Most of you who know me well know that I do not sleep. I am often awake during the night (I would much rather be sleeping but oh well) and what else is there to do but surf the ‘Net. The Internet is a wealth of information if you have the time and patience to sift through all of the blogs, forums, websites etc. I wanted to share some of the things I have been doing and things I have found during my nocturnal surfing. (Do check out my links over there to the right – I update constantly and there might be a gem in there for you!)
Land Trusts, Small Sales & Gurus OH MY!: It appears I have started a ruckus, all in response to my challenge to several assertions contained in an E-Book called "Death of the Land Trust". It appears that the author and partner started a marketing blitz and hit every real estate forum imaginable. I downloaded the book and chose to provide the legal counterpoints to certain vague, sweeping generalizations, misstatements and errors contained therein. The author and co are based in California but the book itself generalizes the laws, title and lender underwriting of land trust transactions. Of course, the thread got a bit heated but there is a lot of excellent information in it and I reckon I did get my point across about blogger responsibility. You can check out the Small Sale Flips & Land Trusts thread at WannaNetwork’s site and my posts there as Kathleen SD.
Websites of Interest, Tools, Social Networking: I found some goodies and wanted to share. First, a new real estate investment networking forum called Investment Riches – seems like a bunch of excellent people and a fantastic resource for networking. Fantastic investment tools and calculators can be found here. These calculators are free and help the investor analyze the deal for profit, rehab etc. I do like beta sites and being the first one to test drive a new concept – I get all warm and tingly inside when that exclusive invite comes in my in-box. DimDim is an online web-meeting site that is free and does not require any download to your computer. I expect to be seeing you all there when my new 20" high-def laptop (with blu ray of course) with a built in web cam arrives the end of next week. There are two sites/clients I would be lost without: PageOnce and Digsby. PageOnce is a web-based, encrypted application that stores all of the things you need in one place. Financial info such as bank accounts, credit cards, bills, social networking sites, email, shopping – just name it and its there so you can access it in one place and from any Internet location. Digsby is an IM client that incorporates Yahoo IM, AIM and other instant messenger applications as well as email and social networking sites in one place. I like it!
Software and Hardware: Yes, yes I know, I am a geek. So what – a very efficient geek because of technology. So I test drive the cutting edge beta websites (I will post the ones I found to be excellent), by the latest gadgets and applications all in an effort to be efficient. Jim Galloway has a law practice blog that is fantastic for providing techie tips, sites etc and I loved his post titled What is In Your Electronic Toolbox? I have bought Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Preferred and X-1 desktop search – I can’t imagine how we survived without them. Dragon Naturally Speaking allows you to dictate to your computer – you can dictate everything. It is a learning program so the more you use it, the more it learns your speech patterns to improve recognition. It is saving me inordinate amounts of time and typing is becoming a thing of the past. X-1 Desktop search indexes the entire contents of your computer, network drives etc. so that all you have to do is start typing a keyword and all related documents are already coming up with a preview pane- without having to open up the corresponding application. Emails, docs, excel spreadsheets, IMs, html, pictures, database files – they are all right there at your fingertips. No longer do you have to worry about where you stored a file or archiving Outlook emails for dread you wouldn’t be able to get your hands on that one email. I haven’t yet fully deployed X-1 in the office (I was test driving it first) but I am going to do it and the girls will thank me!
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