OpenHomez.com News And Support

Promote world peace and understanding through various forms of art.

2011-01-13T07:27:00.000-08:00

OH - The Buzz

2010-02-12T13:36:00.000-08:00

OpenHomez is now on Google Buzz. New open house listing will be posted on our Buzz for all to see. If you'd like to follow OpenHomez.com on Google Buzz go to the OpenHomez.com profile and click on the Follow OpenHomez button or just click on the Follow On Buzz button to the right.

OpenHomez.com Goes Mobile

2009-11-16T11:09:00.001-08:00

Recently we implemented a mobile site at m.openhomez.com. The site is designed for searching active listings from a mobile (small form factor) device. The full capabilities of OpenHomez.com are currently not available on m.openhomez.com, but we are considering extending the features.

Have a look at m.openhomez.com and see what you think.

Bing Maps and SEO Improvements

2009-09-04T07:40:00.000-07:00

Our recent additions include adding a link (Aerial) to the property listing page that will take you to the Bing Maps bird's eye view of the property.

In addition, we have changed the TITLE of each property listing to include the address of the property. Hopefully, this will provide added Search Engine Optimization and additional coverage by the search engines.

Single RSS Feed For Multiple Agents

2009-08-02T10:00:00.001-07:00

If you have multiple agents or listing IDs with OpenHomez.com you can now combine their listings into a single RSS feed. As an example, you might have individual agents with their Open Houses listed independently but you would also like to have a consolidated list of Open Houses for your office.

Using the URL template:

http://openhomez.com/rssmyopenhomes.php?ids=x,y,z

you can create a list of OpenHomez.com IDs to be included in the RSS feed. You can still have unique feeds by specifying a single ID after "ids=" but now you can also create a combined list. You can find your OpenHomez.com ID at the top of your Account page in OpenHomez.com

Using this syntax and free tools such as Feed2JS you can create code that can be embedded into you Web site to show a dynamic list of your Open Houses.

Features For Consumers

2009-07-30T06:49:00.001-07:00

For some time now we have had a Features List for agents and agencies. We thought it was about time to add a list of Features For Consumers. Below is a list of OpenHomez.com features intended specifically for consumers and to assist them with their hunt for open houses. Links in the list refer to blog entries describing the feature in detail. First, the basic search:

Search
From the OpenHomez.com home page click the Search link on the left. No need to sign in. From the OpenHomez Search Page you can search by Zip code or city name or you can simply select from the list of Zip codes below the search box. The numbers in parenthesis next to the Zip codes are the number of active open houses in that Zip code.

Search Results Page
Your search will likely take you to a search results page where a list of properties matching your search are displayed. You can view the detailed listing by clicking on the thumbnail picture of the property or on the address. But wait, there's more!

Hovering - Hover over the thumbnail picture or the icon following the address and you will see a preview of property listing.

RSS Feeds of Search - Near the top of the page you will see the familiar RSS feed icon (). Clicking on this link will provide you the results of your search in RSS format. You can use this link in any RSS reader to view your search results.

Download Map/GPS Data - By clicking on the Download link on the Search Page (in the text near the top of the page) you can download a file suitable for uploading into your favorite mapping program or your GPS.

Map Your Search - By clicking on the map link on the Search Page (in the text near the top of the page) you can create a Google Map of your search results.

Share Your Search - By clicking on the button on the left under the menu you can share the results of this search on over 50 social networks. You can also print or email the results of the search.

Get Notified - At the bottom of the Search Results page you will see a Notify.me chicklet. If you click on this icon you will automatically be notified of changes in this search.

Options - are presented in the form of icons at the end of individual listing in your search results. Click on the icon to view the listing, click on the icon to download map/gps data for this listing, or click on the icon to download this listing to your calendar.

Options When Viewing A Listing
When you are viewing an individual listing you have several other options. Here are a few.

Map & Driving Directions - Click on this link to map and acquire directions to the property.

Download to GPS - Download the listing to your GPS.

Download to Calendar - Download this open house information to your calendar.

Tweet/ReTweet - Use the Tweet/Retweet chicklet to send this listing to your Twitter account using TweetMeMe.

Dwellicious - Use the Dwellicious chicklet to add this listing to the Dwellicious Real Estate social bookmarking site.

Share The Listing - Use the Share chicklet to email, print, or share this listing to multiple social sites.

There are more features coming. Come back to this list often or just browse the OpenHomez.com and experiment with each of the features.

Sharing A Listing And Social Bookmarking

2009-07-26T11:25:00.001-07:00

We've now added a social bookmarking and sharing button from AddThis to each listing. Not only does the button allow viewers to add the listing to over 60 social sites, it also allows the viewer to bookmark, print, and email the listing. The button appears near the bottom of each listing page.

We have also added this Share Button to the right sidebar of this blog. Check it out for yourself. It's over there ======>

Now You Can Search By City Too!

2009-07-21T20:35:00.001-07:00

Prior to today OpenHomez.com search options only allow Zip code searches. Today we added the ability to search for upcoming open houses by City Name. As with the Zip code search you can use the "%" as a wild card in your search. That is, you can either enter the entire City Name such as "Sacramento" to get all the upcoming open houses in Sacramento or you could enter a search of "Sac%" which would return all the open houses in all cities starting with "sac".

A word of caution, there are hundreds of open houses in some cities. Searching by City Name may yield a large number of open houses and the results may take some time to return.

Go ahead. Give the new Search a try.

OH - Dwellicious

2009-07-20T14:46:00.000-07:00

Dwellicious.com is a real estate social networking site that allows you to organize, share, and discuss specific properties. Today we added a Dwellicious chiclet to each OpenHomz.com listing. When a listing is viewed the viewer has the option of clicking on the chicklet and tagging the property on Dwellicious.com there by exposing the listing to the Dwellicious.com real estate social networking community and providing more eyeballs for your listings. Enjoy!

OH - FriendFeed

2009-07-18T10:05:00.001-07:00

Today we added a FriendFeed Group for open houses providing another location on the Internet where your listings will be published.

OH - Technorati

2009-07-12T10:38:00.001-07:00

OpenHomez.com listings are now featured on Technorati. Yet another place where your open house listings are displayed on the Web. The more eyeballs the better.

Yakaz.com

2009-07-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

OpenHomez.com listings now appear on Yakaz.com, an International classified ads search engine. Please visit Yakaz.com to view their classified ads. You can find a complete list of OpenHomez.com listings on Yakaz.com here.

OH - Now You Can Tweet Too!

2009-06-14T13:51:00.000-07:00

Today we added the capability to "tweet" your own open house listings to a twitter account of your choice. Here is what you need to do:

Get a twitter account for your open house tweets. If you already have one and want your open houses "tweeted" there you should use your existing account.

Scroll down to the bottom and fill in your Twitter ID and Twitter Password. You'll also need to change the Twitter Mode to "ON" to enable tweeting from OpenHomez.com.

Go to your My Listings page on OpenHomez.com. After each listing you'll see a Twitter icon (). Click on the Twitter icon to tweet that open house to the Twitter ID and Password provided in your OpenHomez.com User Account.

This is a manual process for the time being. You'll need to click the Twitter icon for each listing you want to "tweet". In the future, we hope to add an "Automatic" Twitter Mode so that any new listing added/updated will automatically be "tweeted" to the supplied Twitter account.

OH - Tumblr

2009-05-04T06:47:00.000-07:00

We recently added Tumblr to our list of syndication sites. Each open house is added to the OpenHomez Tumblr public micro-blog making it visible to all Tumblr users and search engines.

You can search Tumblr for activities and events, including open houses, by zip code, city, street, etc. We have also tagged each posting with the zip code and the city of the open house.

There are many Tumblr Goodies to explore including iPhone apps, widgets, gadgets, and RSS feeds.

Enjoy.

Notify.me Of Search Updates

2009-04-21T13:17:00.000-07:00

Today we added a feature to our SEARCH RESULTS page that will allow you to receive notification of changes to a specific OpenHomez search via email, IM, SMS, or a FREE desktop application.

These services are provided by Notify.me. We have provided a button on our SEARCH RESULTS page to Notify.me. This button will automatically pass the necessary RSS feed parameters to Notify.me to set up the notifications. You decide, via your Notify.me account how you want to be notified of changes.

OH - Twitter

2009-03-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

OpenHomez is now on Twitter. We post new open house listings to Twitter as they arrive within the limits imposed by Twitter (about 100 per hour). You can follow OpenHomez on Twitter here. There are a variety of Twitter widgets and gadgets here.

On 4/27/09 we added a Twitter hashtag on the open house city name and zip code to our tweets. Now you can use Twitter Search to find open house listings in a specific city or zip code. Enter a city name or zip code proceeded by a # to search for the city or zip code you are interested in. (i.e. #Sacramento or #95835).

In the very near future, we hope to be able to allow you to automatically (or manually) post your listings to your own Twitter account.

System Status

2009-03-13T09:45:00.001-07:00

This post is used to reflect current system status and events that may effect use of the system. Hopefully we don't have to use it very often. New events and information will be entered at that top of this post. All times are Pacific Time.

** 3/13/2009 07:00 - Operating normally.

** 3/13/2009 07:00 - We sincerely apologize for the system outage yesterday. We are taking steps to move our backups to an off site facility so we can minimize the chances of our production and backup data being lost in the same event.

** 3/13/2009 07:00 - All syndication and notification feeds have been restored.

** 3/12/2009 17:00 - Most of the "active listings" data has been recovered. However, due to the damage to the user database, most of the listings are not associated with an individual user. If we were processing a feed that you were supplying to us that feed process, the data, and your userid have been restored.

** 3/12/2009 15:00 - The system is back up and running with limited data. We lost all of the listing data and most of the User data base. If you had an ID on OpenHomez.com in the past you should try to log in. We apologize but you may need to recreate your userid.

** 3/12/2009 13:00 - The data base storage facility has been replaced as well as the Web server. We are in the process of rebuilding the system and the data bases.

** 3/12/2009 07:00 - We experienced a catastrophic failure of our servers. Not only did we loose our primary data base but the backups were also damaged. We are working on recovering the system now.

Features List

2009-03-09T10:59:00.000-07:00

Over the past years we have added many new features to OpenHomez.com. Rather than have you scan through this entire blog we thought we would create a consolidated features list. Each feature is linked back to the blog entry that describes the feature in detail. Another good source of summary information is our FAQ page

Current features of OpenHomez.com include:

Free syndication of your open house listings
Broad Internet Syndication
Send us your open house data for syndication
Email and SMS notifications
RSS feed of YOUR open houses
Download To A Calendar
Download To A GPS
Download GPS/Map Data
iGoogle Gadget with up to 5 zip codes
Google Base Syndication
Google Earth
OpenHomez on Twitter
Notify.me Of Search Updates
OpenHomez on Tumblr
Tweet to your personal Twitter account

All of this for FREE. Our service is completely ad and donation supported.

Searching for open houses does not require a login or sign up. Neither does the use of the RSS, download, and gadget features above. We only ask for ID and email address if the email or SMS notification options are chosen. All links come back to listing agent's site. We do not sell or distribute any information collected on our site. We do not SPAM.

Come back to this page often as new features will be posted here.

Syndicating Open House Listings

2009-02-26T20:18:00.000-08:00

We've been ask to provide a little history as to the genesis of OpenHomez.com. You'll find more detail in this blog and at OpenHomez.com but here is a brief history. You should know that our founder is an office manager for a small independent real estate company and an IT consultant. He tells the story like this:

While going through my normal Thursday drill of preparing open house information for the weekend and posting each individual open house to a multitude of Web sites it occurred to me that this was very repetitive and mundane work, not to mention boring. Being basically lazy, I set out to write a tool that would take a single open house listing and syndicate it to as many other sites as possible but only require me to enter the data once. It’s been refined over the last year and it’s available, free of charge (ad support) to anyone who would like to use it.

The site is OpenHomez.com. As I said, it is free to all. We use the ad revenue to pay for the servers, etc. Listings point pack to the agent site(s), and of course, we don’t sell email address or other personal information. You can find additional information throughout this blog. You’ll find the system has some interesting features like email and SMS notifications, an iGoogle gadget by zip code, GPS and Calendar downloads, and a variety of other interesting features. We would greatly appreciate any feedback. We’re wide open for input and suggestions on improving the site.

RSS Feed Of Your Upcoming Open Houses

2009-02-14T15:37:00.000-08:00

Today we added a link to an RSS Feed for your upcoming open houses. You can find the link on your My Account page or on your My Listings page. You can use the RSS link to provide your users with an RSS link that they can place in any RSS reader or gadget. You can also embed your upcoming open houses in your own Web site using this RSS feed link.

Click here for a simple, free tool to generate the code to embed your upcoming open houses in your own Web site.

Download To Your Calendar

2008-11-25T16:57:00.000-08:00

Today we added the capability to download a specific open house event to your calendar. Look for the "Download To Calendar" link in the individual listing view or the add to calendar icon in the search results view. Click to download a file in Vcalendar (.ics) format for the associated open house. A file, upon your approval, will be downloaded to your computer and the calendar program on your computer that is designated to handle .ics files should open the file and process it. If the file does not open, make sure you have a calendar program (like Outlook or Thunderbird) installed and that it is configured to open and process .ics files. Another option is to import the .ics file that was downloaded into your calendar program.

Download Directly To Your GPS

2008-10-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

A new feature recently added to Google maps will allow you to download individual open house listings direclty to your GPS device. Here is a brief description of how to use the feature with OpenHomz.com

When you are viewing a single listing (listing view) in OpenHomez.com, click on the "Map and Driving Directions" link under the property address. This will take you to Google maps with a pin for the address. In the upper right corner of the page, on the blue bar, click on the Send link. Yes it looks like it's going to send an email, but wait!!!

On the left hand side the SEND dialog you can select GPS (or email or car). The BRAND drop down lets you select your GPS brand including Garmin, Insignia, Pioneer, and TomTom. If your GPS device is on the brand list and is attached to the computer (or phone ?) you are using you should be able to click the SEND button at the bottom of the dialog and the address will be sent directly to your GPS.

That's it. If anyone has real world experience with this and would like to share, let us know. We've only tested this in a lab environment, but it seems to work.

Google Base Syndication

2008-10-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

Finally! After a lot of back and forth with Google open houses posted on OpenHomez.com will automatically be published in Google Base. The feed will be read by Google once per day at about 4AM Pacific time. Open houses will be posted as Events and Activities in Google Base. You can find all posting for OpenHomez.com on Google Base here.

Items posted in Google Base will expire either after the open house or after 14 days, whichever is less.

We know a lot of you have been waiting for this syndication. Thank you for your patience while we worked through our issues with Google.

Google Gadget

2008-09-01T19:06:00.001-07:00

Today we released the first version of our Google Gadget for OpenHomez.com. It looks like this:

The gadget allows iGoogle users to monitor up to 12 upcoming open houses in up to 5 different zip/postal codes. Click HERE to get a copy of the gadget for your own iGoogle page.

RSS Feed Of Open Homes

2008-08-14T13:54:00.001-07:00

Today we added RSS feeds to our Open House search results. From the SEARCH RESULTS PAGE you can get an RSS feed for that specific search by clicking on the icon in the SEARCH RESULTS description.

You can add these feeds to most any RSS reader or gadget page that accepts an RSS feed. You can embed this feed in a Web page too. Click here for a free, simple tool to generate the code to embed in a Web page.

Download GPS/Map Data

2008-08-04T12:11:00.000-07:00

We have recently added the ability to download GPS/Map data for open house listings. Currently, the only data format provided is KML. KML files can be loaded directly into Google Maps (place the file/url in the search box), Google Earth, and a wide variety of GPS devices and mapping programs.

If the KML format does not meet your needs you might want to consider GPSBabel which can convert from KML to a variety of other GPS/Map data formats.

Look for the map icon next to open houses in a list or after the Map and Driving Directions in the expanded listing view. On the search results screen you can also download a single GPS/Map data file containing all of the listings found by your search.

Happy GPSing.

Google Earth

2008-01-13T09:37:00.000-08:00

Recently we added a file suitable for downloading into Google Earth. Sorry, it's too large for Google Maps to handle. The file contains all current and future open house data. You can find the file at http://www.openhomez.com/data/openhomez.kml .

Caution, the file contains a lot of data and may take a long time to load. The file is refreshed nightly at midnight Pacific time.

In the future, look for new mapping functions in My Listings and your Search Results including selected data small enough to load into Google Maps.

Syndications and Exposure

2007-12-01T15:04:00.001-08:00

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

Classifieds.MySpace.com (via Oodle.com)
Vast.com and its properties
RealtyFeedSearch and its properties
Eventful.com and its properties
VillagesList.com
Posterous
Twitter
Tumblr
Yakaz.com
Technorati
FriendFeed
Dwellicious.com

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

Send Us Your Data

2007-11-30T19:08:00.000-08:00

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.

Donations

2007-11-19T11:04:00.001-08:00

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.

Notifications

2007-11-15T20:15:00.000-08:00

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.

Beta Version 0.2

2007-11-08T13:29:00.000-08:00

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.

Frequently Asked Questions - FAQ

2007-10-31T14:44:00.000-07:00

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.

Alpha Version 0.1

2007-10-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

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.