DocuSign has announced the release of DocuSign REALTOR Edition, specifically tailored for and available to members of the National Association of Realtors® (NAR).

The announcement followed an earlier statement from NAR declaring DocuSign the official and exclusive ESIGN provider for their 1.1 million REALTOR Benefits® Program member, late last year.

DocuSign Realtor Edition's enhancements and features include special NAR member-only branded signature and templates, an online dashboard, mobile signing, workflow optimization, and integration with real estate tools.

Read more at RISMedia and sign up for a free trial at DocuSign.

Posted in National Association Of Realtors, Real Estate Industry Trends, Technology And YOU, Home Selling Services, National News

Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services has launched a collaborative, virtual research and development laboratory dubbed PRECIPT, the Prudential Real Estate Collaborative Innovation Partnership.

The non-traditional lab is a combination of three facets: innovation, research and development, and collaboration between IT experts and real estate professionals. This virtual lab will focus on four areas: video gaming and sensory spaces, social networking and media sharing, mobile computing, and the application of semantic Web search engines research.

Prudential is partnering with virtual world developer Immersive Design Studio to create one of its top priorities, an immersive virtual tour.

"This is actually 'Avatar' meets real estate. We demonstrated ... how (two people) could both be in different rooms at opposite ends of the country and be holographically next to each other. Buyers can start to experience homes and what they would do with (a home) even before they actually see it," chairman and CEO Jim Mallozzi said.

In addition, the Prudential Real Estate Network is unveiling other tools and resources: a media center to help real estate professionals create listings presentations quickly and easily from one spot, a rent-to-own calculator for consumers, upgrades to the company's proprietary Online Seller Advantage(SM) customer-contact platform, including direct interface with more than 200 social media sites, and their mobile solution, PruRE.com.

Read more from Inman News or in the press release.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Real Estate Industry Trends, Lead Generation, Technology And YOU, Web 2.0 Marketing, National News

The use of smartphone apps to find real estate information is booming with home buyers.

Realtors and brokerages are using free apps to help their current and potential customers find listings and data about homes on the market or just sold, as well as geo-mapping information, as GPS is used more and more on mobile platforms.

Zillow's free app has been downloaded 970,000 times, with users looking up two million homes a month. With so much useage, it's no wonder why more and more companies are building apps for home buyers.

Read more in the Wall Street Journal online.

photo credit: Nimbuzz

Posted in Real Estate Industry Trends, Lead Generation, Technology And YOU, Web 2.0 Marketing

The time has come--you can now check in on Foursquare with photos and video with the new iPhone app, SquarePik, a joint venture between Pikchur Inc. and 39 Inc..

Find your location, snap a photo or take a video and away you go--just three easy steps to let others know where you are and what you're doing. It's a most-awesome tool for real estate agents and brokers because you can now visually share the properties you're listing, events you're hosting and everything in between.

The app is available now through the AppStore.

Posted in Real Estate Industry Trends, Technology And YOU, Web 2.0 Marketing

Google has been developing new technology to crawl and index websites faster, a new publishing/subscribing protocol they've called PubSubHubbub.

Pub stands for the publishers, Sub the subscribers, and the Hubbub is the communication hub through which both communicate online. Right now when publishers put up new content, a ping, or signal, goes out to the Web crawlers to show there is new content. The PubSubHubbub technology would eliminate the need for a ping, thus shortening the time, most likely in an attempt to keep up with the pace of social media tools.

While the PubSubHubbub system won't increase your rankings in search engine results per se, it will see your content is found faster by the indexing service. Having good content is key to increasing your rankings.

Read more from Gahlord Dewald on Inman News.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Technology And YOU