Virtual Meeting Place

Dimdim wants to make the world a smaller place–one free web-based meeting at a time. Boston-based Dimdim is  an open source web company that lets you host free meetings online for as many as 20 participants. It also offers Pro and enterprise class options for users who want to host larger meetings.

The service requires no software to download and takes only one click to start or join a web conference that can be attended from any web browser. The meeting can even be recorded and shared with others as a URL or embeddable code. Other  features include: screen/desktop sharing, audio, private and group chat/IM, video, white boarding, document sharing, recording of meetings, reporting, widgets and more.

Ribbit for Salesforce Wins Award

Remember Ribbit?  The company creates a single online phone that consolidates all your voice lines. And just recently, the  Technology Marketing Corporation named Ribbit for Salesforcea 2008 Communications Solutions Product of the Year Award. Earlier this year, Ribbit for Salesforce was named the “Best Mobile App of 2008″on the salesforce.com AppExchange, based solely on salesforce.com customer reviews.

RETextLeads Offers Mobile Marketing and Lead Generation

If you work in real estate, odds are you spend countless hours placing ads, creating flyers and distributing brochures for multiple properties. But Chris Haller, founder and director at xMedia Participation, describes that as a waste of both time and money. He wants, “to empower real estate professionals with a faster, better, more affordable way to get the attention of potential buyers so they can close more deals.”

Take Your Documents on the Road

Reduce paper, improve organization and do something nice for the environment in the process. It may sound like the stuff of dreams for CRE professionals, but Pixily claims it can make it reality. Pixily is an on-demand document management service that promises it can “help aggregate, organize, find and share paper and electronic documents,” for fees of around $14.95 a month.

Pixily “offers busy, on-the-move individuals” the ability to access all of their documents anywhere, anytime.  “Customers’ documents all travel with them – in a paperless, environmentally-friendly and clutter-free fashion,” a company release explains.

Quick Scans From Your Digital Camera

Scanning documents and business cards is a time saver for any busy CRE pro. But what do you do if you’re on the road? Snapter is one solution to consider.  It’s software that lets you use a digital camera as a mobile scanner. The software automatically crops, stretches, flattens and converts photos of documents, whiteboards, posters, business cards and receipts into more portable images.   The  perspective correction, for instance,  can take a slanted/disoriented image and rotate it to the right orientation.

Whether you’re in a conference room or having coffee with a client, “ just snap the photo and run it through Snapter to produce images that look as if they have been scanned through a flatbed scanner,” the manufacturer states. It’s free to try, $49 to buy. Test it and let me know how it works.

Make Your Own Social Network With Ning

If you’re already using LinkedIn or other social networks, maybe it’s time to get more creative. Consider creating  your own niche social network with Ning, a free, user-friendly site perfect for CRE pros. Just recently, the National Association of Realtors created a Field Guide to Ning, which includes information on what Ning is, how it works and the ways  the real estate community is using it.

Vyew Online Collaboration in a New Way

Vyew is a next-generation online collaboration and web conferencing service. In other words, a web application that a CRE pro might use to make a full presentation to a relocating buyer or out of area seller. 

Inside Vyew you can author new content and collaborate with PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and PDF files, plus audio, video and images. You can also stream live or capture what’s showing on your desktop…all for free. The product has been around for several years.

Last September, the founders  released Vyew 3.0, which added features including   contextual discussions, voice comments, webcam support and other communication enhancements.  A video demonstration  is available here.

T-Rex Global Offers Free Web Apps to Investors

Limited tech budget this year? T-ReX Global (The Real Estate eXchange Global) may have a solution. The company builds free property management software and tax filing web tools, including SimplifyEm.com Property Management Software, DepreciateEm.com – Real Estate Depreciation, DeferEm.com – 1031 Exchange Tax Calculator and Real Tax Tips.

 The tools are designed to help investors save time and money, and maximize their returns on property investments, said CEO Pankaj Shukla, a  former VP at Intuit’s small business division. Co-founder and President  Narinder Sandhu is a former VP  at Intuit’s payroll services. “We engage real estate investors with the development of new innovative online services called T-saps (Tiny, Simple Applications).  T-saps are dependable, intelligent, fun and easy to use applications that do a single task. Nothing more, nothing less,” Shukla said.

PolicyMap Offers Market and Demographic Data

PolicyMap is an online  mapping tool that could potentially help real estate developers, builders, franchisers and other CRE pros map and analyze more than 4,000 data indicators related to demographics, real estate markets, education, employment, money and income, crime, energy, and public investments.  The site offers access to a range of  market and demographic data, including demographic estimates and projections, homeownership and rental rates , housing affordability, housing vacancy and household turnover rates, homes sales data at the block group level and quick community profiles.  The indicators are aggregated from a variety of sources including US Census, Claritas, FBI, IRS, the Postal Service, and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. The site recently unveiled a new functionality that allows users to embed customized, data-driven maps into their own websites and blogs.

Add Wi-Fi to Digital Cameras

Eye-Fi is the world’s first wireless memory card for digital cameras. Pop it in the SD slot, and you add Wi-Fi to any camera. The free Eye-Fi service supports automatic uploads to 20 different web photo sites, including Flickr. You can also send the images to a computer on your network.

Just last week, the Mountain View, CA-based company announced it’s now developing a way for users to wirelessly upload videos from their digital camera to YouTube or a home computer. It previewed the technology at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Eye-Fi CEO Jef Holove said the company aims to “do for video what we’ve already done for photos” and provide an easy way to save and share digital memories.