I tend to look at a lot of blogs and web sites when I have some time to just surf. (That’s not something I get to do often - but as I’m one of those people who likes to relate one thing to another, and yet another again, I really do surf the net. I also play dictionary tag, for those who are interested in such details.) When I’m surfing, I just naturally focus in on things that in some way relate to my life. But sometimes a site will catch my eye for a completely different reason. This was the case with a link I was sent today for real estate in Chevy Chase (that’s a place in Maryland, not a Hollywood actor.)

Now I’m not looking for real estate in Maryland at the moment, but I had some fun with this web site all the same. It’s different from the other real estate sites that I’ve used in the past, and I sure wish I could tell the folks that run those sites to go take a visit and take a few notes for improvements! First of all, instead of just giving me this monstrous search engine I was presented with the 300 most recent listings (for rental as well as for sale) accompanied by a Google map on which the listings were pinpointed. There was a search option but it was a quick search, so no need to choose from a huge variety of criteria I usually have to sift through.

The search results opened in a new tab, and once there I could just expand the view for any listing instead of navigating away from the page to see photos and details about the house in question. If I didn’t like what I saw, I simply collapsed the details & went to look at another property in the same list. Again, maps were readily available. In fact, if I selected one or more properties from the list I was able to generate driving directions from my home to the properties I wanted to see. I didn’t think it would work from Montreal, but gave it a try just for fun. Believe it or not, I was able to generate directions from Montreal to the exact property and back - complete with the distance to be travelled and the estimated time required! When I selected several properties to visit, I got directions that allowed me to plan for viewing them all in one trip.

If I had wanted to specify a type of property, the number of bedrooms or bathrooms, or even a school district, this search tool would allow me to do so. There was also the option to ask for a real estate agent to contact me directly, or I could register for a service that would automatically notify me of new listings that matched my search criteria. And if I wanted, I could send the information I found to a friend (or myself, presumably) by email.

The fun continued as I looked around the rest of the web site. All of these options that were offered for Chevy Chase, were also available for a great number of other locations throughout Maryland and in two other states. I don’t want you to think this web site isn’t of interest to you if you don’t live in that territory, though, because there is an educational aspect to the site that many other people will find useful. Now obviously, laws and procedures differ from place to place. But some of the topics covered in the blogs and YouTube videos will be of interest to a broader audience. Even if they don’t deal with the specifics of the place where you live or want to buy, you’ll be able to get a general idea of where you’re headed and you should come away with a better idea of what questions to bring to a local agent.

Most real estate sites assume that you already know what you need to know, and if you don’t it’s not their problem. They aren’t in the business of educating the consumer. They just want you to buy - or list your house with them so they can earn a nice fat commission. It’s refreshing to find a site that has a whole section for “All the questions you were afraid to ask” or that publishes its Buyer’s Bill of Rights. This is also a company whose owner will take half an hour to meet prospective clients himself to answer questions, and buy them a coffee.

Technologically savvy, this real estate company will respond to enquiries within 15 minutes of sending an internet request. The company is listed with the Better Business Bureau (I checked, and they are a member in good standing) and some of the blog entries reveal schemes that agents at other companies have been known to use for making more money at the expense of the consumer. That being said, they suggest questions a buyer can ask when interviewing a realtor.

If the information seems to be more for buyers than sellers, please don’t think those wanting to sell a property are at all neglected on the site. While 70% of their clients are buyers, they do have a whole section of their web site devoted to sellers. This includes an explanation of how they use both traditional and high-tech methods to sell your home.

All right, you can tell I’m impressed with the lengths these folks go to in order to serve their clients. But I think they’ve also done a service to the real estate community, and to buyers and sellers in general, by setting up such a comprehensive web site. If you are a realtor or a webmaster for a realtor, you might well want to consider looking at this web site. Its features could certainly serve as a template for improving real estate web sites all over.

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

Just a quick reminder to all Montreal-area homeschoolers that tomorrow is our February meeting for kids activities with the Montreal Homelearners (MHL) group. Please do go to the web site & sign up, if you haven’t already, as we want to be sure we’re not all bringing the same ingredients!

There are a goodly number of upcoming homeschool activities and events of interest to all families in the Montreal area. Sonya is doing a great job of writing everything up at the MHL site, and other things like Montreal Free School are also being updated elsewhere. Since other folks are doing a superb job of writing up activities of interest I will be removing the Montreal Happenings section (upper left sidebar) of my blog, and will instead place links in my blogroll (right sidebar) for folks who want to know what’s happening in & around Montreal. I will still write up individual posts about interesting happenings as often as I can, though. So if you see an event notice, look in the post for the date & time, and for the organizer’s contact info. Thanks!

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

You may be thinking about launching your own web site, or perhaps you’ve got a blog that’s doing particularly well and you’d like to take the next step with a domain name and a hosting service. If you’ve ever looked for free services you’ll know there are a large number of services available, and it’s sometimes difficult to make a choice. With free services this isn’t such a bad deal, for you can “shop” around and even try on a couple services without losing anything. However, when it comes to pay services things get just a tad more complicated.

First of all, this is your money we’re talking about. There are a lot of hosting companies out there, and they all offer different types of services. The prices they charge are also going to vary pretty broadly. There are good companies, and some not so good companies. There are also times when a good company may be offering a package of services that you just really don’t need and don’t need to be paying for. So how do you choose?

Well, there are two things you can do. The first is to get educated about what types of services exist within web hosting, and to figure out which ones you need. The second is to do a little comparison shopping so you can find a hosting service that offers all the bells and whistles you need, at the best possible price. Doing this by yourself might be a pretty overwhelming task, even if you already know a little something about hosting. So when I discovered there was a place to go for help with web hosting choice I was really quite pleased to see it.

First of all, this service offers a knowledge center that begins with a FAQ and a Quick Start guide to getting your web site up and running. They’ve also got specific articles about things like domain names and bandwidth that not only explain what these things are, but also give you some advice on figuring out your needs and how to meet them without taking undue risks. Articles on cheap web hosting and scams are of particular interest to a newbie, as they give information that can help you avoid getting caught up in plans that seem too good to be true. For the more experienced web master there are articles on more advanced topics, and a good list of links to other resources.

The second part of the web site is actually a guide to choosing the right web host for your needs. You can perform a search that asks you to plug in values for criteria such as fees, bandwidth and diskspace allowed for your site. An advanced search allows you to specify more details: how many email or FTP accounts you need, what operating system or type of database you want, if you need a dedicated server, mode of payment, and whether you need PHP, ASP or Perl.

A search will provide you with a good-sized list of plans from a variety of hosts, along with the basic information (cost, bandwidth, diskspace, operating system, database) and a rating score. Clicking on the plan name will take you to a new page that gives you more specific details, and a link to the hosting service that offers the plan.

For folks who have used a particular hosting service, there is the possibility of adding your own rating so that scores are based not only on expert opinion, but also on the experiences of regular folks like you and me. And if you prefer to browse for yourself rather than do a search, the site has a web host directory and a directory by type of plan. If you want to submit a host you can do that too. There’s no fee for a listing in their database.

I wandered around the site for a good half hour, and was pleased with what I saw. One of the things they emphasized was that inexpensive plans may not always equate with low quality services. But they did warn against trying too hard to save money. They made some good, specific recommendations about things like how much bandwidth the average user needs, how to know whether the host is reliable in terms of uptime, and how to evaluate the quality (not just the quantity) of bandwidth being offered.

There were a few errors in the code that resulted in a very small number of pages that wouldn’t load (I’ve reported this to the webmaster, so hopefully it will be fixed very soon.) Other than that, the site was easy to navigate and written so that even someone new to web hosting could understand it. Best of all there is no charge at all to use the site, so you can take as much time as you need and keep coming back as often as you like. If you are in the market for a web host I would definitely recommend you stop first at this helpful site and get a better idea of the options available to you. It could save you money - or maybe a big technical headache down the road!

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!