Saturday, December 1, 2007

Syndications and Exposure

One of the main goals of OpenHomez.com is to provide you a single site to post your open house information and then automatically have that information propagated throughout the Internet, saving you from the tedious task of visiting each of the various classified ad and real estate sites. We will constantly be adding new ways to expose your open house information to as many search engines and eyeballs as we can. Below is a current list of our progress towards this goal.

Current Syndications And Exposure:
OpenHomez.com Notifications and Alert System
OpenHomez.com Open House Blog
OpenHomez.com Open House RSS Feed
OpenHomez.com Google Group - Allowing user comment and feedback
OpenHomez.com Google Calendar
OpenHomez.com iGoogle Gadget
Google Base
Google Buzz
Looksmart.com(Edgeio.com) and its properties
Oodle.com and its properties


Things we are working on:
Automatic feed to Zillow.com
Automatic feed to Trulia.com
Automatic feed to Syndic8.com

Friday, November 30, 2007

Send Us Your Data

Effective immediately OpenHomez.com is accepting your XML data feeds. If you have a large number of open houses that you would like to post on OpenHomez.com this option will save you some time. You can upload all of your data at once. No need to enter individual listings online. Of course all of your listings, regardless of how they were entered, are available to you online.

If you're interested in bulk upload of your data please review our XML Data Feed Instructions. If you have any questions, suggestions, or an open house existing feed available, please don't hesitate to email us.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Donations

Our donation program is now active. All of the basic services of OpenHomez.com are free for all and we do not sell or otherwise divulge your personal information. Our only source of revenue is the ads on our site and donations from our users. You can support OpenHomez.com by clicking on the advertisements of the vendors that advertise on our site or by making a donation.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Notifications

Openhomez.com users that create an account can now create alerts and have notifications sent to their email address and/or their mobile phone when a new open house listing is created. Create and log into your account. Click on "My Alerts" and add as many alerts as you like. Check boxes for email and SMS alerts are provided for each alert.

Notifications will be sent to the email address and/or the SMS email address in your account (My Account) listing. See our FAQs for additional information on SMS email addresses.

In addition, all new listing will be posted to various Internet sources to optimize the exposure of your open house listing. See our post on Syndications and Exposure for additional information.

Notifications and postings are delivered hourly, on the hour.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Beta Version 0.2

OpenHomez.com is now open for Beta testing. You can search for opens houses for FREE and without having to create an account.

You can post your open house listings for FREE by creating a FREE account. You can create your personal account by checking the "Create New Account" box on the OpenHomez.com Login screen. This is still a beta test so some things may move around or change, however the system is stable and you should not experience any loss of data.

We are still working on many features of Openhomez.com including additional syndication of your open house listings to other sites such as Zillow, Trulia, and Google Base as well as our own Open House Blog.

If you have any comments, suggestions, or feedback please post your comments on this blog or email us.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Frequently Asked Questions - FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) - Below is a list of our most frequently asked questions and answers. If you don't find the information you need here please free to send us an email with your questions and suggestions.

Why should I post my open houses on OpenHomez.com? - One of the main reasons to post your open house information on the Internet is for exposure. The more eyeballs that see your posting the better turn out you will have at your open house. The problem is that visiting all of the various classified ad sites and search engines takes a lot of your time. A primary goal of OpenHomez.com is to provide you a single site to post your open house information and then we propagate that information for you. Post your information once on OpenHomez.com and we'll make sure it is spread throughout the Internet. Look for our Syndications and Exposure post in this blog for additional information.

Will this always be free? - The basic services of OpenHomez.com will always be free. The current service is supported by ad revenue and your donations. In the future we may offer premium services for a fee.

How long will my listing stay active? - An individual listing will remain accessible to you for 30 days after the event date in the listing. Any listing with an event date older than 30 days will be removed from our data base. You may renew any listing still available by simply changing the event date in the listing.

How long will others be able to see my listing? - Any listing that has an event date greater than or equal to the current date will be visible to others. Other listings will only be visible to the poster/owner.

Are pictures allowed in my listing? - Picture files for company logo, individual poster, and the listed property are allowed by not required. All pictures are referred to by URL. We do not currently allow pictures to be uploaded to our site. Pictures should be formatted for optimal display. Company logo and individual pictures will be displayed at 120 pixels wide. Property pictures will be displayed at 300 pixels wide. We recommend you use Picasa, Google's free picture editing software to prepare your photographs.

What is meant by SMS Email? - OpenHomez.com will email an alert to the SMS email address that you provide. Most mobile carriers provide a standard email address for submission of SMS messages via email to their subscribers. Here is a good list to start with. If you can't find your carrier on this list please contact your mobile carrier for instructions on how to email an SMS message to your phone. We suggest you test your SMS email address by emailing yourself an SMS message. Once you have it working you can copy that email address into your OpenHomez.com account.

Can I Provide A Bulk Data Feed? - Openhomez.com accepts bulk data feeds of open house data in XML format. Please review our XML Data Feed Instructions for further information.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Alpha Version 0.1

OpenHomez.com is a free service that allows anyone, anywhere to advertise their property for public viewing (Open House). Realtors®, brokers, owners are all welcome to post their open house listings, for free.

Enrollment and new user registration is currently restricted. If you would like to participate in our testing or be notified when registration is open, please feel free to email us.

While we are still in Alpha testing mode, you can already see some of the facilities that will be available. Without the need to create an account, visitors can search for open houses by zip/postal code. When an account is created, you will be able to manage your own listings and create personalized alerts for open houses in your area of interest.

Eventually, we will provide the option to syndicate your open house listings and publish them for you on other classified ad sites on the Web. No need to visit those other sites and rekey your information, OpenHomez.com will submit your data for you.

Please be patient while we are testing. While you are welcome to jump in and experiment, this is a test environment. OpenHomez.com is NOT ready for production use. We will post and entry on this blog when the system is ready for production use.