A Real Estate Discussion Blog

I remember when I was in college it was cheaper to call home on Sundays.  Then, even on that cheap 7 cents a minute day, I would watch the clock the entire time I was talking to my parents.  Paying per minute- today's generation will never know the stress of watching the clock while your mother goes on and on about the neighbors.   

Today not only is communication light-years ahead of where in was when I was in college (cell phone in college??  Didn't know one person who had one.), but it has gotten so much cheaper to reach out and touch (or email, text, ping, call, etc) someone.  And in many cases, the price has come down to free! 

Check out these latest ways to communicate with someone - for free! 

Jott.com -  Say you are driving down the road and you remember that you forgot to email your ad copy to the person that handles your company's page in the real estate magazine.  It needs to be in now and she likes in writing.  You are in hurry, driving, and you don't have time to compose an email on your blackberry.  Jott to the rescue.  Simply call Jott's 1-800, say the name of the person you want to Jott (you would have had to programmed her to your contact list, which is very easy to do) and leave your message.  Jott will turn your voice into an email and email your message to the recipient in seconds. 

Meebo.com -  This is a service that lets you instant message from anywhere.  This is a cute service, but they have one application that could be very useful to any agent with a website.  Meebo Me is a widget you can download on the site and integrate into your website allowing you to see the people you are visiting your web page and chat with them!  Imagine that user experience on your site!  Go to www.meebome.com/learnmore.html  to learn more. 

Pinger.com - Say you have a seller that is completely rude to work with (I'll let you think about this for a second...as it will probably be hard to come up with one...) and you need to relay a message that it is imperative that they get you the condo docs by 4:00 today.  You need to get this message to them, but you don't want to actually have to talk to them and just sending an email might not get your tone of how important this is across to them.  Enter Pinger.  You can call the seller through this service and it bypassing the ringing and immediately lets you leave a voicemail.  Sort of like texting, with your voice.  Go to http://www.pinger.com/content/company/learn_more.html?_t=home_learnmore  to learn more. 

I am sure there are a number of other great services like these out there, and if anyone is using them, it would be great to hear about them . 

I don't know if the 7 cent a minute plan is still in place at my old college.  I am guessing they either had to adapt to the new ways that people are using technology to communicate or they went under.   Actually, I bet a lot of other industries have had to go through similar adaptations since my college days...