Realespace

The iGoogle team announced today that they have extended the iGoogle api and introduced some new features.

The three new features are:

1. updated navigation, similar to the Facebook app menu
2. new canvas setting so application can take up more screen real estate, similar to Facebook’s canvas page
3. friend update widget, similar to the Facebook update notifications

As you can see, iGoogle has Facebook in the crosshairs with open social as their weapon, and frankly, Facebook should be scared.

Actually, Wordpress, Six Apart, Facebook, and even smaller collaboration software vendors that have utilized Open Social should be scared. When Open Social was first announce, we installed the shindig server to integrate Open Social with all the blogs we develop. Each blog network using Wordpress Multi-user would be an Open Social container.

The idea was put on the back burner of our development because of two things, mainly the OpenSocial server (Shindig) was not very good. Open Social was announce with the intent that developers would make widgets for existing networks such as Ning, and Orkut, not making all new newtworks. Secondly, Wordpress actually has very good plugin system, that can be extended, although not a lot of developers do.

For Example,
when a developer writes a plugin, that plugin can then be extended by other developers by the use of hooks and actions. Our RateWindow™ widget is an example of this. Once a user installed the RateWindow™ application on their site, other developers can access hooks within the RateWindow™ widget. The RateWindow™ application comes with a built in e-newsletter application that can be used be the owner of the widget to brand themselves via email. We have developed a property listing widget that can be used with the RateWindow™ widget. Not only does recent blog posts get sent in the e-newsletter, but the Realtors listings, profile, and any other plugin that “Hooks up” to RateWindow.

If you not a developer, this probably makes no sense, so let’s just put it this way. All your blog plugins can communicate with each other and extend your branding. For more information contact me, I’d love to bore you with the details.

The major drawback with using Wordpress plugins as a make shift Open Social application distribution is that the Wordpress database is completely wide open because of similar naming conventions and the Wordpress database classes. Any developer can use simple code to grab anything from the database and exploit it.

I’m a big fan of Wordpress, and will continue to develop for the Wordpress platform, but today marks a big change in our thinking and development. The ideals of community building and collaboration are changing and

Mark Warner, CEO of Realespace was invited on Real Estate Radio to discuss the current state of the mortgage industry. He also introduced RateWindow™ to the public with access to our online demo.

RateWindow™ is Realespace’s first major product and is currently finishing up a private beta.

RateWindow™ is the first transparent loan pricing program on the market today and it’s setting a new standard in mortgage lending. Why? Because with RateWindow™, customers get to know that they really will get the best deal—because they choose it themselves.

There are many technologies that can be used to display remote content on your site.

Basic examples

• Iframe tags to create a little box and display a remote website.
• Flash can grab remote data and use it as variables
• Ajax can also grab data and use a variables
• Json with javascript can access and return variables

When you get out of the simple remote data display and want to start interacting with remote websites, you run into many security restraints. Of course, the security restraints are to protect your website, but they are not to be fully trusted.

Just like a home security system. They work well, but if someone REALLY wants to break in, they will…just depends on how much time and effort they are willing to spend. The internet is a little more complicated. A hacker can make an attack that will work on any website that has a vulnerability. Imagine if a burglar was able to break into every home that had an open window, at the same time…

websites, and the browsers you use to surf the web have implemented systems to make sure hackers are not sending remote information to your website. It is called the same origin policy and it prevents remote hosts from accessing website properties on your website. But what if you want trusted remote sites to access your properties and manipulate your website. there are really no easy to allow this.

In what some would consider a hack, we do manipulate remote website properties with our widgets. We will never create a malicious widget. We only make widgets that extend websites, provide benefits and features, and make the website better and more productive. When a company decides to take their data and make it available to millions of websites, they should be able to do so in a trusted and non-contained way.

Here is a good ZDnet post about XSS (cross site scripting attacks) using applets

Summary

• many widgets are simple little containers that only display information from a remote website
• if you want to install a widget that manipulates your website properties MAKE SURE you get that widget from a trusted source.

I recently did a keyword analysis for flat-fee home loans and the results really startled me. There is a huge competition for keywords associated with flat fee home loans and and mortgages.

The image above shows how much competition is in this field, or how much mortgage brokers are spending on these keywords to get business. YET, the keywords are hardly searched for…

This is a great case for why the RateWindow™ Flat Fee Mortgage application is such a great tool for mortgage brokers. Our widget engine allows mortgage brokers to put the application on any website, for free without spending any additional dollars for online marketing. It also allows the mortgage broker to establish good online relationships between websites.

The Consumer has spoken, and we listened
The consumer is looking for honest, transparent mortgage brokers and mortgage products. The consumer will demand tools like this as word gets out that you don’t have to be in the dark when buying, or refinancing a home. The more demand, the higher those keywords above will go. It will be very important that mortgage brokers and real estate agents, get the RateWindow™ application on there site becuase the consumer will be looking for it

This brings us to another benefit for the widget.

The RateWindow™ widget co-brands with any website it is placed on. The Realespace widget platform handles all the hard work.

Bottom line, this widget will save mortgage brokers advertising costs and provide additional marketing benefits for both the mortgage broker and the owner of any website the Ratewindow™ application is on.

Signup for the RateWindow™ Application at RateWindow.com

Recently, many companies that I talk to either have a widget concept in development or they are looking into creating a widget strategy. Unfortunately many of these companies are missing some main concepts about deploying a widget. Without the basics, your widget will not get the attention and user distribution that you are looking for.

1. Benefit all parties involved.
   If you are thinking about deploying widget, don’t just think about your company and how you want to get your information on as many websites as you possibly can. Widgets are all about adding additional features and benefits to the host site. A widget that only benefits the parent company is nothing more then a glorified banner ad. Good luck trying to get people to put a banner ad on their site to benefit your company.Your widget should add features and benefits to the host website. Provide benefits to the visitors of that host website, and in turn the widget owner will benefit from additional exposure. Put yourself third in the hierarchy of widget deployment.
2. Do not take visitors away from the host site.
   How simple can that be? Yet, the majority of all widgets do that. Web programming has come a long way. We can add full applications on host websites with only one line of code. The webmaster simply copies and pastes a line of code from the widget companies website and they have a feature rich web application on their site. If you are thinking about a widget, you really need to think about full applications running on the host site. Remember give that host site features and benefits and co-brand with the host site. The visitors will not leave the host site and all parties benefit!
3. Give the host site credit
   Everyone that puts your widget on their site should be given credit. Give them thanks by linking to them on your company website. Make a widget page that shows all stats for that widget. Another great way to give credit it to add a feature to the widget that shows random links to sites that have the widget. Be careful, of course, many people will not want to send people away, but I want to touch on a key aspect of widgets. That key concept is the viral aspect of widgets. Think of them as a snowball. Think of ways to give credit to all parties and that widget will grow and grow!

These concepts are just the tip of the iceberg, and give a very general overview. In upcoming posts, we will talk about better alternatives to widgets, how to deploy widgets, and all the components of widgets. So grab our feed if you want to stay up-to-date with widget strategies.