I have one Ad sponsorship available for February. Details can be found here.
You can also sign up for the Vendor Alley Private newsletter. Detail can be found here.
A few changes to the blog. First off I’m announcing the new Vendor Alley private newsletter program. This will replace the previous premium membership/champagne room program. All existing premium members will now be Vendor Alley private newsletters subscribers.
Why the changes?
Couple reasons. It was too hard for me to get breaking information out soon enough because not everyone had a Twitter account (where I would primarily alert members). Secondly I’m kind of excited about having another forum to feature profiles on people and companies in the industry plus any pre-release things I’m privy to.
How can I get access?
Newsletter subscribers will get early access to Vendor Alley posts (some content on the private newsletter may never be posted). The cost is only $2.00 per month. I wanted to do $24 a year but the Tiny Letter platform doesn’t yet support this. To sign up please visit visit http://tinyletter.com/VendorAlley. More details are above on the Private Newsletter page.
Why are you charging?
As the saying goes; gas, grass or ass, nobody rides free.
What other changes are you making?
I’m opening up the Vendor Alley Twitter account. Previously it was invite only. Basically it will function as a Twitter feed of Vendor Alley posts. To start following please visit @VendorAlley.
I’m very excited about this new forum and looking forward to sharing with more with you.
gr
The list is out! Once again Inman News has release it’s list of the 100 Most Influential Leaders in Real Estate for 2010. The list was broken down into several catergories:
Categories of 100 Leaders:
Yours truly made the list under the Technology category! I’m just two spots away from Steve Ozonian!
Needless to say we are super excited about working with Russ and MRED again. And a special thanks to Lynn Strantz for help making this happen.
See the full press release below:
SOURCE: Midwest Real Estate Data
Nov 02, 2010 12:01 ET
Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) Enters Into Licensing Agreement for Cloud CMA
Highlighted Links
LISLE, IL–(Marketwire – November 2, 2010) – Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) announced today it has entered into a licensing agreement to provide MRED’s 40,000 customers with W&R Studios’ Cloud CMA product in early 2011.
Cloud CMA is an innovative as well as eye-catching product for preparing comparative market analyses, buyer’s tours and other property reports. With Cloud CMA users can easily create amazing presentations from a desktop/laptop or mobile smartphone, with exclusive blended data from top websites including Google, Zillow, education.com, Walk Score, Yelp and more.
When Cloud CMA is integrated with MRED’s connectMLS™ MLS system, users will be able to search for listings and comparables and seamlessly launch the Cloud CMA package to produce stunning reports that will help them win more listings and write more offers.
“One of MRED’s goals is to locate tools with which to arm real estate professionals so that they are the driving force for every real estate transaction,” said Russ Bergeron, CEO of MRED. “Cloud CMA will enable our customers to create personalized reports that blend data from our MLS and top websites to give their clients the full spectrum of real estate information.”
“The key aspect of Cloud CMA our Board found most attractive is that it provides our agents with a cutting edge tool that incorporates all of the real estate information available for today’s agent,” stated Dean Rouso, President of MRED.
Kelly Reichert, an agent with Coldwell Banker in Ft. Collins, Colorado, and an avid Cloud CMA user, said, “I’m so excited with the Cloud CMA program. This program saves me so much time in preparing a market analysis. I am so grateful I have this tool!”
“Cloud CMA’s reports aren’t just a pretty face — they have a purpose, too,” said Greg Robertson, co-founder of W&R Studios. “The layout, page order, content and design are all about taking your client to the next step, whether it’s making an offer, or signing that listing agreement. If you can use e-mail you can use Cloud CMA.”
About MRED
Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) is the real estate data aggregator and distributor that provides the largest multiple listing service (by listing volume) to over 40,000 customers, with property information encompassing northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin and northwest Indiana.
About W&R Studios
Founded in 2008, W&R Studios is a privately held web software company located in Huntington Beach, California. W&R Studios focuses on creating the next generation of web-based software solutions for the real estate industry. By providing a “less is more” approach to software design, elegant user interfaces, and using the latest in agile programming, W&R Studios’ software applications are at the same time powerful, yet accessible to everyone.
For further information contact:
Jeff Lasky
MRED Director of Communications and Training
630-799-1470
Email Contact
Russ Bergeron
MRED Chief Executive Officer
630-955-2765
We’ve been working on developing a new landing page for Cloud CMA for a long time now. After our last round of product improvements we had some time to focus and finish it up.
To check it out just visit http://CloudCMA.com
Dan and I are super happy with the results. Now we’ll see how well it performs!
If you are a MLS provider give me a shout. We would love to have Cloud CMA working with your MLS or give you a quote on a Cloud CMA site license.
gr
___________________________________________
W&R Studios announces special September promotion for Cloud CMA.
New reduced pricing plan and free trial with no credit card required option.
HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA August 31, 2010 – Web software company, W&R Studios, announced today it is starting a special promotion in September for its innovative product, Cloud CMA.
Cloud CMA, launched in January of 2010, is a web-based software application designed for real estate professionals to create reports for their buyers and sellers. Cloud CMA is available on a monthly subscription basis.
For the month of September, Cloud CMA will be free to try without a credit card. Cloud CMA will also have lower pricing plans for subscribers who wish to continue the service after the free trial period.
“The response to Cloud CMA has been extraordinary. We wanted to do something special so that everyone could try Cloud CMA with no strings attached,” stated Greg Robertson, co-founder of W&R Studios.
Cloud CMA is now available in several metro markets in the United States including Southern California, Phoenix, Dallas-Ft. Worth, and Portland areas. These areas comprise over 175,000 real estate professionals. Additional markets are expected to be announced soon.
“As part of this special promotion, we have revamped our Cloud CMA landing page and announcing Cloud CMA Weekly Webinars,” concluded Mr. Robertson.
For more information about Cloud CMA, or to sign up for a free trial, please visit http://CloudCMA.com. To sign up for a Cloud CMA Weekly Webinar, please visit http://CloudCMAWeeklyWebinar.eventbrite.com.
About W&R Studios
Founded in 2008, W&R Studios (http://wr-studios.com) is a privately held web software company. W&R Studios focuses on creating the next generation of web applications for real estate. By providing a “less is more” approach to software design, elegant user interfaces, and using the latest in agile programming, W&R Studios’ software applications are at the same time powerful, yet accessible to everyone. W&R Studiosʼ products include Dwellicious, a social book-marking site for real estate, Dwellicious Pro, and Cloud CMA. Co-founders Dan Woolley and Greg Robertson each have over 18 years experience developing and marketing software solutions.
For more information please contact:
Greg Robertson
greg at wr-studios dot com
(714) 924-4219
Russ Bergeron has taken over the effort of MRED, LLC hosting the CMLS Conference in Chicago this year due to Bud Fogel’s departure. And the event is shaping up to be one of, if not the largest CMLS conferences ever!
Attendance is way, way, up! The conference hotel (The Westin) is sold out of rooms. All sponsorship tables are sold out. And it’s only July!
So if you haven’t already paid your CMLS member dues or signed up for the conference I suggest you do so….now.
Details can be found at the new Council of MLS website.
Hope to see you there!
[REPRINTED FROM “LIGHTNING | TWICE” , THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF W&R STUDIOS]
I’ve wanted to do a short promo video about Cloud CMA for sometime now. I’m a big fan of the task management software “Things” from Culture Code. I got really inspired from this video for their new iPad version. I’m also a big fan of the “There’s an app for that.” commercials that Apple put out. So with those two videos in mind I got started.
What normally gets my creative juices started is music. And I had a particular song I wanted to use, played on a particular instrument.
The song is “Singing In The Rain“, I thought this would be clever music to use with a product named “Cloud”. Not sure if anyone would get the reference but I thought it was fun. I also wanted no vocals, just the music.
As for the instrument I was dead set on having the song played on the ukulele. The bright strumming sound was perfect for the vibe I was going after. I did actually find the song done on a ukulele on You Tube, and even a version on iTunes. But they either had vocals or just didn’t match the song I had in my head.
So where do you go when you are looking for a ukulele player to record a song you have in your head for a real estate web app?
Craiglist!
And I totally lucked out. A guy by the name of Abe Lagrimas responded. I Googled him and found a few videos including one where Abe plays Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirt” on the ukulele. Needless to say, if your playing Nirvana on a uke, your exactly the guy I’m looking to work with.
We negotiated a price then discussed a few things on the phone and after a couple iterations Abe e-mailed me over the audio files. They were just perfect! Abe produced the song exactly the way I imagined it in my head.
So in my original vision I just wanted music and images. But as I got to editing the video I realized it was close to impossible to make it work with just music and images.
So I took a few hours and wrote a script. I decided to do a play (homage?) on Apple’s “There an app for that” commercials.
With the the script written, I needed to have someone do the voice over. That part was easy. My wife Jenn did the recording in one-take, just like a pro. And it came out amazing. She really knocked it out of the park.
So without futher adieu…Here is the offical premeire of the Cloud CMA Promo Video -“There’s A Report For That!”
Hope You Enjoy!
gr
TIP: If you want to see this video without the black bars across the bottom and top just click the video again and it will send you to You Tube where you can view it in full glory.
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Inman News is doing a People’s Choice Innovator Award. The awards go to a variety of categories. We’ve got two finalists in the running.
Cloud CMA – Most Innovative Web Service.
Vendor Alley – Most Innovative Blog
Since you can only vote once, I would humbly suggest you use one of your “life lines” and “phone a friend”.
: )
Inman News has posted the list of finalists for their annual Inman Innovator Awards. You can check out the list here.
I’m very happy to announce that both Vendor Alley and Cloud CMA have been selected as finalists.
Vendor Alley was nominated in the Blog category. I started Vendor Alley back in 2007 and am continually amazed at the popularity of the site. Thanks to all Vendor Alley readers who voted to make it a finalist.
I am also super excited about Cloud CMA being nominated in the Web Service category. At W&R Studios we have only launched two products, Dwellicious and Cloud CMA. Dwellicious was a finalist last year (losing out to Closing.com) and now with Cloud CMA making a list of finalists this year I’m not sure if my partner Dan Woolley can handle the pressure on any new products we create!
We have some stiff competition in both categories so good luck to everyone and thanks again for your support!