Cloud Computing and Real Estate

Hi Folks,

   Glad to have you back. If you are lucky enough to have the Holiday off for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I hope that you have a nice, relaxing day planned.

   Lately, every time you turn on your TV, you hear, "To The Cloud", or "Cloud this", and "Cloud that". What exactly is this, "Cloud". Well, this is not the kind of cloud that you see in the sky. This is referring to a virtual cloud, where a sky cloud has billions of little droplets of water, and the Computing Cloud has billions of servers hosting Web sites and Web Applications ("Apps").

   As Wikipedia refers to it, "Cloud computing is location independent computing, whereby shared servers provide resources, software, and data to computers and other devices on demand, as with the electricity grid.", which is the "Cloud", or you can even think of it as an ocean. It's huge and made up of billions of pieces.

   Now, as Cloud Computing relates to an industry, such as the Real Estate industry, Wikipedia continues to say that, "This frequently takes the form of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through a web browser as if it were a program installed locally on their own computer." So, to break this down, a Realtor or an investor can be on the road looking at homes, and can pull out their laptop, IPad, IPhone, Droid, etc, and can access a Web Site that can run the same Home-Valuation App that they can run from their desktop in their office. Thus, they are accessing the "Cloud" to do exactly what they can do from their office. As long as their is a connection to the Internet, they can do this.

   Hopefully, this can give you a good understanding of how Cloud Computing is and how it relates to the Real Estate industry. Things have come a long way since my Commodore 64K Computer in the 80's! (Now, I'm dating myself with that statement !).

   Did I miss anything? Comments? Suggestions? We'd love to hear

Have a Great Week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !
Regards,
Rob Eisenstein
HomeRun Homes Blog http://blogging.lease2buy.com
HomeRun Homes Website http://www.lease2buy.com


Tags: #cloudcomputing #realestate #realtor

A Special Interview with Our Head Web Designer

Hi Folks,

   What can I say? Snow, Snow, and more snow coming. Remember a few years back when we didn't get a snowflake all winter? Well, winters is back with a vengeance !

   Today, I'd like to give everyone a long overdue look at our main Web designer, David Davis of DCGWS Internet Solutions. First, just a little look back in time to 2008. At that time, we had been in business for over 6 years, and business was going really well. However, we were operating in the "Stone Age", and we were basically entering in all Ads manually on the website. There was no user control panel, and the lines of communication were getting more difficult as the business was growing.

   I realized that in order to keep growing and to continue to provide quality customer service, I needed to upgrade my site with a database, along with some automatic features to keep the flow of information as timely and efficiently as possible. And so, my search began...6 solid months of looking for and interviewing web designers. In all of that time, the only designer that I spoke with that really "got me" and knew exactly what I wanted was David.

   I have posed a few questions to David for the purposes of this interview, and here are his responses:

Question 1: "David, for the purpose of this interview, can you provide some comments about our website, Lease2Buy.com?":

David: "Lease2buy.com is a real estate listings website powered by Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP OOP (Object Oriented Programming). It is in my humble opinion, the best and most successful website in it’s class."

Question 2: "How far has the site come along since you came on board?":

David: "When I took over the programming of lease2buy.com. the entire website and all its property listings were static pages, meaning all manually added and edited. Rob asked me to completely automate the site and that was what I did. An end user can browse the site, buy an ad or even multiple ads via a major credit card or PayPal, and once the transaction is completed, the ad becomes “live” without any interaction from the website owner or webmaster."

Question 3: "Can you comment on the Security of the Website?":

David: "The site has PHP session based logging, and uses encrypted passwords for both the user back end and site administrator back end."

   David, thank you for a wonderful job. Your work ensures the integrity and efficiency of all visitors to HomeRun Homes (www.Lease2Buy.com), and provides excellent security for those placing Ads on the website. Keep up the good work.

Please post your comments (and Kudos!) to David !

Have a Great Week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !
Regards,
Rob Eisenstein
HomeRun Homes Blog http://blogging.lease2buy.com
HomeRun Homes Website http://www.lease2buy.com

Tags: #Linux #Apache #PHP