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In defense of common decency – and why stealing will cost you more in the end

Inna Hardison — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:02:32 +0000

One of the reviews for Deborah Griffin, Scottsdale AZ Realtor reads:

HONEST & LOYAL: I found Deborah to be very focused, results-oriented, and a person that demonstrates a great work ethic. She is a highly motivated individual, remarkably intelligent, honest and loyal. I would highly recommend anyone the opportunity to work with her…[emphasis mine]

What if I told you that it appears Deborah Griffin is a common thief, of the worst variety? One who not only tries to profit from another’s labor, but one who has no problem stealing from people she knows, intimately…

As most of you know, ha media builds custom sites for real estate professionals for a living, among other things. Everything we design is done for that specific client, one a time. The clients who hire us want to stand out. They want their marketing to look and feel like them alone. That’s what we promise and that’s what we deliver.

One of these clients is an agent in Fountain Hills, AZ, Patti Irwin. About a year ago we released her brand new site, http://realestatefountainhills.com, a custom responsive design with IDX Broker integration. Here are a few screenshots for the curious:

Two days ago we ran across this site belonging to Deborah Griffin: http://coolscottsdalehomesforsale.com, which, according to Google, was published on March 15th of this year.

Here are a few screenshots of Deborah’s site.

Ms Griffin went so far as to copy not only every tool we used in building Patti’s site (including custom settings for those tools, such as custom fields we used in the WP Reviews plugin), but she blatantly stole every element, down to the price breakdowns of custom search links and their naming conventions, the entirety of the navigation, form, layout, meta titles and descriptions and pretty much everything else she and or her designer could figure out how to steal. You’d think that if one was trying to steal a website in its entirety, they would not be quite so brazen and, at the very least, would create their own background image. But even here, the photo of the cactus that our client took was appropriated, albeit lazily, into the background of Deborah Griffin’s website. As if it was so hard to take photos of cactus in Arizona…

Whenever a conversation about stolen designs, images or content takes place, the advice dished out tends to revolve around pursuing legal avenues for getting the stolen content removed. There is nothing wrong with that, and it is in some cases advisable to send a C&D to the offending party and maybe even file a DMCA with the hosting provider, or sue for monetary compensation. While in most cases the offending party will indeed comply and remove the stolen work, we don’t believe that to be a sufficient lesson, nor does it do much to protect service providers like us and our clients from future theft.

So with that in mind, we believe that every creative professional has the RIGHT to protect their work from being stolen and that every client who retains the services of a creative professional to design something that will be UNIQUE to them, has the right to protect and defend the assets they had paid for.

We charge a lot of money for what we do for our clients, commensurate with the time and effort we spend on each project precisely because at the end of the day our clients will have something that nobody else has. What Deborah has done here was not just an insult to Patti, but it is injurious to the survival of businesses like ours. It dilutes the value of the work that we do.

If anyone reading this finds it tempting to appropriate any of our work for their benefit, we will find out, and we will out you publicly. If you happen to sell real estate for a living and you choose to steal content, images or design from anyone, you will be branded as a thief, and…

I have yet to meet a consumer who’d want a thief to handle their most important financial transaction or a broker who would knowingly hire one.

I’m sure some of you will tell me that I should have handled this differently. That I should have maybe started with a phone call to Deborah Griffin or a nice email, followed by a C&D and on and on, all in an attempt to have our stolen work removed from the internet. I don’t think that would be fair to me, or to my client. You see, I believe that putting any undue burden on the injured party is insane. I think that the only person who should feel any discomfort, and hopefully, shame, should be the guilty party.

Some of you might also try to suggest that maybe Deborah Griffin simply hired a designer to build a website for her and was unaware that the site was pretty much a direct thievery of an existing site that we built for Patti. I am pretty certain that this will indeed be the defense that Deborah Griffin employs, should she run across this post, but it doesn’t wash for me. Deborah knows Patti. They work in the same office, and as recently as a year ago, they were talking about designing their sites and sharing ideas and such. They were friends.

This makes this incident even more disgusting in my eyes. And it makes my heart ache for the hurt my client must be feeling. This isn’t about the money. It’s about that very basic line of decency that should never be crossed, certainly not by members of the Real Estate profession, the ones who subscribe to a Code of Ethics that is supposed to make consumers trust in their honesty and integrity. I read the review of Deborah Griffin today that is copied at the beginning of this piece, and the two words: “honesty and loyalty” made me sick to my stomach.

Honesty and loyalty indeed. Et Tu, Brute

(Note: If you are reading this post days or months after its publication and the offending site content has changed or was removed, know that the offense has happened, and this post simply being an account of said offense, shall remain, no matter what course of action Deborah Griffin takes.)

UPDATE 1, May 1st, 2013: Prompted by the DMCA notice from the hosting provider, Deborah removed the cactus picture. Sadly, nothing else has been changed on the site, nor has there been an apology to our client.

UPDATE 2, May 2nd, 12:15 a.m.: HostGator suspended Deborah Griffin’s site, after receiving multiple DMCA notices. We’ll keep an eye on it to see if Deborah realizes the errors of her ways and builds or purchases a website that doesn’t infringe on anyone’s rights, or simply chooses to move the site to a different hosting provider. Thanks for reading, all, and the many comments here and elsewhere on the net.

Apple’s Fall From Grace – Go Hack Yourself!

Jon Hardison — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:04:24 +0000

There are almost no viruses for Mac and Apple has done a great job protecting their users from many of the vulnerabilities that plague other platforms, but what if I told you that anyone, including your 10 year old, could take complete control of your computer in under 1 minute if they’re sitting in front of it? What if I told you that simply losing your laptop could expose all the client data you have on that computer?

When we first started working in Real Estate there were almost no Macs. MLSs didn’t support them, so as badly as most wanted to throw their PC out the Window (ha ha) Apple simply wasn’t an option. But now, you can’t pass two desks in your average Real Estate Office and not find one Mac. As it turns out, this isn’t a good thing. Here’s why:

We’ll just walk you through the process so you can see how easy it is, or even hack yourself.

Warning! Doing this on OS 10.6.4 or less has been known to cause crashes.

Shut down your Mac.
While the Mac is booting, hold down command+s. You’ll boot to a prompt.
Type “mount -uw /” without the quotes and hit enter.
Type “rm /var/db/.applesetupdone” without the quotes and hit enter.
Type “shutdown -h now” without the quotes and hit enter. Your Mac will shut down.

You’ve just told your Mac that it’s new and that it should go through the initial setup again, as if it were just taken out of the box. The problem is that when you’re done with the guided setup of your “new Mac” you will have created a new Admin account. An Admin account you can use to reset the password on your old admin account, to turn off parental controls on any account on the Mac, or to access any files on the system.

Watch how it’s done by a 12 year old…

Once you’ve reset passwords in other accounts, you can log into them with the same access, opening browsers and using saved passwords, pulling up client information, contracts, personal information — THE WORKS! The ONLY thing anyone needs to access everything on your Mac, including private emails, contracts, documents, addresses, and those naughty photos you should never have taken, is simply physical access to your computer. That’s it.

I contacted Apple Support about this today. Their response: “There is nothing you can do to resolve this. We recommend keeping a very close eye on your computer and the child that’s using it.”
This isn’t new information, but it will be a surprise to many of you.

I’m writing this post on the last PC in our office. I guess I can now say it’s our first PC. Security of this type is less of an issue for us because we don’t maintain access to our client’s private data, but still… We can not justify purchasing another Mac unless this is fixed.

Test it if you like (but we don’t really recommend it). Call Apple and tell them how you feel about it. Personally, I think this is a deal breaker.
If your clients knew this (which they will shortly) do you think they’d give you one once of personal information with the glowing Apple logo on your desk? I wouldn’t!

(God I hope they do something about this.)

In the meantime, here are some things that might help Mac users address the issue of sensitive data on their Macs.

Is there a way to secure files I keep on my Mac?
Free Encryption options: http://mobileoffice.about.com/od/mobilesecurity/ss/how-to-encrypt-files-with-TrueCrypt.htmAnother solution for Laptop users would be to use an external hard drive and store all your sensitive data their, making sure to secure it when it’s not in use, but it too will be accessible if found by someone that wishes to access the data on it.

Is the same thing possible on my Windows computer?
The short answer is yes, but it is NOT easy and it does NOT take a few seconds to do. And depending on the setup windows version and setup, having a working admin account on a Windows machine does NOT allow access to other user files on the same system.

Diverse Solutions IDX Security Issue

Language of sales – the date rape drug of business

Inna Hardison — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:05:34 +0000

Recently, I ran across quite a few conversations about use of language and body movements/positions in order to achieve success in sales, including real estate, or dating, or life.

The basic concept behind these coaching methods is reprogramming of one’s brain (and all that goes with it) in order to fulfill some goal, whether getting a sale or that girl who is entirely out of one’s league. The premises behind these vary slightly, but all seem to be predicated on the idea that there is such a thing as an ideal person, ideal sales professional, ideal date, et. al., and that one can successfully impose their own wishes and reality on another person at will. Most tend to also be based on a belief that even talent and genius can be successfully emulated, if only one follows certain rules.

In a nutshell, by following such training, one can accomplish virtually anything in any situation, from dropping bad habits to winning a sale.

The methods one has to follow to achieve such success range from mirroring the tonality and speed of the prospect’s speech to matching their body posture to specific sets of words in a specific order to use in conversation in order to get to the desired outcome, i.e. a sale, a signature on a piece of paper, a date. The techniques all go to how to sound curious and excited and interested in the person on the other side of the conversation, which will lower their defenses and allow you to do your magic and close the deal.

Rumor has it such tactics actually yield results. Rumor has it anyone can learn to use these techniques and the prospect will be non-the-wiser, if the practitioner is any good. Some money and a bit of time is all it takes to master these…

Mind Control with Derren Brown – NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) from chewisniewski on Vimeo. [note: Darren Brown has disavowed any affiliation with NLP on multiple occasions, but still, this happens to be one of the most often cited examples of its use]

This is how one of the coaches describes such a course for real estate professionals, and I quote: “NLP is a six-month intensive program that teaches you the words, phrases and patterns that people use to interpret reality. Using this new language, you will dissolve your client’s reality before their eyes and create a new one instantly.” [name of coach redacted]

So let’s assume for a moment that it is possible. That you can indeed successfully modify the reality of any given situation to suit your needs, and control the outcome of any given conversation. Now apply it to the business of helping someone buy or sell a home. Would you do it?

I’m lucky to have been born too cynical to think that this stuff would work on me personally, so I don’t feel in danger of inadvertently allowing my subconscious to make any huge decision for me. If I were selling my home, I would demand to see all the marketing that the agent has done for properties like mine or in my hood. I’d ask a million questions which an agent would actually have to be able to answer intelligently, where the pretense of listening to me would be decidedly insufficient. But I’m also integrally involved in the real estate space in my business and so my expectations and knowledge of the industry are different from a real estate virgin. In my research, most consumers genuinely believe that real estate agents are interchangeable and that they provide similar service for similar compensation.

So what is such a consumer to do when subjected to some new-fangled bit of manipulation? How are they supposed to even recognize that every question a person on the other side of the conversation asks them is designed to elicit a specific response or is simply a step in building momentum to the “big yes”, the signature on a piece of paper?

I’m struggling with reconciling any of this with the definition of that very fiduciary duty agents supposedly have to their principals. But more importantly, I think the very idea that in order to succeed in this business (or any business for that matter) a person needs to shed the very things that make them unique and human and magical. That anyone must emulate or imitate or appear to be someone that they are not. That people are more likely to hire someone who is (or sounds) like them, has similar speech patterns, body movements, et. al.

I’d like to hope that as a species we have evolved past the stage where individuality was frowned on and people were looked at as belonging to particular types or personalities. I’d like to think that my friends in real and social life are entirely unlike me and that’s the very thing that makes them special to me. The very things that makes me like them are their authenticity, their quirks, the strange things they do and like, their passions, their unique to them speech patterns… In business relationships, I’d opt to hire someone who is simply very good at the thing that I need done, and who is not trying to be someone else. I inherently distrust people who attempt to be liked by everybody or who try to get everyone’s business. Not everyone will enjoy working with me, in fact, I am pretty certain that if I hired someone while manipulated by that nifty training, the experience would suck, theirs and mine, start to finish.

At the end of the day if we are good at whatever it is we do, and we are not trying to be everything to all people, I think we’ll get the clients that we actually deserve to get. If you are not getting enough business to keep going, maybe it’s time to consider getting better at the actual business of serving your clients, or maybe you were simply not meant to do the thing that you are doing. And that, too, is ok. But with all things being equal, wouldn’t it be better to win business because someone truly, genuinely wants you to be the one to help them?

And in my experience, an added bonus to actually giving a shit about the person on the other end of any conversation instead of calculating the next step or re-metering your speech patters is that you get to discover some amazing people, and some incredible stories that stick with you. With the exception of sociopaths, we are all endowed with empathy. We are all inherently capable of relating to another human being, and that’s where the magic happens. That’s the language of human relationships, no tricks or pretenses required. I hope we are all better than some shepherds will have us believe. I hope we can recognize something as just plain wrong and choose not to cross that line. Hell, at this point, I hope we can even see the line…

Parallax Scrolling – Really? Do we have to?

Jon Hardison — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 21:47:47 +0000

I bowed out of most of the various technology for real estate groups some two weeks ago, fearing that I was getting caught up on the wrong side of many issues relating to the creative side of design and tech for Real Estate. My learless feeder, despite all my great arguments, chose to stay and today hit me in the face with what, for the sake of this post, I’m going to call the next big shiny new object.

Like a parent hard at work when their child exclaims, “Oh My God You’ve GOT to See This!” – All I’m thinking is, “Oh for #uc% sake, what is it now?!?!?” And sure enough web-minded real estate folks have found a new toy. A new way to complicate their lives. A new weapon in their never-ending arms race. Parallax Scrolling.

Parallax scrolling isn’t new. In fact, it’s been around quite literally for ever. It was first discovered by the first child to ride a train and look out at the moon in the evening sky and wonder, “why is everything but the moon moving? Is it following me?”. Disney used it by paining backgrounds in layers on clear plastic, moving them at different rates to give the impression of depth. Super Mario Brothers? Yeah, that was basically Parallax too. It was what the first film printers, back in the days of Star Wars, spent most of their time doing. And a few years ago it found its way to the web.

Before I really get started on this, I want to be clear. Parallax is cool. Very cool! And since it landed on the web a lot of amazing and useful things have been done with it. I’m in no way against it and believe it IS a useful and effective addition to the web. I don’t, however, think it should be used for cool and nothing more.

Examples of Bad or Useless Parallax Utilization:

Green Splash Web Design – This is actually a very cool firm. The only reason they’re here is that Parallax isn’t really adding anything to this design. It’s “cool for the sake of cool”.

NH Hotels – This site might be awesome? I wouldn’t know because I got a little sick after just two scrolls. This is a great example of NOT thinking about your users.

Muffi – I don’t know what the hell is this. – “Just cuz you can doesn’t mean you should”, comes to mind.

Great Examples of Parallax Utilization:

Whiteboard.is – Very cool! Not over done. Parallax supports this company’s goals very well, illustrating their point beautifully.

Peugeot – Kind of a cool idea and goes to what I was saying.

TooYoungToWed – Simple. Beautiful. (Heartbreaking!) And a good example of an ideal use of Parallax.

Clearly, the web introduced all sorts of new ideas and capabilities to this old idea, adding many layers of possibilities (programmable-ness). You can make it do all sort of crazy and amazing things. But there’s also a lot it can’t do. Scrolling of any kind is linear. So if you’re thinking of having a 100% Parallax driven real estate site I can promise you two things. 1) Your visitors will be absolutely amazed at your new site, and 2) They’ll get pissed and leave.

I actually find it amazing that this is even being talked about right now. Every guru, every marketer and every consumer has spend the better part of the past 5 years pushing for shorter paths to resources, more direct messages and in many cases fewer bells and whistles. Remember Flash and how for almost a decade every site you went to had a useless opening animation you had to sit through before you could do what you wanted or get to what you needed? This threatens to be Flash all over again.
And let’s be real: Flash didn’t die because of Apple or changes in the tech. It died because people simply don’t have time for this crap. Overuse of Parallax will produce the same result, not to mention that like Flash, so much of what will find its way onto unsuspecting sites will probably suck.

All that said, there are GREAT ways Real Estate can use Parallax to get ahead of the digital curve, the best of which (IMHO) is in telling stories. I can see Parallax being an incredible way to interact with web users, provided they know what they’re getting when they navigate to it. As an alternative to video, I think it could ROCK! As a new way of presenting data — a sort of info-graphic 2.0 if you will. There’s a lot of room for extremely wide acceptance of the Parallax method in the Real Estate space. I just hope we keep a leash on this monster and don’t use it to make the same old mistakes.

Be well my friends.

Why Real Estate TV Ads Miss Their Mark

Jon Hardison — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 01:35:19 +0000

I know… This type of post is usually reserved for Inna, but this time I’ve got to speak up.

Century21 ran four spots during the Super Bowl (here is one) this year and they’ve been the topic of conversation in Facebook’s various Real Estate marketing groups. If I had to sum up the reaction from most Realtors® I’d say it was luke warm with a few liking their “tech forward” representation of Real Estate Professionals while most others either didn’t notice the spots or simply did not like them. Some cite them as a vast improvement over last year’s Real Estate Super Bowl ad that I hear featured unicorns or some gimmicky equivalent.

I hated the ads. Yep, I said “hated”. It’s not because most seemed unfriendly to one group or another or because my 12 year old could have probably shot them better. It’s because these ads committed the same wrongs we’ve watched play out in industry advertising for decades — choosing cheap jokes, pretty pictures and soothing voices to illustrate its self importance. So I’m going to take a step back for a moment and acknowledge a great ad to explain what I mean.

You already know what I’m going to say…

Dodge’s “So God Made a Farmer” ad was brilliant! (If you haven’t see it, watch it right now!)

Dodge managed to hit stop in the middle of the super bowl and take us on a passionate trip. It wasn’t a trip to learn why they’re so great or a journey to discover why they have a superior product. They showed us WHY they do what they do. They connected us to why they believe their product to be so important and gave an abundantly respectful, 3.8 million dollar nod of acknowledgement to those they serve, and in so doing pledged to do more, and do it better, for longer and for less because they know who their customer is, and they know that that customer truly needs what they’re selling.

Dodge paid their respects to this important part of America. They thanked them. But they didn’t dishonor them by doing it badly, no. They chose their words and imagery carefully, saying nothing about themselves. It was pure, liquid good will and as far from a Farmer as I am, even I could appreciate the gesture.

Now back to reality. The average farmer has many trucks, and while they surely want a good one, the choice of which one they buy will rarely make or break what they do.

Here’s what infuriates me about these Real Estate Ads

Let’s talk about the realities of a Real Estate transaction. I know, I know… As licensees most of you know more about it that I ever could, right? I call BULLSHIT!
Real Estate transactions don’t start when a couple drive up to the Real Estate office in their two year old Camery, five months pregnant. Here’s where they start:

They start the moment two people look into each other’s eyes and realize they want to spend the rest of their lives together.
They start the moment that just-granduated-college kid starts thinking about his future and realizes what a financial mess he’d left in his past.
They start when we finally get that promotion we’ve been working toward for a decade.
They start with the cursed blessing of the loss of a loved one that gives us that little financial bump we need to even be able to think about it.
They start with the birth of a child, the needs of an aging parent, the desire for a garden and so many other things.

Sure, that transaction starts for you when they click that “I want more information about this house” button on your website, but most of us have been working toward this moment for our entire lives. Fixing things, then breaking them and fixing them again… Loving and losing and laughing and crying and working and pushing and not sleeping (…breath…) not for the god damned home, but to build a life for ourselves that demands and deserves one!

So, when you look at it from your client’s perspective, you are sorta the last part of it, aren’t you? Most people know how important a Real Estate Professional should be. They know they’re better protected for having one. They know it should make the process go more smoothly. They know all these things.

The only people that don’t seem to know how important a Real Estate Professional is are, well, Real Estate Professionals.

So next time your brokerage wants to make a joke about what you do… Next time the NAR wants to reduce the catalyst for the purchase of a home to “your kids will be smarter”… The next time anyone makes light of the seriousness of the role you play in people’s lives…

PLEASE TELL THEM TO STFU!
You just don’t need this kind of help.

Sincerely, and respectfully,
Jon C. Hardison-
ha media group | Hardison & Associates, LLC.
Marketers of Real Estate Professionals who get it…

I’d rather be poked with a pitchfork than be told to shut the hell up…

Inna Hardison — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 20:42:17 +0000

I spend quite a bit of my time digging through various groups and forums that deal with real estate in my efforts to keep abreast of current goings on, sentiments, et al. It’s my way of staying on top of my game as a marketer with a lot of real estate agent and brokerage clients. As is to be expected, some discussions get rather heated, and our egos and tempers occasionally get the better of us. I’m as guilty of this as the next guy or gal, or likely more so than most, but… even in the midst of a really heated debate, I can’t imagine winning an argument by telling someone who disagrees with my point of view to take a hike, for any reason, or that they need to meet some professional or educational requirements in order to be entitled to an opinion.

For years now I’ve been fighting the prevailing sentiments that all vendors suck, or slightly more nuanced interpretations of the same. For years we are being told that unless we make our living by transacting real estate, we should refrain from voicing our opinions on the state of the industry on a whole or on any specifics, less maybe those that pertain to what we do. I’m sick to death of hearing that we are not qualified to judge or opine because we don’t know what it’s like to sell real estate day in and day out. The latest blowup revolved around a rather eloquent post by Marc Davison of 1000Watt Consulting>> where Marc provided an account of one of his friends’ real estate experience gone wrong as a segue into a plea to help make the industry better.

I am not surprised to see that some people got offended at what they perceived as some broad brush strokes, but I am surprised and offended at the anger directed at what amounts to as a messenger in this case. Without quoting everyone from the thread in question>>, which you can click through easily enough, the overwhelming sentiment among the shallow readers seemed to be that one, especially an outsider, should not criticize the industry. We should all instead engage in collective peace pipe smoking or some other kumbuya alternative.

And of course the oft voiced refrain that as vendors who are “fed” by the real estate industry, we should all tuck our tails between our legs or risk losing our shirts.

I am one of those vendors. I am also a consumer and a marketer. Part of my job is to try to see the world from as many different perspectives as I can get my virtual hands on. I spend the majority of my time predicting people’s future reactions to the messages and collateral that we create. This applies to any responsible marketer (or should). That’s just what we do. That’s what Marc does. That, in fact, should be the reason that people hire an ad agency or a marketing company in the first place. In all the other industries we’ve ever worked with, it seemed to be understood that consumer opinion was not only important but imperative to the success of their campaigns, and to the success and reputation of their business. When Dominos chose to face the criticisms head on, they earned a ton of fans in the process. They created media assets around how horrendous their old pizza was. They (humbly) but publicly apologized, and, from what I’m told, made their product better.

I would love nothing more than for this industry that we work in daily to come to terms with those consumer and outsider opinions, no matter how unpleasant. It’s easier to bury a crappy real estate transaction than a lousy pizza, of course, if only because real estate transactions for most people simply don’t occur often enough to generate consistent expectations and consequent feedback. But I’d venture a theory that precisely because real estate purchases are so rare over the course of our lives, every single transaction gone wrong has a tremendous impact on the overall reputation of the industry.

I would posit that for every lazy or incompetent agent, good agents are losing money every time the former butchers the deal.

I’m told that all a consumer has to do is make sure they choose the best agents, and that should they have a bad experience, simply realize that it is their fault for not having chosen more wisely. I’d like to challenge my real estate agent and broker friends to create a list of criteria that a consumer should use in order to determine competency level of any given real estate agent. I’d like for that list to include actual resources where consumers could verify any transaction numbers, should those be part of the criteria. As it stands right now, I don’t think anything like that exists. I also know from a few previous attempts to bring such transparency to the consumers that agents were the first and loudest to fight such efforts (successfully, I might add).

Until that happens, I will loudly and publicly fight the status quo. I will stick up for people and businesses who have something important to say and for their right to say it. And I will keep staking our very reputation on the idea that if we are not passionate about the space we operate in, we have no business being in it. And that anyone who is passionate about any industry will never stop trying to improve it, which requires being willing to state the negatives wherever they exist. Anything short of that would indeed be a disservice to the industry, to our clients and most importantly – to those very consumers that we all serve.

Your thoughts?

An apology to my son for being a parent who rents…

Inna Hardison — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 16:53:03 +0000

I am sorry, my love, that you just learned that your mom and dad didn’t do right by you. I am sorry that you are now equipped with some facts which I can’t disprove, all of which paint a rather bleak picture of your life when compared to some of your friends. That you now will look at yourself as less than any kid whose parents did the right thing and purchased a home, instead of renting one.

The little girl on that NAR TV commercial is always going to be the shining example of all the things you don’t have, and all the things you’ll never be, and they have the academic research to prove it. You’ll do worse on your SATs, when it’s time for college applications, and because of that, you’ll go to a lesser school than your friends next door. You won’t be as healthy as any of the kids whose parents own the place they call home. And of course your parents won’t ever feel connected to the community they live in or give a crap about its politics. You know that last bit of course isn’t true, as you’ve seen us fight for all sorts of causes over the years, but I’ve nothing in a way of facts to show you that all the other stuff they said about you and us isn’t true either.

The commercial spot is below. It may take a second or two to load:

The NAR has a 16-page document outlining all the positives of home-ownership (and, inevitably, all the negatives of renting), drafted by a bunch of people with important sounding names and positions, where they quote from important sounding books by various economists and sociologists. And they condensed all that research into the 30-second TV spot to appeal directly to you, the kids of parents who rent. You are the one who is being addressed, and I have nothing to counter any of it with.

So I will simply apologize for choosing to pay my rent to a man I happen to know who owns this house instead of to a large anonymous entity called a bank. I’ll apologize, too, for not being one of many people in Flagler who owe at least twice on the homes they own than what they could sell them for, or the thousands who have lost their homes to foreclosure. The NAR would like you to believe that your dad and I should have made a different choice. That we should have anchored our collective destinies to a specific quarter acre lot and a specific house for the next 30 years and maybe then passed it on to you as inheritance. Of course the homes that they build here don’t tend to last 30 years, but that’s not important. You are told that there is patriotism inherent in owning a home, because it’s just better for the neighborhoods, families, country.

“Homeownership boosts the educational performance of children, induces higher participation in civic and volunteering activity, improves health care outcomes, lowers crime rates and lessens welfare dependency”
-source: http://www.realtor.org/reports/social-benefits-of-homeownership-and-stable-housing

We let you down, kiddo. And according to that very same report, you’ll likely not own your home either, and so your kids will start out with the same disadvantages of the other kids of all the renters out there. Less smart, less healthy, less capable, less happy. Just less than the pretty white blonde thing enjoying her home and her white picket fence, and board games, and happy family times that inevitably come with it…

I am sorry.

Footnote:

For a well thought out piece by one of the sharpest minds in the business, see Marc Davison’s blog on the subject at 1000WattConsulting.

If you find yourself taking offense at the above TV commercial, currently running nationally and in prime time, take the time to contact the NAR and voice your opinions. So far, outcries and complaints from Realtors, whose brand NAR is representing to the general public, hasn’t resulted in even an acknowledgement that the ad was a mistake. Maybe hearing from the consumers they were trying to target in the first place might make a difference.

Introducing Another New Responsive Site

Jon Hardison — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 07:11:05 +0000

Hi Everyone! We’re chugging away and hard at work on a great many new projects, most of which are on the web. We just thought we take a moment show off a little with one of our latest projects. Just like our last web release, this real estate website is fully mobile responsive, so there’s no separate apps to download or new interfaces to get used to. It’s just a site that, well, works on everything.

This one was developed for a client we’ve had for some time, but who has recently formed her own new Brokerage, Lisa Heindel with Crescent City Living, LLC. One of Lisa’s many strengths is ability to take amazing photos. She always captures the unexpected, the authentic, the human. So naturally, we used some of these shots to tell a story of NOLA as it is, not as tourists tend to see it. Feel free to scroll through the storyboard-style slides on the homepage (works on any device as well).

We were honored that Lisa trusted us with brand development and website design for her new baby, and we are thrilled with the direction she is going with the firm. They are all about honest, simple and authentic. We hope we helped them portray that.

Feel free to take a look around the site by visiting crescentcityliving.com. Keep in mind that she’s still working to get it populated and all, so there may be a few spots here and there that aren’t ‘perfect’, but it’s well on its way.

Thank you Lisa! We love ya…

Fully Responsive Real Estate Site – Right or wrong, it’s done!

Jon Hardison — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 23:10:35 +0000

Hi Guys:

It’s been a while since we’ve had the time to blog. Sorry for the absence, but now we’re back.

One of the reasons we were gone for so long was because we needed to make some changes. Some big changes, the biggest of which was the main tool we use to develop our sites. We’ve been using Headway for a long time, and loving it. It’s been the base of all the custom Real Estate websites we’ve done, and frankly, I don’t think we’d be where we are without them, their support and their fantastic product. But all good things…

Because of how Headway chose to approach their update to 3X, and the simple fact that many more WordPress standard functions still aren’t natively supported yet, we’ve had to seek higher ground, even if only temporary, and the cost of that switch can be seen in the lack of regularly released new work. To make matters ‘more interesting’ one of our primary IDX providers, IDX Broker, also saw fit to roll out their beta of IDX Broker Platinum to the world, tossing yet another wrench into our beloved works, but this has all turned into the perfect storm for us and our clients.

Okay, enough of that. Let’s talk Responsive

As some of you may already know, we just released our newest project: LiveUptownNow.com for a sweetheart of a man, Scott Hartis. In the past, we’ve almost always used 3rd party tools to create mobile friendly websites, or relied upon our IDX providers to handle mobile search. But we’ve always felt that we lost something in the mobile translation, and in some cases sacrificed the strength of a brand by handing over the mobile experience to ‘another’. So we set out to resolve this by finding a way to provide a consistent experience across all platforms without increasing costs/time, maintenance for us or our clients, or server/bandwidth (performance) loads. Responsive was the obvious choice until we started digging.

The guys at WP Touch recently published an article that does a fair job of illustrated some of the differences and up front costs of a responsive site.

Weighing Options: WPTouch, Responsive Design and Your Mobile Strategy

While I think some of the points are a little blown out of proportion, there is validity to every line. We didn’t find many voices that synced up with theirs, but lets face it. We’re all a bit bigoted, and I commend the guys at Brave New Code for taking a reasonably open stance on the issue given what they do.

Is ‘Responsive’ it an emerging buzzword and little more?

In short, no. It IS a buzzword, for sure! Be prepared to spend the next year or two having everyone tell you that “you need it”, or “must have it”, or that “you’re an idiot not having it”. Be prepared for everyone to call every display that doesn’t look completely ridiculous a “responsive” display. Responsive will, for a time, be the buzziest of buzzes, but here’s the difference. This has merit. Not that others don’t… My problem is that once the SNO (Shiny New Object) Job gets going it can be very difficult to evaluate these things objectively, keeping in mind your organizations needs and any additional costs, time and resources.

Brand consistency is important for Scott, so responsive was (in our opinions) the right choice for him, as it will be for the vast majority of our clients, which is why we’ve chosen to go responsive as a developer. Of course, we will have clients that don’t require it at some point and for them, we may go another way such as WP Touch as we have in the past. The point is that NO ONE SHOULD BE RUNNING OUT AND REDOING THEIR SITES SO THEY’RE RESPONSIVE WITHOUT THE NUMBERS TO JUSTIFY IT! Please don’t fall for the impending hype.

Real Support for Responsive – Who has it?

The biggest problem for those that want to go truly responsive on their WordPress Real Estate sites is going to be IDX and how they handle mobile on their end. Keep in mind that the majority of WordPress enabled IDX’s feed displays aren’t on pages you own or have the ability to edit, so you’re beholden to IDX Providers in many ways.

Zillow isn’t ‘Responsive’, but…:

Zillow’s Diverse Solutions product has gone in a different direction thus far, developing a mobile web app that allows site visitors using mobile phones or tablets to access listing data using a native mobile interface, but this isn’t responsive. Again, you lose a degree of control over the experience and certainly lose brand consistency using this method. The advantage is that it’s fast, easy, cost effective and does provide all the tools a mobile home shopper needs while still providing Agents and Brokerages all the lead capture and tools they require. One slight disadvantage with with Zillow method is that any page containing their content will automatically recognize the use of a mobile device and effectively steal that user away from your site which can also be a problem when trying to create a consistent user experience.

IDX Broker Platinum has the best of both worlds:

IDX Broker’s new (still in beta) Platinum product essentially bridges both worlds, giving you standard displays that are flexible enough to make fully responsive for mobile visitor AND maintain control over both the experience and brand representation, AND they also have a mobile web app that works in much the same way Zillow’s does. As a user / developer, you can use either, as IDX Broker has had the foresight to leave these choices up to you. It is very important to remember that this product is still in development, so we have not yet seen everything it can do.

The only problem for responsive displays on mobile devices that IDX Broker has at this moment is that mobile-like services such as location services aren’t available via their desktop services. So while the displays look great on a mobile device, and searching remains easy, it’s lacking the more automated mobile feel of their mobile web app. But if I’ve learned anything at all about IDX Broker in the past few weeks it is that they have no fear of taking a new approach and I have a distinct feeling this won’t be an issue for long.

On brevity in Iambic pentameter…

Inna Hardison — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 20:49:58 +0000

By way of brief intro, there has been a lot of jabber around my socials on brevity in writing/blogging/et al. By way of a Friday joke, I made this status update, not expecting any responses. But since I got some, it now officially constituted a dare.

Click the FB image for the rest of that conversation:

So here goes, 144 words on the subjects recommended by my FB friends: unicorns, froglickers, 151, manatees and Zillow.

On Brevity in Iambic…

The pundits tell us that we must write short
I tell them that the Unicorns are real
And that redacted thought is not a thought
But a reflection of another’s zeal
For smaller words; and even smaller feelings

Unless the brevity expressed is such
That beauty shimmers off each letter’s edge
And beckons us to wade the very depths
Of unknown streams; where magic is a hunch
That manatees are us, removed at birth

That stories in six words are only told
By those with rare gifts, and rarer still
In spaces where complexities of thought
Are yet to be disdained, as if we shill
For the appeasement of the common sheep

I’ve been accused of licking stranger frogs
Than measuring my syllables or words
I’d rather tilt at windmills that are Zillow
Or down Pirates’ Rum, 151
Than calculate my future readers’ worth

Thank you to Melina, Coleen and Marc for humouring me:-)

Do you follow rules of some kind when writing, and if yes, what are they, and what makes them not arbitrary to you?

ha media group

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