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Take a look back at the first cell phones and see how fast the technology has developed! At what point in this video does your first phone appear?
GPS technology lets buyers search real estate listings from any cell phone.
Out of Southern Arizona, AZBiz.com breaks the news about Kent Simpson’s branded mobile real estate search – a new tool for the Tucson area that shows all homes for sale and works on any phone! Simpson of TucsonKent Real Estate Group recently partnered with Smarter Agent and is the first REALTOR® to bring this technology to the area. “I started this because mobile is the future. People are depending more on their phones to access the Internet to get information on the fly. I wanted to be ahead of the curve.” Simpson’s clients and prospects can use his app to see all listings based on GPS location, address city or zip code. The “Call to See” feature will connect the user to Simpson, regardless of who listed the property. Simpson says he has clients in Massachusetts and Colorado using his app to search for properties in the Tucson area. To download Kent Simpson’s mobile app, text: TKREAL to: 87778 or go to his website to read more.
Spring Cleaning for your Business – REALTOR® Magazine, March 2010 Edition
Our partner Scott Nelson with Wolfson Cutler Real Estate in Medford, Mass. explained to REALTOR® Magazine that his spring cleaning means taking a new approach to marketing. He discovered that most of his clients are college-educated women between the ages of 27-53. He recently started a real estate radio show for an online network called Diva Toolbox. It airs on BlogTalkRadio and is available on his website through iTunes. He also launched his own branded mobile real estate app powered by Smarter Agent for his tech-savvy clients. Read more “Spring Cleaning” tips. Anyone interested in seeing all homes for sale in the Greater Boston area can text:SCOTTN to: 87778 to get Scott’s app.
Customize your Facebook Profile or Fan Page with Smarter Agent
MyTechOpinion.com announced the launch of a branded badge and tab Smarter Agent created for our clients’ Facebook pages. 
Now anyone who has a Smarter Agent text code, which is how clients download an agent’s app, can input that same text code into an application Smarter Agent created for the Facebook platform to display a branded badge and tab for all their Facebook friends to see. It works for the profile page or a fan page. The badge will display your name, logo, brokerage and text code for your mobile app, and the “Real Estate” tab will provide more details. Your friends can also display the information on their profile or fan page to help spread the word. Read more,
Mobile MLS Listings — Smarter Agent
Smarter Agent met Tech Savvy Agent at the Keller Williams Family Reunion show in New Orleans last week. It’s no surprise that Tech Savvy Agent totally gets what Smarter Agent’s mobile app is all about. “I must say….Smarter Agent has something going here with their mobile MLS listing application which gives agents the ability to give away a branded mobile app for their consumers!” Watch the interview at www.techsavvyagent.com.
Valentine’s Day is this weekend–did it slip your mind? 
Well to start, “Datepedia Holidays and More” for BlackBerry is the perfect app for those who have trouble remembering holidays, birthdays and anniversaries. This app can help you avoid the dog house by simply adding important dates to your BlackBerry calendar, which will alert you.
Still haven’t booked a reservation yet? You’re running out of time. See what’s still available with Open Table.
Or, maybe you’re the type who wants to stay in and prepare a nice dinner for two. Healthy Recipes has more than 200,000 meals to choose from!
Sprint is also touting a bunch of useful Valentine’s apps for Android, Palm WebOS and BlackBerry devices. First, for the HTC Hero and Samsung Moment, Sprint offers the “1-800-Flowers Mobile Gift Center” app to send flowers and gifts. An Etsy Browser for Palm Pre and Palm Pixi lets users view handmade jewelry, clothing or accessories. And the Godiva Chocolatier app available in App World lets you order Godiva chocolates and other gifts right from your BlackBerry. These apps help simplify the searching and ordering process making it possible to do right from your cell phone–but it’s still up to you to place the order on time!
For all the single men and women out there who need help making that first impression, find your next pick up line with one of these apps. NOTE: We have not tested these apps nor any of the pick up lines contained within, so we want to warn you that the use of these apps could lead to a lot of snubs or worse…a slap across the face. Proceed with caution.
To our knowledge, a love potion app does not exist yet. But who knows, by the time we post this blog it could be in one of the app stores. We hope some of these suggestions help alleviate some of the stress this Valentine’s Day!
Congratulations to Russie Weidl of Watson Realty Corp. for being named the #1 Watson Realtor of Central Florida. A press release announcing Russie’s award stated, “Russie’s current and future customers are always number one. She looks for new and unique ways to serve them. In August 2009 Russie added a “Real Estate Finder Tool” for the Cell Phone to her website. This tool simplifies the search for homes in Lake Mary and the surrounding region through Homes for Sale, a new patented mobile application powered by Smarter Agent.” Russie attributes her success during the tough economy to perseverance, plain hard work and learning new skills and ideas through training courses. If you’re looking for homes in Russie’s neck of the woods, see how to send her mobile app to your cell phone by clicking here, and you’ll have access to all MLS listings.
Coffee and house-hunting anyone? This image shows people using Smarter Agent’s mobile app between 8 and 8:15 a.m. EST this morning. That’s 5 a.m. for those people searching in California–now those are some serious homebuyers, or just morning people. This is just a fraction of the searches conducted using Smarter Agent. Make these homebuyers your clients, and give them a mobile app so they can search with your branded app at 8 a.m. or 5 a.m. or anytime they want! So wake up and smell the coffee–mobile is here to stay, and Smarter Agent is here to help connect you to a mobile generation of homebuyers.
What do President Obama, The Philadelphia Flyers, Emergency relief for Haiti, Punxsutawney Phil and Smarter Agent’s mobile real estate search have in common?
Texting.
Each use a text message and text code to disseminate information as quickly and as easily as possible to reach people on the one device they have with them at all times.
President Obama announced his vice presidential candidate via text message. The Flyers, like most sports teams, have a text code on game tickets to receive team alerts on your cell. Smarter Agent gives every agent or broker that signs up for his/her own mobile real estate application a personalized text code as an easy way for anyone to download the house-hunting app to their cell phone. This year, even 
Punxsutawney Phil-America’s most famous groundhog-will send out a text message declaring whether spring is around the corner or if we’ll have 6 more weeks of winter. Yes, even a groundhog can text!
On a much, much more serious note, the Red Cross has already raised more than $22,000,000 and counting for Haiti through a text message campaign. If you text: Haiti to: 90999 you can send a $10 donation to the Red Cross–it’s backed by the U.S. State Department. This campaign has been so successful because anyone moved by the images they see on TV of the devastation in Haiti can easily grab their cell phone, punch a few keys, and make a donation to help a country in need. Sure, people who want to donate can go to their computer, too, but they most likely have their cell phone in their back pocket or bag and can make the donation at that very moment. People are texting the code to other friends, tweeting about it, publishing the text code as their Facebook status and spreading the word in many other ways. This simple text message strategy is a powerful way to inspire anyone with a cell phone to act instantaneously.
There are thousands of examples like this out there, and they range from goofy updates from a groundhog to courageous calls to action.
Texting is the new alert system; the new fundraiser system; the new instant-information system. Time to get with it.
Who: Innovators in real estate, social media and technology
What: Educational sessions, discussions, debates, start-up debuts, demos and so much more packed into a 2-day conference
Where: NYC
When: Jan. 13-15
Don’t Miss: Smarter Agent’s President Eric Blumberg speak Wednesday January 13th at 9:20 am on the panel, “Marketing on the Small Screen: Understand the Mobile Platform Better than Your Competition” along with Matt Goyer of Redfin and Matt Snyder of Zumobi.
Visit Smarter Agent at demo pod D20 to see the latest in mobile real estate apps. Chat with sa_stormy live at the conference on Twitter!
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For the latest gadgets and technology, check out the “Cool Tools” section in the January issue of REALTOR® Magazine. See a familiar app on page 10? That’s right, Smarter Agent made the list- a marketing solution for the mobile age! If you don’t have the magazine, check out “Cool Tools” online http://www.realtor.org/realtormag. |
It all started when Smarter Agent’s Jen Levine (@sa_jen) entered a contest on Twitter to win a free video produced by TurnHere. A few weeks later, she received an email that she had won, and the battle over who had to step in front of the camera was on! Jen and I couldn’t get ourselves out of it, so to help us out we decided to give our friend and faithful client John Lauber (@johnlauber) a call, and we asked him to make a celebrity appearance and talk about his branded mobile app powered by Smarter Agent. He even provided the shoot location–Thanks, John!
The process of setting up our shoot date was a breeze. The emails walked me through every step, and when I needed to change the date (because I didn’t factor in time to recoup from NAR), it was no big deal for TurnHere to reschedule the shoot for another week. TurnHere set us up with freelancers from Reel Stuff Entertainment in Cherry Hill, NJ. They were a blast to work with and kept us from getting nervous when the camera was rolling. When the camera was off, they were really curious about our mobile real estate app, which is always awesome! The shoot went by so fast, and we had a lot of fun. On the way back to the office, of course, I was thinking about all the lines I had probably messed up.
Within a week, we had our video to review. We requested a few minor revisions, which was easy to do using TurnHere’s automated system. After the updates were made, we gave our approval and received the embed code in no time. Now, this may be obvious to many of you, but when I attempted to paste the embed code into WordPress it didn’t work because I neglected to first paste it in a program like Notepad to strip out any special characters or formatting Outlook may have thrown in. Our intern Nick realized what I was doing wrong and saved the day again! So here it is-perfectly embedded for all to see. Thanks to everyone who made this video possible!
In less than 24 hours, Real Estate Powered by Smarter Agent surpassed 5,000 unique downloads on BlackBerry devices. Yesterday, our app debuted as a featured application in BlackBerry App World and is still currently displayed in the first position of the carousel of featured apps. Thank you to Research in Motion for giving our app such a coveted spot and to all of the BlackBerry users out there who downloaded our free mobile real estate search. If you don’t have Smarter Agent’s 3-in-1 real estate app on your BlackBerry yet, click here for download instructions from App World. Once you have Smarter Agent on your BB, you can see homes for sale, recently sold homes and rentals at the touch of a button, using your phone’s GPS capabilities to pinpoint your location and pull up market information in your immediate area.
In addition to the 5,000 and counting BlackBerry downloads, we saw an increase in downloads on devices across all carriers. No matter what phone or carrier you have, text ‘SA’ to 87778 to download Smarter Agent to your cell phone.
Our awesome team of developers is constantly improving upon Smarter Agent’s premiere app for every cell phone. The latest version of our iPhone app is in its final stage of testing and includes some great new features that take advantage of the iPhone’s capabilities to the fullest extent. More details to come!
