August 2004, Real Estate Cybertips

Archive of Tricks & Places

John M Peckham III

Jack Peckham ( ) is the Executive Director of the Real Estate CyberSpace Society, based in Boston, MA.

Hear an interview
with Becky Swann
on RECS Radio 1999

Becky Swann
again in Oct. 2001

Real estate professionals are ramping up to take advantage of the power of CyberSpace.

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Directories
Int'l Realty
US Realty

Real Estate Cybertips:
August 2004

TRICK #1: HOW MUCH DID YOUR NEIGHBOR GIVE?
TRICK #2: FOIL THE SPAM BOTS!
GREAT PLACE #1: WHAT DID THE CANDIDATES REALLY SAY?
GREAT PLACE #2: RECALL CENTRAL

CYBER MAGIC TRICKS

TRICK #1 HOW MUCH DID YOUR NEIGHBOR GIVE?
www.fundrace.org

Would you like to know who your nosy neighbors are backing with their wallet in the upcoming Presidential election?

Now, if you feel nosy yourself, it's easy. Just visit this interesting place, enter your zip code and shazam -- up comes a list of your neighbors who gave to the presidential candidates -- how much they gave -- and to whom they donated. There are lots of other interesting features here including one that lets you search by name.

Guess what -- Howard Dean donated $2000 to the Bush campaign. (That's Howard M. Dean of Hinsdale, IL!)

TRICK #2 FOIL THE SPAM BOTS!
www.safeemail.org

If you have a web site (and who doesn't these days) you need to know that there are lots of "bots" (short for robots) crawling around the web looking for e-mail addresses to gather for lots of intrusive mail lists!

This neat on-line tool presents you with a single box so you can enter your email address and click to convert it into html browser code. Then, whenever you put your e-mail address up on your site, you can simply paste in that code and --shazam -- your e-mail address appears perfectly normal but the pesky bots find it darn near impossible to grab your address.

Another win for the good guys!

GREAT PLACES

GREAT PLACE #1 WHAT DID THE CANDIDATES REALLY SAY?
www.campaignsearch.com

Two things make this great place interesting. First it's a magical source where you can hear campaign positions on very specific topics. Second it's a powerful demonstration of how technology can be used to search and extract the spoken word on very narrowly chosen topics -- in effect a search engine for the spoken word.

These folks tell us that "More than 75 percent of Americans rely on broadcast news sources for information about the presidential campaign. Voters have had few ways to search these audio/video outlets for news and topics that are critical to them - until now."

At this great place they gathered campaign-related video and audio files from a number of Web sites: George Bush's and John Kerry's campaign Web sites plus C-SPAN, PBS, NPR and more. They then use special programming to identify the sections of audio/video news and speeches that are relevant to your search criteria.

Great place - it's like a Google for sound and video!

GREAT PLACE #2 RECALL CENTRAL
www.recalls.gov

Ever wonder whether a product you have purchased is unsafe, hazardous or defective? Until now you'd have to check with six separate agencies with vastly different jurisdictions to get the straight scoop.

Now these government agencies have banded together to provide "one stop shopping" so you can get this information quickly and easily. This great place allows you to check recalls by product type, by product description or by company name and get the detail regarding each recall. Major categories include consumer products, motor vehicles, boats, food, medicine, cosmetics and environmental products.

Lot's of big bucks went into this site. Be sure to check it out you paid for it!

Real Estate CyberTips are provided with compliments of the Real Estate Cyberspace Society.