

The next thing I think that you should do is to go RealtorMagOnline at http://www.realtor.org/rmohome and take a look at the wealth of information that is available to you there. Some of you know that my primary business these days is teaching REALTORS® and other small business owners how to use Social Media Marketing to locate their ideal client and having done so, to entice that client to enter into a relationship with the REALTOR® or small business owner that will lead to a sale.

During the process of teaching the concepts so many people get bogged down on “what should I say?” or where can I get ideas of things that would be valuable to my ideal client? Well look no further grasshopper. RealtorMagOnline has a very rich source of information for you. There are downloads of brochures, articles, webinars, newsletters and much more. If you can’t find content for your blog or Facebook business page there you seriously need to think about that career at a burger joint!

I’m going to climb down from my soapbox now, but I am going to ask you to take your mouse and click on the two links in this article and get busy with using some of this information to help you build your business…one twelfth of the year is nearly over! What are you waiting for?

A tale of two geeks who backup AND restore!

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 03:00:51 +0000

Recently a friend and I experienced similar computing “disasters. We both had iMacs that were approximately 3 years old and both of them experienced hard drive failures. Don’t draw any conclusions about the reliability of the iMacs as that isn’t the point of this article.

A conclusion that is fair to draw is that hard drives fail. It’s not if they will fail, it’s when they will fail that we need to keep in mind.

Both of us are very accomplished computer “geeks”. My friend has been a Mac aficionado for many years and runs his very successful business with his wife on Mac computers. I have been a Windows “guy” since the days of DOS computers and only in the past three years have I become a Mac “convert”. But, again, it’s not the computing platform that is the topic today.

The topic is simply this: your hard drive WILL fail and when it does, it will take all of your data with it. When that happens and you are sitting staring at folder with a question mark (Mac) or staring at the blue screen of death (Windows) the result is the same…you are hosed. (Hosed is a technical term that means you get to spend the next few days working like a dog to get your computer back!)

My friend has a very good plan for backing up data, he has multiple portable drives that he uses for backup. He rotates them daily, exchanging a drive each day and taking the unused drive with him off site. This is so that if the backup drive and the main computer hard drive fail, the worst that can happen is that he only loses data from the current day. (He has “yesterday’s” backup drive off site).

My plan was less robust. I relied on the Mac Time Machine backup program that was backing up to an external hard drive sitting on the desk. I didn’t rotate drives like he does.

So, when the inevitable happened, we both thought that we were covered. All we would have to do was to replace the failed hard drive in our iMacs and restore data from the most current hard drive.

In my friend’s words “Not so fast Grasshopper!” It didn’t work that way for either of us. You see, we both failed to close the “loop”. It doesn’t matter how many backup drives you have stashed away somewhere if the data that they contain is corrupt as it was in his case. It also doesn’t matter if the backup drive you have doesn’t have a recent backup on it because the backup settings were changed and the computer wasn’t backing up as it was in my case.

In both cases, a simple, periodic RESTORE of critical data (and actually opening the file to verify it’s integrity) would have spotted his corrupt data and my utter failure to actually be backing up!

The story has a happy ending. We were both able to recover data from our failed hard drives and we are both back in business. But, the process stole time and money from both of us.

It’s time for you to check your own data backups…what are you doing, and how do you KNOW that you can get the data when you need it? Have you done any restores? Have you checked the restored file to see if you can actually open and read it?

Let’s hear your stories.

Staying on top of your social networks in a nutshell

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:00:24 +0000

A few weeks ago I gave you a seven day plan for using social networking. In Day Seven of the plan, I talked about a tool that I use (NutshellMail) to help me stay on top of all the activity in my social networks.

When I add my Facebook friends, my Facebook business page fans, my LinkedIn connections and my Twitter followers, I have over 6,000 potential information sources to monitor. That would be totally impossible to do, even if that was the only thing I did every day.

NutshellMail gives me the ability to get “digests” of the activity that matters the most to me on a schedule that I choose.

Watch the short video to get an overview of what NutshellMail can do for you:

Now go sign up at http://NutshellMail.com

Realtytechbytes.com by Jerry Kidd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.Realtytechbytes.com. Did you know that I have arranged for readers of my blog to receive licensed software for free? And that there is something new everyday? Click on the link to go to the blog and look for Give Away of the day in the sidebar.

Staying on top of your social networks in a nutshell

Free Google service puts you on the map!

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 03:00:51 +0000

I’ll bet that you know that 90% of home buyers use the Internet at some point during their home buying process. (Source: NAR’s 2009 Survey of Home Buyers and Sellers).

But, did you know that Google can put your business on the “map” for free?

Here’s how to take advantage of this Free service from Google:

Open your browser and navigate to http://budurl.com/LocalBizCtr
Create a Google Account if you don’t already have one
If you have an account, Log In
You will be taken to a page where you can fill in the necessary information about your business (Hint: As a real estate agent you ARE a business)
You can upload pictures and videos. (The videos have to be on YouTube first).

When you are finished, Google will want to verify that you are the owner of the business by calling you and giving you a PIN number (Or Snail mailing the PIN number). Once you enter the pin, you are good to go!

Watch this short video for a quick overview.

The video uses a restaurant as the example, but think about the ways that a real estate agent could use this. Why not put your vitual tours on YouTube and then bring them back into your Local Business Center listing?

backupify your social content

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:00:37 +0000

I had a minor disaster at my casa last week in which I lost all access to a VMWare Fusion Windows XP machine. Fortunately it was quickly resolved by using a backup. That started me thinking about what I have that is NOT backed up.

All of my computers use backup drives that are physically connected to my computer. They run continuous backups and are available to move my data to another machine if I need to do so. Or, they can be used to restore missing or corrupt data.

I also use MozyHome as another way to back up data. So in theory I am covered, right?

Not so quick. What about my social sites like Twitter and Facebook? It turns out that I have not been backing those up. What if my account at either site got trashed or even worse, cancelled? How could I recover my friends lists or pictures or the content that I have posted?

To put that in perspective, at Twitter I am following over 4500 people and over 4300 are following me. Trying to restore those lists without having a back up file would be impossible. The same holds true for my Facebook account where I have over 600 friends, many Notes, a few pictures and so on.

In my research to solve this problem I ran across a service that I am using and thought that you might like to know about it too.

This is a cloud based backup service that will use your login information to go to your Twitter, Google Docs, WordPress, GMail, Facebook, Zoho, Delicious, Flickr, Basecamp or Photobucket accounts and perform daily or weekly backups of your data.

The service acts as backup program and does not actually store your data on their servers. Instead, the data is stored on the Amazon S3 Web Services Cloud, which in my opinion was a really smart move on their part. To understand why I say this, click here to read more about Amazon S3 web services.

You can also download your data to your local computer once it has been backed up. This now gives you 3 copies of your data. The original is on Twitter, Facebook, etc. But, you also have a copy on the S3 cloud and the one on your hard drive. The chance of all three failing at once are very, very small.

Finally, until January 31st, you can get an account for free. Hmmm, sounds like a good deal to me. Better click on the backupify logo in this post or just click http://www.backupify.com and sign up.

About the Author: Jerry is a 23 year veteran of the real estate industry and has done it all from listing and selling, to managing single and multiple offices. He has been the IT Director for a major SF Bay Area company, and has also been the Training Director for another major SF Bay Area company. In addition to writing this blog, Jerry is the Principal of Jerry Kidd Training and Consulting, specializing in showing real estate professionals how to utilize today’s exciting social tools to create and nurture relationships with home buyers and sellers. Visit http://www.JerryKidd.com to learn more about the training and consulting services offered.

Last minute shopping for you!

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 03:00:50 +0000

Got your shopping done yet? Most people I talk to have gotten theirs done or most of the way done. But, when I ask them what they got for themselves I get a blank look. Apparently nobody thinks that they should get themselves a gift. Well, let me offer a suggestion. Go get yourself a gift! After all, haven’t you been nice this year? I’ll even go so far as to make a suggestion: Give your self the gift of never having to use a fax machine again! Imagine if you could send a fax with the press of a button and not have to wait around to see if it got delivered. And imagine if faxes that were sent to you always got delivered with all of the pages intact and readable. It’s all possible if you follow my suggestions below.

To start with, go sign up for MyFax for $10.00 a month. MyFax® is an award-winning Internet fax service that lets you send and receive faxes through your email. MyFax provides exceptional value, a great low monthly price, and 24/7 customer support. And, although there are others providing a similar service, it’s the one that I use and therefore recommend.

Although MyFax will let you send any document that is already on your hard drive, what about documents that are in paper form? Wouldn’t you need a fax machine to send them? Nope. Not if you have a scanner. Again, there are any to choose from, but the Fujitsu ScanSnap series is the one all the rest try to beat. And can’t.

The ScanSnap comes in a version for Windows and a version for Mac. There are desktop models and portable models to choose from. The desktop models come with Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Standard which allows the scanner to save scanned documents as Adobe PDF files. All models come with Rack2Filer software which simplifies document management. The Fujitsu web site is offering a free carrying case for the Windows version of the portable scanner and a $50.00 rebate on the Windows Desktop and Mac desktop and portable versions.

So, if you’ve got MyFax and one of the ScanSnaps you won’t need to ever use a fax machine again. A side benefit is that any thing that you ScanSnap and fax will arrive looking as good as the original copy. No more messy faxes coming from you.

So, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Winter Solstice and whatever other holiday you may be celebrating! Be sure to include yourself on your gift list and get one of these. It will change the way you do business for the better. (I own 4 of these devices and have them at home, at my office, in my briefcase and at my wife’s office and have been a MyFax customer for years, so I am speaking to you from experience and as a satisfied customer)

For your convenience you can visit my Amazon Store so you can purchase the ScanSnap. You may be able to get a better price by shopping around. I’ve also provided a link to MyFax (above) for your convenience.