This article continues our series on how to keep your contacts and calendars in sync between your mobile device and your computer.   In our first installment, we considered the challenges faced by real estate professionals and others who work away from their desks when it comes to keeping their data synchronized across multiple devices.  We’ve considered how to work on the go with iPhones and a Mac.  We’ve also looked at products and services offered by Google to keep mobile workers organized.

Today, we look at the BlackBerry and the options BlackBerry users have when it comes to getting synchronized.

The BlackBerry is the granddaddy of the synchronized smartphones, the first to use wireless technology to help busy people keep their handheld device in sync with their desktop computer.  But being the first doesn’t necessarily make it the easiest to work with.  In fact, depending on how you get your mail and what you’re trying to sync, you have quite a maze of possible solutions.  I’ve attempted to summarize some of them below.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). If your brokerage gives you an e-mail account, they probably offer you Microsoft Outlook through what’s known as an exchange server.  There’s probably an IT administrator and that person is responsible for setting up the software that lets you sync your BlackBerry and for making sure you have access to it.  If you’re in this situation, you have automatic, over-the-air synchronization between your BlackBerry and Outlook. In many respects, this is the best of all possible worlds:  you put out very little effort yet your e-mail, calendars and contacts all stay in sync.

BlackBerry Hosted E-mail.  Because BES provides the easiest syncing solution, you may wish you could do it that way even though your organization doesn’t provide it.  Enter the hosted e-mail solution.  Purchase a personal, hosted e-mail account and you get many of the advantages of being connected to an enterprise server, including having your e-mail pushed out to your smartphone and automatic, over-the-air syncing.  The cost is in the $10-$20 per month range.  Thinkpost Communication and Exchange My Mail are two companies that offer individual e-mail hosting plans.

BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS). If your mail isn’t coming from a server at the office (or even if it is), BlackBerry can work with your mobile phone company to push your email to you through its BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS).  BIS can accommodate up to ten e-mail addresses.  These can be Internet e-mail accounts like Yahoo or Hotmail; or they can be POP and IMAP accounts that come from your Internet service provider; or they can be accounts that come from an exchange server.  If your e-mail service allows it, BIS will automatically sync the e-mail between your phone and your desktop.  Then use your USB cable to sync your calendar and other data between your phone and your desktop.  Get more info here, or contact your Internet service provider.

Gmail. Google offers its own solutions to people who want to sync Google contacts, calendars or e-mail.  If you use Gmail, get the Gmail Mobile App.  Or better yet, download and install the Enchanced Gmail Plug-in on your BlackBerry.  Then use Google Sync to synchronize your contacts and calendar wirelessly over the air.

Today it’s Google’s turn.  If you use the Google Calendar, Google makes it easy to sync that calendar with your phone or desktop computer.  And if you’re using Gmail, you probably have dozens of names and addresses in your contact list.  Google sync handles that as well, helping you manage your contacts across all your devices.

Google Sync uses push technology to keep your devices synchronized; update a phone number son your computer and the new info is pushed automatically to your other devices.  Add an event to the calendar on your synced mobile phone and that change will be reflected automatically on your Google calendar.

Google Sync works with the Iphone, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile phones, among others.  The features vary, depending on what kind of phone you have, but the push technology works for most phones.  You can also sync to Outlook on your PC or iCal and Address Book on your Mac

If you’re using Google Apps at your workplace, your system administrator has to enable syncing.  Otherwise download the syncing software and get step-by-step instructions here for syncing Google to your phone.  Or learn how to sync calendars and contacts to any device at the Google Sync Services website.

This is the second piece in our series on mobile computing and synchronization.  Today’s post focuses on strategies and applications that work for Mac and iPhones (and by extension iPads and the iPod Touch).

Here’s the issue.  You work on the go.  You’re often out of the office and away from your desk.  As you meet new people, you enter their contact information into your iPhone.  Later, when you’re sitting at your computer, you want to send email to people you met earlier today.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could enter their info one time on your phone and later be able to find it among your e-mail contacts on your computer?

Ditto for appointments.  You set up a client meeting by e-mail while sitting at your computer.  Or someone puts a meeting for you on a shared calendar. How does that appointment get onto your phone so you’re reminded of it while you’re out?

Below are several solutions that work with Macs and iPhones (and by extension iPads and the iPod Touch).  Each one seems to address a different aspect of the problem, so experiment to see what works best for you.

Sync with iTunes. The simplest solution is to sync with iTunes. If you use iCal to keep your calendar on your Mac and Address Book to keep your contacts, these can be synced whenever you connect your iPhone to your computer.

Simply connect your iPhone to your computer with the cable provided.  Click the “Info” tab and check off what you want to sync.  You can sync the Address Book on the Mac, your Yahoo address book, your Google contacts, the iCal calendar on the Mac, Safari bookmarks, notes, and email account settings.

It’s the simple and it’s free, but you’ve always got to use that cable to sync.

Subscribe to MobileMe. MobileMe is Apple’s subscription service that syncs your mail, contacts, and calendars across all devices over the air automatically.  Sync your Mac, your PC, and your iPhone; keep your Mac Mail, your Mac Address Book, iCal on the Mac and Microsoft Outlook all synchronized without having to push a button or connect a cable.  And all data is backed up in the cloud so it can be restored even if you lose your iPhone.

MobileMe’s biggest drawback used to be that you had to use me.com (or mac.com) e-mail address.  But now it lets you use e-mail forwarding to manage an existing e-mail address.  MobileMe has had its share of challenges over the years, so proceed with caution.  Subscription for an individual account is $99 per year with a 60-day free trial.

Sync with Spanning Sync 3. Spanning Sync 3 lets you sync iCal on your Mac with your Google calendar, and Address Book on your Mac with your Google contacts.   Then you can use iTunes to synchronize your iPhone with your Mac.

For example, let’s say you run into an old friend at the mall and enter his contact info on your iPhone.  When you use the cable to sync your iPhone with iTunes, your friend’s contact info will be added to the Address Book on your Mac.  Then, when you synchronize your Mac with your Google account using Spanning Sync 3, your friend’s info will be added to your Google contacts.

It’s a two-step process, but it solves the problem.  Purchase Spanning Sync 3 for $25 for a year or outright for $65.

Use the SaiSuke Calendar. Keep your iPhone and your Google calendar in sync with SaiSuke, a calendar management app for the iPhone.  The SaiSuke calendar is full-featured, letting you maintain and color-code as many calendars as you wish.  View your appointments as a list, or in day, week, month and even year format. Use the memo field to add a note to any calendar item.  Sync manually or set it up for automatic wireless syncing so the calendar in your hand matches nicely with the one on your desktop.

There’s a free version that syncs only one way and only one week out, but lets you test the app before buying the full version.  The full-featured version of SaiSuke is available at the iTunes App store for $9.99.

Let’s start by defining the problem.  You meet a couple at an open house and they make an appointment to meet you at your office latter in the week.  You add their contact info (and maybe even the appointment) to your phone, but how do you get it on your laptop computer without entering it manually a second time?  And it’s not just phone numbers and appointments; it’s also notes, passwords, and favorite items.  If you’ve got several different devices—especially devices that are not in the same technical family—you have the potential to have information all over the place.

Our series will consider some possible strategies for keeping yourself organized.  Solutions include:

• Keeping It All In The Family. If you use a Mac, an iPhone, an iPod, and/or and iPad, for example, the challenges of keeping yourself organized are minimal.
• Giving it to Google. Of course, Google would know how to make it work, regardless of what kind of devices you have. They have the answer to everything, don’t they?
• Paying the Piper. Several companies make proprietary software that’s designed to make it easy for you to work on the fly. But are the solutions you pay extra for any better than the options that already exist on your computer?

And what if you have a Windows computer, a Blackberry phone, and an iPod Touch for your music?  What’s the easiest way to sync these devices that come from different technical families?

That’s our challenge: to identify the best solutions for staying organized while being mobile.  Stay tuned for our first article.

Ning

Recently, the creators of Ning made the decision to start charging for Ning networks in return for providing more features and more support.  The change will take place starting in July.  That means if you created a social network using Ning, you’ve got to decide whether to keep your group and start paying, or dissolve it.  And that can be a tough decision if you have a vibrant group with many members and lots of activity.

If you’re a WordPress users have a third option.  You can use BuddyPress, a free WordPress plug-in that lets you transform a WordPress blog into a social network site.  Then you can use a Ning to BuddyPress importer to migrate your users to your BuddyPress-created social network.

BuddyPress is completely customizable so that it can have the look and feel you want.  It gives network members an activity stream that lets them follow the actions of their friends à la Facebook; it also allows them to create profiles and set up blogs.  It has groups, forums, private messaging and a growing number of plug-ins that extend its capabilities.

It has the potential for a number of really great real estate applications and—better than Ning or Facebook—you own the content, you set the terms of service, and the members and their information belong to you.  What could be better than that?

If you have network built on Ning, take a look at what  BuddyPress can do.

The people you’re working with to get the deal closed can contact you in a number of ways, so you need an easy way to check all messages and keep all your communication organized.

That’s where these great applications come in.  All of them translate information into text and/or forward it to your email inbox, making it easy for you to receive and organize.

Fax to email applications let you send faxes from your computer or mobile phone and receive them in your email inbox:

• The eFax basic plan lets you receive faxes in your email inbox from a local number (or, for an additional fee, from a toll-free number).  The upgrade plan also converts voicemail messages to text and sends them to your inbox.  Pricing for the basic plan starts as low as $14.13 per month with a $10 set up fee.
• With myFax, you can receive up to 200 incoming fax pages as email and send up to 100 fax pages for $10 per month with no set-up fee.  Choose a local or toll free fax number for the same price.  Upgrade plans allow for more pages.

Phone-to-email applications manage and route incoming calls, and convert voicemail, texts, and faxes to e-mail:

• RingCentral virtually manages your phones by answering calls 24/7 and routing them to the requested person, even if that person is not in the office. It can send voicemail, text messages, and faxes to the agent’s email inbox for easy retrieval and storage.  It can also give a team or small brokerage a professional feel without the need for a receptionist or expensive phone equipment.  The basic plan allows for unlimited phone, fax, and voicemail for one user and starts at $49.99 per month; a plan for four users is $99.99.
• Feature-rich Grasshopper managers your calls and routes faxes and voicemails to your inbox. In addition, it lets you choose your on-hold music, create an extension with additional information for callers, and easily set up conference calls.  An upgrade feature can even read your voicemails to you while you’re, say, driving.  The basic plans starts at $9.99 per month with a $25 activation fee.
• If you’re willing to use a number assigned to you by Google Voice, you can set it up so that number rings all of your phones, translates your voicemail and text messages to email, reads your voicemail to you, records your phone calls while you’re on the line, and blocks calls you designate by sending them directly to voicemail.  And because it’s Google, it’s free, but it does require an invitation and it’s only available in the U.S.

Use this calculator in the New York Times to help your clients assess the costs and benefits of renting vs. buying.

Facebook’s

In fact, your blog turns out to be one of the most valuable Internet marketing resources you have.  Here’s why:

1. You don’t own your Facebook account, and therefore, you have no say over what changes Facebook might implement.
2. You don’t own the content on your Facebook page so that if it were shut down for some reason—or if some change in Facebook policy were to go too far and you decided to close your account—your content would be lost.
3. You like to think of them as “your” followers, but you can’t control how Facebook chooses to use the private information of people who like your page.
4. Your content (and that of millions of other people, of course) is what makes Facebook successful.  Your effort enriches Facebook.  Are you getting back as much as you give?
5. Your blog, on the other hand, is yours. You set it up, you make the decisions, and you own the content.
6. Your blog enriches only you, your brokerage, or whomever you chose to write about.
7. Your readers are your readers and your subscribers are your subscribers.  As long as you put out good content and treat them well, they’ll stay with you.   (You don’t have to worry that changes someone else makes might erode your readership.)
8. Other than occasional upgrades to the blogging software, there will be no changes that you don’t authorize.

The Internet and the social media tools we all use will no doubt continue to change and evolve as the big players try to find ways to gain market share and turn a profit.   That means we’ll frequently need to review our Internet strategy and the usefulness of the tools we’re using.  In the mean time, don’t ignore your blog.  It’s one of the best tools you have.

The Internet is an excellent medium for crowdsourcing because it can accept input from so many people.  One local real estate board is making use of the Internet’s crowdsourcing capabilities to raise the bar professionally.

The Houston Association of Realtors® (HAR) has created a Client Experience Rating system, which uses information from the “crowd” to assess the performance of real estate professionals.  At the conclusion of each transaction, buyers and sellers are invited to rate their agent.  Clients are asked to rate their agents on competency, on the agent’s knowledge of the market, on how well the agent communicated with the client during the process, and on the client’s overall experience.  Clients area also allowed write free-form comments about their agent, and about their buying or selling experience.

HAR complies these surveys and gives each agent a score (e.g., 4.8 stars out of 5).  Agent’s scores are then posted in a number of places on the HAR website, including on the agent’s web page and alongside his or her MLS listings.  Prospective clients can see the agent’s score, and can know many transactions that agent has completed before hiring him or her.  At some point, the Houston Association of Realtors® plans to allow clients to search for agents by score, which will, no doubt, reward better agents over time and weed out weaker ones.

Crowdsourcing has allowed Wikipedia to become a bigger, more vibrant encyclopedia than any paper reference book could ever be.  Crowdsourcing has the potential to raise the stakes for the real estate profession as well.

It makes a nice addition to your real estate blog and installing it is easy.  You can even configure it to match your blog’s color scheme.  Watch the tutorial below for step-by-step instructions.