Mike Mueller - Builder of Engagement

And you might have notice something a little strange going on.

There seems to be quite a few Jeff Turners popping up.

You know, that ResPres guy…

Here’s just a few I found on Twitter.

There’s also a Video thread on Seesmic here: http://seesmic.com/video/FbFrgAXmZc

And if you’ve changed your Avatar - please add it to the Group on Flickr

How many times have you said or heard that? 

Have last minute docs that need to be signed and the client is at work?  How often has that happened?
Can they meet you halfway?
So where is halfway?
And when we decide where that point is, where do you want to meet?
The side of the road isn't the right option.
Want to have coffee?
How about a little Pizza & Beer?

So many questions! How do you figure it all out?

Fear not! 

I have the website to quickly answer all your questions. 

It's called meetways.com and it'll not only calculate where that middle ground is but also show you the available coffee shops, pizza parlors or whatever you specify.

Here's a real life case in point.

My friend and fellow car guy Lane Bailey found some cool car parts online.  The seller didn't want to ship.  Lane had a small problem.  He lives in Lilburn, GA and the parts were in Livermore, CA.  That 2,456 mile trip is a little too far for some greasy car parts.  Lane knew I lived close so he asked if I could pick up the parts.  Using meetways.com I quickly came up with 4 coffee shops near the halfway point where "Mr. I'm afraid of Fedex" can meet me.

Now, if these parts are too big to ship - I can always make the drive and meet Lane halfway. 

"Hey Lane!  How about a little Pizza and Beer in Walsh, CO? - I know the perfect spot!"

Try Meetways - it'll make you look like a star!

Are you following me on Twitter?

YES!

If you know me, you know I am passionate about two things; Social Media and Technology.

I have contended for years that Real Estate Professionals were the greatest people to walk the Earth.

So when a V.L.H.T.O.C. * approached me and asked if I would like to teach Technology to Real Estate Pro's my answer might have been a little quick.

How Quick?

Let's just say...

• It was so quick it couldn't have been measured in nanoseconds.
• Top Fuel Eliminators?  They don't have the reaction time I had.
• F/A-18 Pilots?  Too slow.  They might as well have been flying a Cessna.
• The Suzuki GSX1300R Hayabusa?  Feels more like a moped.

We live in interesting times.
More now than ever before a successful agent has to be on top of their game.
They need to properly leverage the technology and tools available to their advantage.
My job is to help those agents become more successful, to thrive, and to excel.
I'm looking forward to the new challenge.

*  stands for "very large, highly tech oriented company"

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Register to Vote today

posted by Mike 

Follow me on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Flickr

Wow!

Consider this somewhat of a Re Blog.  Maybe not so much Re Blog but more of an “Wow YOU guys ROCK!”

Yesterday was Blog Action Day.  I was a participant and wrote a post.  The topic was Poverty and my post took on a more personal flavor.  Last night, I headed over to my Feed Reader to catch up on the world.

I read quite a few posts yesterday and was very impressed in how the Real Estate community embraced the project, but nothing impressed me as much as the collection of posts on AG.

Let’s start with “Fighting Poverty- Rocky Turner“

I’ve been quietly following the efforts of Mothers Fighting For Others for quite some time now. This is a Full Time effort for Rocky.

Tom Vanderwell is someone I’ve known online. He’s a lender and a very smart one at that. Talk about an eye opening experience, check out his post “Going out on a limb

Ginger Wilcox - I’ve had the pleasure of dining with this excellent Agent. We’ve connected at various seminars and conventions. I had no idea she was so involved in caring for those less fortunate. Ginger, thank you for all you do!

Craig Barrett - another surprising individual!

Craig’s attack on Poverty is his Local Food Bank.

Being a Food Bank Volunteer myself - I say great job Craig!

Drew Meyers - One of Zillow’s big guys.
Drew’s passion? Microfinancing

Have you heard of it? It can change the world!

Gina Kay Landis - I could list the ways she’s involved but my laptop doesn’t have that much ink. Just go to the post and read it yourself.  I particularly liked the idea of helping with the marketing for non-profits.  Who better than a real estate agent.  They know marketing right?

Finally, a huge tip of the hat to Agent Genius, Benn and Lani, for collecting and putting together these great people!
Agent Genius - YOU ROCK!

We are learning to blog and use social medai today in Fremont.

We're going to learn all sorts of great stuff like linking, tags, keywords and so much more!

Everyone who attended todays class is now set to dominate Google for any keyword they choose.
They have the tools and knowldge .

Look out world, here they come!

under the freeway,
originally uploaded by zappowbang.

Today is Blog Action Day. It’s one day a year when thousands of bloggers around the world write about one singular topic.

This year the topic is poverty. That seemed simple enough. So I sat down and started to write…

Poverty happens in third world countries far away.

Poverty happens here in the US as well.

Poverty happens to that guy who sits on the freeway exit and asks for change.

(Well, I think Poverty happens to that guy. I have also heard rumors it’s a sham and he’s pulling in hundreds of dollars a day.)

Then I also came to realize Poverty is very much closer to home. My Home.

You see, I have this brother. He’s been in and out of rehab, in and out of jail, in and out of hospitals... You name it he's been in and he's been out of it.

The family has tried to help him, taken him in, set him on the right path and so on. Nothing worked. He rejected everything and anything (as is often the case). The cause and the reasons don’t matter to this topic.

I haven’t talked to him in over 10 years. That silence has been by choice. My choice.

I drive by him 3 times a week as he stands outside a halfway house with others waiting to get a bite to eat and take a shower. He doesn’t notice me and doesn’t want to. I’m ok with that.

Recently I learned from a friend that my he’s living under a freeway. He’s warm, he’s dry, but the stark realization that I know one of “those people” rings hollow in my soul.

On the positive side, this thing called Blog Action Day has brought those thoughts to the head of the line. Although I know my brother wouldn’t accept anything from me directly, I find myself thinking about how I can help that halfway house, or any program that reaches out to help.

Each year we spend a day at the local food bank sorting cans as part of the Mueller Family holiday season ritual. While those same cans I sorted might eventually find their way to my brother, my involvement is once a year. That’s it.

What happens the other 364 days?

Here’s just a couple of answers.

You can donate to the Global Fund via: http://www.change.org/blogactionday
That’s simple , straight forward, easy to do.

Shop for anything using aGoodCause
They offer a revolutionary shopping concept to fight poverty.
When you purchase from more than 5,000 online shops you’ll be automatically making a donation to a charity of your choice.
http://www.agoodcause.com/content/view/429/146/

The answers are not easy.

Talking about it certainly is not easy.

It turns out, nothing is easy with Poverty.

You can follow the world’s posts today at http://blogactionday.org/

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A spoonful of credit crunch…

Originally uploaded by The Silver Penguin

And do it right!

The last post was a warning on how NOT to steal images. It was really a setup for this post which deals with finding the right image on the internet and using it properly.

To Recap: Poor Faye had used Google’s Image Search, found a picture she liked, and then used it for her blog.  The  owner of the image had setup a Google Alert for anything linking back to his site.  He saw that Faye had used an image so he changed the actual image on his server (the one she was linking to).  The new image which was unsightly, to say the least, now showed prominently on Faye’s post.

Here’s just one way, and my favorite way, Faye could have done it right.

Flickr

Yes Flickr is an image hosting site, but it has a really cool feature you can use to your advantage.  Creative Commons.  When a photographer decides to upload their work to Flickr they can also assign any one of 7 different Copyright licenses to their photo.

• None (All rights reserved)
• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons
• Attribution-NonCommercial Creative Commons
• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons
• Attribution Creative Commons
• Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons
• Attribution-NoDerivs Creative Commons

That means you can find a picture you like and know that it’s Rules for proper use (assuming you follow the rules).

Here’s how this works.

Go to Flickr.  Find the drop down for “EXPLORE“.  You’ll see the Creative Commons section.

Read the descriptions for your options on the right. 

Most of the time I go with the “By:”

or   symbol.

Now search for an image using descriptive tags, like “sunny day” or “kid on swing” or even "credit crunch".

Every image you find is free to use. All you have to do is give proper credit the photographer (as I did on the first picture above).

If you still are not finding the right image, try changing to another Creative Commons sections.  My second favorite is the

  or in human terms, the "Attribution-NoDerivs License"

WARNING: If the image uploaded to Flickr was not theirs to begin with, this does not remove you from liability to the real owner.

Let me put that a different, more personal way. 

Let’s say I upload a great graphic of the famous Porsche Crest.  I slap a Creative Commons License on it saying it’s free to use.  You grab the picture and use it in your blog.  Meanwhile Porsche employs leagues of very high powered people constantly searching the globe for improper use (ask me how I know).  They find your picture and you get a cease and desist letter.  “Well, Mike said it was ok” doesn’t hold water.

• Best Idea.  Take your own pictures.
• Second Best.  Use Flickr and Creative Commons.

Are you following me on Twitter?

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• Supporting Creative Commons
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File this under Public Service Announcement.

Since nearly every cell phone has a camera, and since advanced editing tools are available for free, it makes no sense to steal a picture from the internet.

I know it’s easy to do.  Just do a Google image search and you’ll find exactly what you need, right?

Once you find the image you can just insert the image via the URL that way you don’t have to worry about uploading it to a server.

That is unless the image was originally put up by someone who had a Google alert for anything linking back to their site.  That would be a bad thing.

Why you ask?

We’ll let’s just say you have a sweet little blog called Faye’s Blog.

You did just that and found the perfect picture and stuck it in your post like this:

It looks nice.  Good job!  

There's one problem though.

The owner of the image (the same one who carefully hand crafted the image Credit Crunch) happens to have a Google Alert set to look for anything that links back to his site.

Within minutes of your post, Google sent that same owner an alert pointing him to your post.

The owner could then substitute yet another image into his server files replacing the original image with something less appealing than what you might have first found.

You can guess this might not be such a good thing.  You see by the owner replacing that image with anything he wants, the new image now instantly shows up in your post!

Oh - Oh!  This isn’t going to look good to Faye’s readers…

Faye’s Bio says…

I’m currently at the University of Aberden doing an MLitt in English Literary Studies.

Good for you Faye. 

Next post I'll show you how to find and properly use pictures you find on the internet.

Are you following me on Twitter?

REBlogWorld was an EPIC event. 

Certainly one of the highlights of my year (so far)

Kristal was there capturing it all in pictures.

Words cannot describe what happened in Vegas but I think a series of pictures does come close.

Fabulous Work Kristal - Fabulous!

Be Human. Follow me on Twitter and go PINK