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A new and powerful Internet search engine, that ranks real estate and chiropractor web sites based in part on the I.Q. score of the site owner, will be launched soon by NonVerac Inc. a well-funded division of research leader, PostBar Inc. The idea is to provide consumers seeking real estate not only with agents who have managed to get their Web site ranked high on search engines, but also with ones who are likely to be "smarter than the average bear" according to NonVerac's female CEO and founder, Iama G. D. Prevaric, Ph.D. The approach will be basically the same for chiropractors listed in the new engine. This move is sure to be extremely controversial. Says Prevaric, "Our research showed that agents having the highest-ranking sites were not necessarily the smartest ones in a given city, according to consumer polls we did following 5,275 home sales. The most common consumer complaint extracted from the study was, 'You wouldn't think that someone smart enough to get their Web site that high on a search engine would be so stupid when it came to handling our transaction.'" Prevaric's firm was able to match real estate agent and chiropractor names with the same person's elementary and/or high school or college I.Q. test results in six test cities: Los Angeles, New York City, Miami, Denver, Boston and Cleveland. The search engines will launch first in those same cities in late May. She said that under the "Freedom of Information" act, schools had no choice but to deliver up the I.Q. scores on demand. The new real estate agent and chiropractor search engine will be available on the World Wide Web about May 25th, according to Prevaric. The former is named "SmarterAgent.com" and the latter, "SmarterBoneDoc.com. Engines for other professions, including medical doctors, nurses, attorneys, investment counselors, stock brokers and others will soon follow," she said. I suspect that if they have not already done so, officials of Densa, the low I.Q. society to which, interestingly, many real estate agents belong, are preparing to vigorously complain to the Federal Trade Commission, citing laws dealing with discrimination, restraint of trade, and issues regarding the public vs. privacy aspects of an individual's school records. I have no doubt that many, many anti-discrimination groups will do the same. On the other hand, such search engines may well do as they promise and provide consumers with agents and chiropractors that are the smarter ones in their geographic area. If so, this could be a beneficial service, delivering agents and chiropractors that are more likely to dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s for consumers, whether it be homes or bones. I'll keep you posted as I hear of new developments.
Quick Tech Tips by Bill Koelzer (These are Real!) Alphabetize Your Microsoft Browser Favorites Scores of people have asked me how to alphabetize the “Favorites” that they’ve accumulated in their Microsoft Internet Explorer browser. What’s a “favorite” you might ask? Favorites are Web (or Windows) pages you have saved electronically in your browser as though you had “bookmarked” a real book with a piece of paper. When you go to favorites, you can find your bookmarked Web sites within two clicks. Ideally, that is! Click here
for the full story: Password & Spyware Info For generating random passwords, then remembering them for you, we like the form-completion utility from www.moonsoftware.com. It’s called Password Agent and both columnists/speakers Michael Russer and Bill Koelzer highly recommend it. For more details, visit Michael J. Russer’s March 26th column in AgentNews on protecting and remembering passwords. PC World recommends Roboform and there are other alternatives. To see if your computer is inhabited by any adware or spyware, download the free Ad-Aware program for your system. A quite powerful tool to kick out even Trojan horses and other insidious invaders is Spy Sweeper which lets you do a free scan for scalliwags on your computer. How to Run Scan Disk inWindows XP—YES, You Can!In the earlier Windows versions, ‘95, ‘98 and 2000, when your computer froze up or acted weird, you could run the utility called Scan Disk, which searched all through your hard drive, looking problems, then fixed them. It was sort of like having a built-in techie who could fix anything. In no time you’d be up and running again. Now there’s Windows XP and where can you find Scan Disk? Well, most people can’t and indeed, with Windows XP and XP Pro being so stable now, there’s little need. But every so often stuff happens, and if you can fix your faulty drive yourself, why pay an outsider to do it? Here’s how to find Scan Disk.. Click on Start, select My Computer, look under “Hard Disk Drives” for the icon of your C drive, right click on the icon, select Properties, select Tools, Under “Error Checking,” click on the button “Check Now.” Put a check in both boxes under “Check Disk Options, click on Start. Now, just wait quite a few minutes until Scan Disk checks every sector of your hard drive(s) for errors, and fixes them. Afterwards, it’s a good idea to reboot. Likely by then your magical built-in XP techie called Scan Disk will have fixed whatever was wrong.
2004 'Most Impressive Welcome to the Most Impressive Website Contest – our second annual promotion that provides YOU - our valued clients - an opportunity to nominate a website designed and hosted by Advanced Access for a special award. This contest is special as it was created last year by our Advanced Access forum members. We are pleased to announce the nomination period for our 2nd annual "Most Impressive Website" contest. Nominations will be accepted from April 1, 2004 to April 30, 2004. The voting period will be the first two weeks in May and the winner will be announced in the May Newsletter. This is a contest voted on by your peers. Please review the available categories and decide which site you would like to nominate. When you submit your nomination, please enter it into ONE CATEGORY ONLY (even if you believe your website is the best in multiple categories). Also, please choose an option under the “Who’s Nominating this Website” field and let us know if you are the site owner, a friend, or just an admirer of the website. If a website is nominated more than once, and in more than one category, the website will be submitted into the category of the owner’s choice. The winners will be announced in the May Advanced Access Newsletter.
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Read the following from real estate professionals who are using Advanced Access' Marketing Tips to their advantage:
I just wanted to say thanks to all of the support folks that helped me with the daunting task of converting my hundreds of Realtor link exchanges that were not in any order to be sorted by state. The virtual office was easier to understand than I thought it would be (for someone who is not very tech savvy) & the support staff was there to help when I got stuck a few times. It's nice to know we have this level of support when we need it.
Dave Alperin, GRI, REALTOR® "I just wanted to say thank you to Jeff at AA who I spoke with this morning. I finally decided to tackle my reciprocal links and after spending many, many hours and still not being able to accomplish what I was trying to accomplish, Jeff solved my problem and now I have an AMAZING Realtor's Link Page! Still have a few things to tweak, but I am so excited that I can start linking. Please go to my website everyone and link to me and vice versa! Thanks again Jeff!"
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Bill
Koelzer is a Web marketing consultant to Web-proficient agents
nationwide. He is co-author, with Barbara Cox, Ph.D., of the
Prentice-Hall books, "
