Thursday, April 9, 2009 - Embeding a Video into a RealTown Blog Entry
Recently we've been asked how to embed a video in a RealTown blog entry. It IS possible! ;)
When you go to YouTube or a similar video site, you are usually provided 'Embed Code' which will allow you to put the video on your website, blog, or pretty much any online post. This can be done with a simple copy and paste of that code. If the code isn't inserted properly, or if the site you are posting to doesn't allow code, your video won't show up properly, it might end up looking like this:
That's probably not what you want to display to the world ;)
If you want to add video to your RealTown blog entry, you need to embed the code directly into the source for your blog entry. You can do this by clicking the 'Source' button in the upper left corner of your editing window when you are typing out your blog entry.
First, go to your RealTown blog and create a new entry, or edit an existing entry.
Next, type out your entry just as you normally would. When you are ready to insert your video you might want to hit 'Enter' a few times so your video has a new line instead of showing up in a sentence.
Click the 'Source' button in your Entry Editor.
You will be brought to the source for your entry. You will see the text of your entry surrounded by code.
Find the point where you left off, you will notice a few tags, these are basically where you hit the 'Enter' key, they are page breaks in HTML code. Place your entry after the desired text and one or two of these page breaks and click your cursor where you want to embed the video.
Paste in the code.
When you are done, you should see the box where your video will be within the entry. If you need to move it down some just hit 'Enter' above or below it as you normally would.
There are *some* video sources that may not be compatible with your blog. To be extra safe, check the box in the bottom of your entry editor that reads Filter this entry's HTML using Tidy. Filtering the HTML may help fix broken HTML problems. If the code is compatible with RealTown's blogs, the video will display once you post your entry given that the viewer has the proper plug-ins installed.
It's always a good idea to view the public side of your entry to be safe.
Thursday, November 13, 2008 - Getting All Your E-mails on Multiple Computers
These days many people use multiple computers. You may have a computer at work which your company provides, another desktop computer at home, and even a laptop for when you are on the go. What a lot of these people don't know is that you CAN receive all your e-mails from all your accounts on each of these computers!
If you setup one of your accounts on two (or more) different computers, and don't alter any advanced settings, both computers will 'compete' for your e-mail. When you check e-mail on one of your computers, you will get the e-mail that is waiting for you on your mail server. When you go to check your e-mail on the other machine, that computer will only download mail that has arrived since you last hit the 'Send/Receive' button on the other machine. This causes confusion as to which computer has which mail stored on it. Neither computer will have access to ALL of your e-mail.
Well, there is a solution! Outlook (and most other e-mail clients) will allow you to store a copy of your e-mail on your mail server, allowing the other computer(s) a chance to receive the exact same set of messages. If you choose to use this feature you will need to make the setting change (below) on all computers you use. I also suggest selecting an extra option that automatically removes your e-mail from the server after a certain number of days so that you don’t fill up your mailbox on your e-mail provider’s server.
Other people who might use this feature are people who frequently visit their mail server (sometimes referred to as 'Web Mail') to check their e-mails remotely from a computer other than their own. Leaving a copy of e-mail on the server would allow you to access it when you aren't at your machine.
Here is how you make this change if you are using one of the versions of Outlook listed below:
Outlook Express (and some older versions of Outlook):
Go to your ‘Tools’ menu and choose ‘Accounts’
Double click on the name of the account you wish to alter
Select the ‘Advanced’ tab
Check the box under Delivery that reads ‘Leave a copy of messages on server’ (I suggest also checking the box below that reads ‘Remove from server after # days’ and selecting the number of days it would normally take you to check your e-mail on all your computers. This will allow you to get a copy of everything on all your computers, but your mail will be deleted from the server after this number of days so that you don’t fill up your mailbox.)
Hit ‘Apply’ then ‘OK’ to save your changes.
Outlook 2003: Go to your ‘Tools’ menu and choose ‘E-mail Accounts’
Choose ‘View or change existing e-mail accounts’ (usually selected by default) then click ‘Next’
Double click on the name of the account you wish to alter
Click the ‘More Settings…’ button
Select the ‘Advanced’ tab
Check the box under Delivery that reads ‘Leave a copy of messages on server’ (I suggest also checking the box below that reads ‘Remove from server after # days’ and selecting the number of days it would normally take you to check your e-mail on all your computers. This will allow you to get a copy of everything on all your computers, but your mail will be deleted from the server after this number of days so that you don’t fill up your mailbox.)
Hit ‘Apply’ then ‘OK’ to save your changes.
Outlook 2007:
Go to your ‘Tools’ menu and choose ‘Account Settings’
Double click on the name of the account you wish to alter
Click the ‘More Settings…’ button in the lower right corner
Select the ‘Advanced’ tab
Check the box under Delivery that reads ‘Leave a copy of messages on server’ (I suggest also checking the box below that reads ‘Remove from server after # days’ and selecting the number of days it would normally take you to check your e-mail on all your computers. This will allow you to get a copy of everything on all your computers, but your mail will be deleted from the server after this number of days so that you don’t fill up your mailbox.)
Hit ‘Apply’ then ‘OK’ to save your changes.
Now keep in mind there is a small downside to this method... Spam and other e-mail you delete will have to be deleted on each computer, but for most people that's a small price to pay for the convenience of being able to access all your e-mail from every computer you use.
Thursday, October 30, 2008 - How to add an RSS Feed to your My RealTown Feed Reader
This tutorial will explain what RSS is, how it is used, and how to make it work for you.
In short, RSS, or Real Simple Syndication, is an easy way to keep track of all your favorite online publications without having to visit a hundred different websites every day.
A long long time ago, you could subscribe to some websites. The website would e-mail you automatically every time there was new content added to the site. This sounds pretty neat in theory, problem is, if you subscribed to a really busy website where content is added many times a day, or if you subscribed to multiple websites, your inbox would be flooded with these e-mails. That’s when some genius came up with a solution, RSS!
An RSS feed contains a little information about the feeds you choose. Usually this is the title of the feed, the website it belongs to, the latest website updates, and sometimes, a description or full contents of the article(s) and the date the item was added.
As a user of RSS, you don’t need to know any of its history or how it works. The part you need to know about is actually Really Simple…
The first thing you need to harness the power of RSS is a Feed Reader. Most NEW web browsers and e-mail clients have a feed reader built in… but RealTown also provides a pretty powerful reader for its members accessible via your My RealTown home page. We think your My RealTown home page is a great place to start your day, if you do to, make it your home page!
The first step here is to go to http://RealTown.com and login (if you aren’t logged in already). Click the Member Login link in the upper right corner of the screen. Input your username or e-mail address and password. Note the Remember Me checkbox. If you don’t want to have to login the next time you visit RealTown, make sure you check this box. When you are done, click Login.
You will automatically be brought to your My RealTown home page, but if you aren’t, or you were already logged in, simply click the My RealTown button in the upper right corner of the screen.
This big box in the middle of the screen is your My RealTown Feeds. This is where you can subscribe or unsubscribe to any RSS feed you’d like. We have pre-filled a few for you, RealTown News, RISMedia, User and Friend Feeds, and others. To get a feel for how it works, select RIS Media. You will see all of the most current RIS Media News Article Headlines, newest on top. If the title seems like something you’d like to read, just click the title, and I will be brought directly to that article on it’s original website.
So how do you do it?!
Well, Any time you see an orange icon like this: (sometimes they are slightly different) next to a link that says ‘RSS Feed’ that means there is a feed available for the site you are on. This icon is pretty much standard. Most websites that offer an RSS Feed will have this icon available somewhere on its site. For this tutorial, lets find a real world example.
Lets go to http://Time.com; Time Magazines website. Basically, when we get to Time.com we have to search for the little orange icon, and/or the words RSS Feed…. On this particular website, you'll find it, at the very bottom of the screen.
In this case, clicking the link will bring us to a page where we can choose what feed(s) we want.
Pick a topic you are interested in, then click the Subscribe link. You will be brought to a page that looks like this:
Since RealTown isn't listed in the list of feed reader software, you'll need to use the link above that reads [view xml]. Right click on that link, and choose Copy Shortcut (if you are using Firefox, the link will read copy link location). This copies the URL to your clip board so we can go back to RealTown (or whichever feed reader you prefer) and add the feed.
Next, we go back the My RealTown page and click +Add a Feed (within the Feed Reader window). In the first field: Feed Address, input the URL you just copied by holding the “Control” button and pressing "V", or you can right click in the field and choose ‘Paste’. Name the feed anything you like, something that will tell you what feed this is or where it is from. Since I chose TIME Top Stories, that’s what I will title it. When you are finished, click ‘Add Feed’. The page will refresh and you will see confirmation if everything was done correctly. You will also see that "TIME Top Stories" (or whatever you titled your new feed) will appear at the bottom of your Custom Feeds. If you click on the title, you will see the titles of the most recent headlines. If you see something you want to read, simply click the title (or right click and open in new tab or window) and you will be taken directly to that article.
Pretty neat huh? Once in a while I have a hard time finding a feed to a website I like to read. Sometimes it is because they don’t offer feeds, but sometimes the feeds are just hidden. If I can’t find the feed on their website, I’ll go to Google, and search for something like “People Magazine RSS Feed”. This will usually bring up the RSS Feed for the particular news site you are looking for so long as it is offered.
Let’s go back to the feed reader. If you ever want to unsubscribe from this feed, simply select the feed, then click the unsubscribe link below the feed titles.
If you ever want to see more than the 10 newest articles, click the ‘Visit Website’ button. You will be taken directly to the source of this feed and more than likely you’ll be able to browse through their older articles.
Most sections of RealTown.com also offer RSS feeds. There is a feed for our articles, there are feeds available on most blogs (it is up to the blog owner to allow or not allow the feed to be turned on), groups, and our communities.
Let’s try adding the feed for a blog. If there is a particular blog you enjoy reading on RealTown, go to it. For this example I will visit Saul Klein’s blog. Same process here, we are looking for the RSS icon and/or the words “RSS Feed”.
Here it is, toward the bottom left side of the screen. We right click on the icon and choose ‘copy shortcut’, then we go back to our feed reader, click ‘+Add RSS Feed’, name the feed, paste in the URL, and click ‘Add Feed’. We now have two custom feeds!
RealTown allows you to add up to 100 custom feeds, so don’t hesitate to add them. Remember, you don’t have to read all these articles every day, you don’t even have to browse the headlines for each source, this is just an easier way for you to access several news websites faster. This is just one of the many useful tools we offer you here at RealTown—FOR FREE! So, start your day here at RealTown—THE Real Estate Network.
Friday, October 17, 2008 - How to Post to RealTalk
Here at RealTown we’ve been seeing a lot of buzz about the community platform, and there seems to be a little confusion about posting, and the difference between the web-based platform vs e-mail. Well, I’m going to try and clear all that up ;)
Let me start by saying we did change the look of RealTown.com recently, but we really didn’t change the community platform at all, so if you weren’t confused three weeks ago, then you probably don’t need to be confused now… just keep doing what you’ve been doing and you’ll be just fine!
If you ever browse the web platform, it’s a good idea to go to http://RealTown.com and make sure the site remembers you. You can accomplish this by clicking the ‘Remember Me’ checkbox from the login screen before submitting.
There are two ways to participate. You can choose to use just one method (just the web interface OR just e-mail) or a combination of both.
Via E-Mail…
Most people who have been RealTalkers for years and years prefer this method simply because it is how they are used to participating on RealTalk. If you ever want to send a message to RealTalk, simply send an e-mail to RealTalk@RealTown.com. Fill out an appropriate subject line, type out your message and hit ‘Send’. It’s that easy.
If you are reading a message you received from RealTalk, and you’d like to reply to it, simply click the ‘Reply to Community’ link at the bottom of that message. This will open up a preaddressed e-mail, with the subject line already filled in. Don’t mess with the subject line unless you want to start a brand new thread. That subject line is important to keep the conversation threaded together. Just type out your response and hit ‘Send’.
Keep in mind that if you send an e-mail to the community it won’t be posted immediately, it will be moderated. Moderating is something we do MOSTLY to keep spam, auto-responders, and undeliverable messages from finding their way into your inbox. If we didn’t moderate our communities, about half the messages you receive would be junk, and no one wants that ;)
Via the Web…
If you are subscribed to receive e-mails from any of our communities, you can click the subject line of any one of these messages to be automatically brought to that thread on the web. A thread is the ENTIRE conversation—everything with that one subject line. These threads are ordered chronologically.
From your inbox, you can simply click the ‘View/Reply on the Web’ link to be taken to the threaded conversation you are reading. Once you are viewing that thread on the RealTown website, simply click the ‘Reply’ link when you are ready to post. Type in your message and click ‘Submit’. Since you posted from the web, your post will display immediately. We post things from the web immediately because we know you aren’t spam.
If you don’t have a RealTalk e-mail in front of you, and you want to post to the community (or start a new thread), just go to http://RealTown.com and login (if this is your personal computer, it’s probably a good idea to check the ‘Remember me’ box on the login screen). Once logged in click the ‘Community’ button at the top of the screen. Select the community you wish to post to from the ‘Select a Community’ drop down menu, then click ‘Create New Discussion’. Fill out your subject line and select a category. If you aren’t sure which category to choose, leave it blank and our moderators will take care of that for you. Fill out your message and click ‘Submit’. You are all done ;)
I hope this clears up at least a little confusion, but if you have questions, please reply to this post, or even contact me directly. I’ll be posting more tips shortly. Thanks guys, have fun!
Thursday, May 15, 2008 - RealTown's First Video Tutorial!
Hello all :)
I just created RealTown's first video tutorial! This tutorial is all about "How to update your RealTown Profile".
Please be patient... the video takes a few minutes to load...
If you can't wait that long, click here to see a lower quality version over at YouTube ;)
Monday, January 28, 2008 - What are you afraid of?! Start blogging today!
It seems that every day I speak to someone who wants to start a blog, but they don’t know where to start. Many of these people seem genuinely afraid of making a huge mistake. Relax! It’s not that scary! :) The blogs here at RealTown offer soooo many great features that the beginner sometimes gets overwhelmed. Just remember, pretty much everything can be undone. So to those of you who wonder: “How do I get started?” just take it one step at a time.
Most of the questions people ask me are “What should I write about?”, “What should my title be?”, “Which template should I use”, “How do I get my image up there?” etc… To these people, I recommend that you don’t sweat these details yet. What should you write about? It doesn’t matter; just start writing about whatever comes to mind. While you are writing your first few entries you’ll see that certain topics are easy for you to write about, these are probably the topics you will want to focus on with your blog… getting the first few entries written should also make it a lot easier to come up with a blog title, a blog description, and categories. Once you get going, you don’t want to be changing your Blog Title very often as that could hurt your standing on Google (and other search engines) but changing it once or twice when you just start out won’t hurt you.
Keep in mind, your blog doesn’t have to be about your business; it can be about ANYTHING! Your town, your hobbies, travel, food, things you like, your pets, things that start with the letter ‘L’, anything! Most people I speak to are Realtors, and most seem to think that their blog needs to be about Real Estate (usually specific to their local market) if they want to generate business from their blog. Personally, I don’t think this is the case.
As a realtor, you know that the most important thing is that a potential client knows your name whenever they decide to buy or sell. Maybe your blog is about local restaurants… if people are interested in reading about what you have to say about your local food, they will probably subscribe to your blog or add it to their ‘favorites’. Your name will be in their face every time they look at your most recent review. Somewhere on your blog it will probably be mentioned that you are in the Real Estate business, so when Jane Doe decides to sell her house, maybe she’ll contact that nice Realtor who likes the same restaurants she does.
I’m not necessarily saying your blog shouldn’t be about Real Estate, I am just encouraging you to explore all your options. Sometimes finding new things to write about can be challenging, so don’t lock yourself into any topic that is too specific. If you do keep your blog’s focus on Real Estate, maybe consider adding a category for “Other Stuff”, your pets, your family, jokes, musings etc… This helps create a more personal bond between you and the reader (aka your potential future client). Show them that not only do you know your way around the Real Estate business, but you might have something in common with them on a more personal level as well.
The most important thing is that you update your blog as often as possible. If you want to write about 10 completely unrelated topics, that’s fine, just organize them into different categories so visitors can find what they want.
Don’t wait on the details… You can change your title later, you can change your template later, you can edit everything any time you want. If you have an idea for a blog entry, just start blogging! You can fuss with the background color and settings some other day.
Saturday, January 26, 2008 - Beta Test our NEW Community Plaform!
Exciting news! RealTown is almost ready to launch our New Community Platform… but first, we need your help!
RealTown is assembling a group of people who would like to help us BETA Test our new web-based community platform. We will be asking these people to login to RealTown throughout the week and start chatter on our new RealTown Talk community. You will participate and add to discussions from the web, then give us feedback on the changes, and the usability. We also ask that you report any errors you may have encountered with the system while testing.
If you’d like to help us Beta Test, click here to visit the test platform. Simply select the desired community (RealTown Talk will be your only option) from the ‘Select Community’ drop down. By default, ‘All Categories’ within RealTown Talk will be displayed. If you opt to start a discussion from this page, it will be filed under the ‘General’ category. If you would like to filter the messages by topic, simply select a category from the ‘Select Category’ drop down menu. If you click ‘Start Discussion’ from within a specific category, your post will be filed under that specific category. You will have to be logged in to post to the community.
We’d like you to post as much as possible throughout the week. Start discussions, add to discussions, and let us know what you like and don’t like. If you get any errors, let us know about them by sending an e-mail to CommunityBeta@RealTown.com. Any comments, questions, or concerns can be sent to CommunityBeta@RealTown.com as well.
Friday, January 25, 2008 - What the heck is "Spoofing"?
Almost daily, InternetCrusade gets a call about "spoofing"... even though most people don't even know what "spoofing" is.
In short, "Spoofing" is when someone (usually a spammer) puts your return address on the e-mail(s) they send out. This is no different than someone putting your return address on a physical envelope. When the postman takes that envelope to a bad address, the envelope is sent to the return address—even if that isn’t the person who actually sent the letter.
Spammers almost always do this. If they “spoof” your address, it makes it a lot harder to find the person sending out junk mail… and as an added bonus, they don’t get all the returned mail from all the bad addresses they send to—you do! If they happen to “spoof” one of your e-mail addresses, you are the lucky one who gets to deal with the bounces and/or angry replies.
Once spammers know a domain name exists, they will put random words/characters before the @YourDomain.com in the return address of all their mail and send away. This usually only happens for a few days or a few weeks because the spammer moves on to a new domain name after a while.
The reason many InternetCrusade customers experience this is because we are one of the few companies that give our customers the use of unlimited addresses on their domain name through the use of a feature called a “catch-all”. If the catch-all feature is turned on, you will receive e-mail addressed to EVERYTHING@YourDomain.com. The chances of a spammer using AnythingTheyWant@YourDomain.com are a lot higher than them sending as a specific address like Mary@YourDomain.com.
Unfortunately, spoofing an e-mail address is easy, and there is no way to stop someone from doing it. There is however a way to stop you from having to deal with all the returned mail… turn off your catch-all. This can be done with a quick call or e-mail to your friends here at InternetCrusade. We can leave certain addresses active if you need us to (like 123MainStreet@YourDomain.com or any other address(es) you have given out) and we can turn you catch-all back on whenever you want- it’s usually best to wait a week or two.
RSS Blog Feed
(sometimes they are slightly different) next to a link that says ‘RSS Feed’ that means there is a feed available for the site you are on. This icon is pretty much standard. Most websites that offer an RSS Feed will have this icon available somewhere on its site. For this tutorial, lets find a real world example.
