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Thursday, February 28, 2008

New Startup: Property Stampede LLC

I realize that I have not been the most consistent blog author lately and I am sorry, but I have an excuse.  So here it is...I have been secretly been involved in a startup, Property Stampede LLC.

Property Stampede LLC will be operating PropertyStampede.com which will be the first website of its kind, where property management software is joined at the hip with a rentable real estate search engine. Property Stampede's goal is to solve two problems, one for property managers and one for users looking to rent real estate.

Problem 1:
There are many many applications out there that claim to be a complete solution for a property management firm, but few really are. Very few offer the ability for the property manager to maintain complete accounting records. Even fewer offer online transactions allowing tenants to pay rent electronically. But most importantly, none of them allow a property manager to simply click a button and have their vacancies immediately marketed to the public. Not one!

Problem 2:
There are many websites out there where a user can search for an apartment or office space. Very few allow that user to compare the rent of a specific unit to comparable units in the neighborhood. Even fewer allow that user to look up neighborhood amenities, such as parks, hospitols, places of worship or airports from within that site. But most importantly not one of them allow that user to fill out an application for residency online. Not one!

Solution:
By combining these two services into one application, we can solve both of these problems. We can provide a property manager with a much more feature rich, cost effective and complete industry solution. Allowing the property manager to increase their appearance of profesionalism to the property owners and tenants. It also allows us to offer an improved method of locating rentable real estate by having a more complete listing service and as well as offer more advanced features that our competition can not. Creating a much more powerful feed of prospective tenants to property managers for no additional cost, allowing property managers to keep marketing costs down.

So if you are a property manager or real estate investor who is currently dissatisfied with your methods of tracking real estate and are fed up overpaying for marketing, I challenge you to learn more about our product by visiting our blog at www.stampedeblog.com.

Chris

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Apple Macbook Power Supply

Ok, I am slightly embarrased to write this post seeing as I claim to be a computer technician, but I must. I recently had a problem attempting to charge my laptop with my power supply. The LED would no longer light up, my Macbook Pro would recognize the AC supply but would not charge.

So I went online and signed up on Apple's concierge to meet with a Apple Genius. He diagnosed it, verified that it was not working properly, and then notified me of my blunder...

The powersupply that I had brought in, which I thought was mine was a 60W AC Power Supply. A Macbook Pro uses an 85W. My wife and I bought our laptops at the same time, hers a Macbook, and at some point we swapped power supply's. My laptop burnt out her power supply.

Here is the problem, Apple should not have made the power supplies identical. They should have had some type of differentiation on them other than the fine print on the side that says 60W and 85W. Luckilly they replaced it under warranty, but man I feel embarrased.

Chris

Google Blacklist

Most likely a highly debateable topic is the mysterious 'Google Blacklist'. For the less familiar Google's Blacklist is a list of websites who have either violated Google's Terms of Service or have manipulated the system to get high rankings on their search engine. In short, Google's goal is to have the most relevant search results for its users and ad buyers. They do this by analyzing the links in and out of a website as well as the content on the website. The more relevant the content and the links in and out of the website the higher in the ranks your site will sit.

The blacklist is for websites that cheat or try to manipulate the system. There is a good article that goes in depth about one specific website that was ranked 1st, but is now blacklisted and finds itself on the seventh page of Google's search results. To read the full article go to BMighty.com.

I will later post how you can protect yourself from angering the Google gods so to speak and find your site on the black list.

Chris