Tom Flanagan

Back on May 27, 2008, the NAR settled with the Department of Justice regarding its policy with VOW’s (Virtual Office Websites). The case was in litigation for over two years. I just finished watching the video update from NAR president Dick Gaylord and reading the convoluted revised Virtual Office Website Policy. The revised policy can be found here. Here’s a run down of the new policy:

• IDX applications / solutions were not affected, just VOW’s
• VOW participants not only have to have a Brokers license, they have to actively participate in the MLS and the Real Estate process.
• Users have to agree to the Terms of Use of the VOW system and have a registered account with valid email address.
• The Registrant must supply a user name and password.
• Listings displayed on a VOW must clearly identify the listing firm.
• The new policy will formally take place somewhere around Labor Day.

On a side note, if you’re as confused as I am regarding the correct grammatical use of “NAR vs. DOJ vs. VOW” visit: “Abbreviation vs. Acronym vs. Initialism“.

Here’s the Podcast DOJ update:

I can’t believe that I’m going to miss the last Providence Geeks Dinner of the summer! I’ll be heading to Denver, CO. the night before preparing to launch a new site and platform. The Geeks take the rest of the summer off and return at the end of September (Wednesday 9/24/08 @ 5:50pm to be exact). The Last Dinner is July 16th, 2008 - 5:30 - 9:00pm at the AS220.

AS220 is located at 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI. A super cool place.

Here’s the Street View:
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This dinner will feature: mofuse - a new start-up focusing on mobile and blogging. Haven’t checked-out the Geeks, do so here.

If not, submit it to “Search Pinging Service”. Here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/25ezrm.  Want to learn more about the Pinging Service and the Google blog search? Here’s the link for the FAQ page: http://tinyurl.com/3nyrm8.

I have five Browsers on my laptop: Opera, Netscape Navigator, Safari, IE and Firefox. Firefox is hands down my Fav! Thunderbird is also my preferred mail client. I’m pretty much a huge Mozilla fan. I just recently downloaded Firefox 3, Mozilla’s latest offering. The new release boosts 15,000 improvements. One of the newest Features is the “Awesome Bar” or the “Smart Location Bar”. Basically, it suggests previously viewed sites. Now, Firefox 3 is a sleek Browser with many new cool features and add-on’s.

However, I didn’t find the “Awesome Bar” so Awesome. When typing in a URL, the drop down actually showed my gmail inbox. Certainly not something I’d like to show. Especially, when setting-up a web based corporate presentation!  Disabling this feature was one of the first things I did after upgrading. I found this really great, quick video tutorial on c|net. Enjoy!