Often when working with data especially data that is unformatted, such as the information I export from the MLS, I will receive a large number of blank rows interspersed with the information I am interested in. One solution would be to just sort the data and the blanks will be at the bottom or top of the list depending on the sort order. Now suppose the order of the data is as important as the data within the list well the technique below will allow you to delete the blank rows while preserving the order of the list.

Before you begin please make sure you save your workbook.

1. Step one select the range of cells you want to remove blanks from
2. Press F5 on your keyboard or click Edit and Goto
3. Click the Special button
4. Click the Blanks option and click OK.
5. If you are using Excel 2007 choose click the arrow under delete on the ribbon and choose Delete Sheet Rows. If you are using Excel 2003 or Excel XP right click click delete and select entire row.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Final Product

- Mark Flavin

Between monitoring servers, checking email, and just surfing the internet I find that I quickly run out of screen real estate so for me multiple monitors are a must have. However multiple monitors have their drawbacks for instance one monitor has the taskbar and the other monitor has only whatever windows you drag onto it.  

Enter UltraMon, frankly after only a couple days of using UltraMon I can’t imagine running multiple monitors without it.  There are ton of features to UltraMon and to be honest I am still exploring the program but some of the best ones I will describe below.

First, I love being able to easily stretch a single wallpaper across the monitors.

The next thing I love about UltraMon is a feature called smart taskbar which essentially extends your taskbar across both monitors and clearly identifies which program belongs to which monitor. This makes it much easier to switch back and forth between programs without hunting for the window which you minimized.

Another really cool feature is Mirroring, Ultramon will allow you to show the exact same screen to two or monitors. This could be really useful for presentations or if you are sharing a document with a client who is across from you or if you would like to show your desktop on a TV mounted behind you (a broker asked me to help him set this up).

The last feature I really like about UltraMon is that it lets you quickly move programs between monitors by right clicking on the window title. UltraMon will also allow you to maximize any window across all monitors which can be really helpful when working with large images.

  

As I said there are a many more features to this program but if you are using or plan on using multiple monitors I would definitely recommend that you give UltraMon a try. 

-Mark Flavin 

This is news to me but may not be news to everyone.

I was on the phone with Top Producer today helping a customer (agent) and he has a pocket pc phone. We were trying to get it to work with Top Producer Sellphone. Yes we got it to work, yes it sucked.

Top Producer SellPhone is great for a standard cell phone with a WAP browser. But Pocket PC phones (Winblows Mobile) uses IE so we had to enter a special http address to access Top Producer SellPhone. It works but its kludgey.

Getting to the point.

The support rep on the phone said that there is a Windows Mobile and Blackberry sync client in beta right now and the plan is to release it in January.

So for you Top Producer users that want to ditch the Palm and go Windows Mobile you can have your Top Producer data and have Supra eKey soon.

Side note.
I do not recommend Top Producer but I won’t say its a crappy product either. I just thing that most agents don’t need it because they don’t use it to its fullest capabilities and then becomes a waste of money.

If you are one of those that don’t use all the features then just switch to Outlook.

I will have more articles about CRM (customer relationship management) apps soon.

Loren Nason
Future of Real Estate Technology
Your Local Tech

How to put listings on your Video iPod.

This is for a customer that asked if it was possible.

I first asked Joel over at Future of Real Estate Marketing if he had heard of it being done. His response was that it was possible but kludgey.

So I thought about it and here is what I came up with:

Step 1:
Create Video of house
It can already be created for you but you need something to upload to YouTube.
YouTube needs these formats QuickTime .MOV, Windows .AVI, or .MPG files AND they recommend these specs MPEG4 (Divx, Xvid) format at 320×240 resolution with MP3 audio.

Step 2:
Get a YouTube account and upload video.

Step 3:
Install Firefox browser if you don’t have it.
www.getfirefox.com

Step 4:
Install Greasemonkey for Firefox – http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org

Step 5:
Install Script for Greasemonky to add dowload link for YouTube & Google Video
http://www.joshkinberg.com/blog/archives/2005/11/greased_google.php
Once this installed you will get a link at the top of all pages of youtube when viewing a video.

Step 6:
Download and save your video with Firefox.

Step 7:
Download and install Media Coder:
http://www.rarewares.org/mediacoder/

Step 8:
Convert your video you downloaded from YouTube

Almost done

Step 9:
Copy your newely converted video to your iPod
Show your listings

Yes THIS IS A PAIN IN ARSE.

Anybody else have any other ideas?

Loren Nason
Future of Real Estate Technology

A while ago i wrote and article about how to Tether you Palm to your laptop so you can get internet access.

What I didn’t look into at the time was if it supports Windows Mobile Phones. Well yes it does and it makes life so much easier.

Why would you want to do this?

Well if you have High Speed access on your phone you can use your phone to get internet access on your laptop without having to purchase a seperate Broadband card from the cell phone companies.

You are now saving more money.

The application works with the following phones:
Treo 700w/700wx, Treo 750, Motorola Q, PPC/XV 6700, Samsung I730/I830, T-Mobile MDA, Cingular 8125.

Get it here:
http://www.junefabrics.com/palmnet/index.php

Enjoy

Loren Nason
Future of Real Estate Technology