System Status

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.