If you have been to your local consumer electronics store recently, you probably noticed new DVD players prominently displayed throughout the store.  The new DVD players promise to take full advantage of the high-definition flat panel televisions that have been embraced by the public. 

As consumers, we are presented with a choice,  Blu-Ray or HD-DVD?  The scenario may sound eerily familiar to anyone over 35.  We were confronted with a similar choice for our VCR’s in the 80’s,  VHS or beta?  Eventually, one format won out over the other.  The technologies deliver similar picture quality with the major electronic manufacturers and movie studios equally divided among the 2 camps.

My suggestion, wait until after Christmas.  Sony is launching their new game console, the PlayStation3, in November.  The unit comes with a Blu-Ray DVD player built in and a price tag lower than the existing players currently in the market.  The prices for these 2 new technologies will start to dramatically fall and an industry leader should begin to emerge.

At Video Openhouse, we are committed to being industry leaders, implementing the latest technologies.  Currently, our video is captured in high-definition, wide-screen format.  We are prepared to offer HD-DVD or Blu-Ray DVD’s when our clients demand high definition video on DVD.

At the end of April, we attended a Ubertor training session.  The workshops are tailored to aid the new Ubertor user, but the sessions are open to all real estate agents and are free to attend.  Essentially, we were on a fact-finding mission since the large majority of our clients were Ubertor clients as well.  

By attending the training session, we were hoping to learn more about their philosophy and how it is implemented in to their products.  The training gave new users all the necessary insight into both creating and modifying pages within a website and maintaining listing information.  Even more interesting to us was their emphasis on search engine optimization.  Ubertor websites have been created to allow any real estate agent to easily set up and maintain their website, and during that process, optimizing the webpages for search engines such as Google. 

The training session was filled with insights and strategies to help agents get the most benefit from their website.  After the attending the training session, we realized the effort that Ubertor has put into simplifying and optimizing websites for real estate agents.  We liked what they were doing so much that we altered our own website using some of the approaches they were using. 

The benefits of having a Ubertor website are both immediate and long-term.  The short-term benefits are the attractive design and ease-of-use interface.  More importantly, the long-term benefits of having a website that has been optimized for search engines may prove to be even more valuable in this ever increasingly competitive world of real estate. 

Ubertor posts all their upcoming traing sessions here.  Their next session in Vancouver is on Monday September 18th at Sport BC, 1367 West Broadway.  I would highly recommend attending.

Last week I read a great article in the Vancouver Courier about the plan to offer wireless access across the city by the time the Olympics roll into town.  It’s a goal that city council set for itself this year.  Currently you can find “hotspots” scattered randomly over our city, a mix of unsecured home networks, wired restaurants and cafes and at educational institutions such as UBC. 

In Toronto, where I moved from earlier this year, the local hydro company is planning on installing a wireless access point on every 4th or 5th hydro pole in the downtown core this fall.  In some other major cities, such as San Francisco and Philadelphia, the transformation has already begun.  It is inevitable that over the next 4 years, technology will make it easier to be connected to the Internet without having to lug around a laptop.  The opportunity to provide broadband access to all the residents of Vancouver will allow businesses that are tech savy to further distance themselves from their competion.  Realtors take note, ensure that you are providing your audience with high quality content that captures their attention.