ocracokewaves

Our mania for relying on prepared lists

People on the beach at Sunset — Emerald Isle, NC Oct. 10, 2010

Late last week I got a call from someone headed to North Carolina to check out retirement options.

Apparently the lady had read a list of the top one hundred places to retire, and this North Carolina spot which shall remain nameless was on the list.

Long ago I learned not to say negative things about the competition, but this destination made me struggle to find the right words.

I finally said, “I don’t think you’ll find what you are looking for there,” and left it at that.

She did not find what she wanted there, and the next morning she called me and arranged for a visit to the area where we live. I wondered how many people had been led astray by that particular list.

While struggling to fall back to sleep tonight, I searched a few lists of top retirement places.

I don’t pretend to be an expert in retirement, and some friends would even accuse me of being a failure at retiring since I keep working, but I do know a fair amount about cities in North Carolina and Virginia since they were in the heart of my territory when I worked for Apple Computer. Also I was born in North Carolina, and I lived in Virginia for over twenty years.

Most of the cities and towns on the top ten list of places to retire were probably okay, but a couple on the list would cause me to question the methodology of the list. I seriously doubt that any of lists that I saw this evening were based on a survey of retired people living in an area.

Having lived in three different places in Canada in addition to North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, I feel that I can evaluate an area for my own needs fairly quickly. Perhaps that is why we never bothered to look at any lists before we started our own research in 2003 about where to move after my career at Apple ended.

I do admit that the wanderlust that is in my genes might make me a little better at doing research on towns. Of course having traveled for business reasons for over 25 years might also play a role.

We planned several vacations around destinations that my travels had hinted might be of interest. I was also able to eliminate lots of potential places because I had seen some of them at their worst. Business travel usually happens no matter what the weather so the odds of being in place when their weather is at its best are slim.

Our travels finally gave us our own short list, and we eventually moved to the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina after three or four years of looking for the right spot. It has turned out to be a nice place for us. There are not many places where you can walk along the beaches in October and still enjoy warm water on your feet.

There is a list of reasons why where we live has met our needs as a place to live, but I know this place is not for everyone, and the list is one specifically made for my wife and myself.

There are plenty of other lists out there besides ones of retirement cities. There are the inevitable lists of top colleges, best cars, and top companies for jobs.

I don’t doubt that some research went into all of these lists. What I do doubt is whether or not they have any real value to people reading them.

Are we so lazy that we cannot make up our own lists of places to go or colleges or even places to retire?

After all, there is very little information that cannot be had easily on your computer screen these days.

I would think there is some value in finding your own destinations whether it is college, retirement, or the best beach.

It is a little like recipes and a great cook. While my mother, who was an amazing lady and a great cook, followed a few recipes in her day, her most delicious meals were ones where she had created her own recipes. When I go searching for a hush puppy recipe or one for fried chicken, it is hers that I am trying to find not one on some website.

I will remember that the next time I read a list for the best jobs or the greatest places to start a new business.

Hurricane Hype and Media Madness

My wife and I live on the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina.

We just got to experience not only Hurricane Earl but also the media coverage of Earl and lots of concern that was spawned by the media coverage.

We were witness to the full hype well before Earl and his thirty mile per hour winds and 3/4 of an inch of rain showed up. We had far more than 3/4 of an inch of hype.

I know hurricanes including Earl are dangerous. Earl went on to knock the power out for a couple of hundred thousand people in Nova Scotia. Also at least one person died up there because of Earl.

We did get several calls from friends not living in the area. Most were worried for our safety. One was worried about the roof of our house blowing off and was adamant that we needed to leave as soon as possible. We really appreciated people worrying about us even if we had few concerns.

All of the worrying I suspect is a result of people paying too much attention to the thrill a minute media and not enough attention to the real resources that are available in most situations.

I am an admitted weather junkie. I spend a fair amount of time on Weather Underground and during, the tropical storm season, I closely watch the tracking of storms. You can see some of the tracks in this archive.

When we moved to the Crystal Coast, we came with the heritage of being born in North Carolina and spending the first twenty plus years of our lives in North Carolina. The last twenty years we have lived in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. Our home actually overlooks the city of Roanoke. We are located at about 1,600 ft on the side of Twelve O’Clock Knob Mountain.

We have seen plenty of destruction and flooding from hurricanes in the mountains. Hurricane Floyd deposited a large tree on our screened porch just before we were set to take possession of our home in 1989. We were stunned to see our home on the evening news from the apartment where we were living.

With that kind of background, we made the decision to not live directly on the beach. We do live on the water, but we are located approximately three miles up the White Oak River from Swansboro which sits on the Intracoastal Waterway behind Bear Island and other pieces of the Southern Outer Banks. The net of all that is there is some serious barrier island protection between us and any hurricane unless it comes right up the White Oak River.

Our home is off an inlet of the White River. We are located on what is called Raymond’s Gut. We are actually in a very sheltered spot. I have seen some of the local fishermen bring their larger boats up the river and anchor them in our inlet when bad storms are on the horizon. We are in a flood plain, but our home is built so that the only part of the home that would get wet in a 100 year flood is garage floor and the crawlspace. Both have plenty of flood vents.

At no time during my intense watching of Earl did any of the models predict a turn towards us or even a wobble in our direction. Of course hurricanes are unpredictable to a certain extent so we did prepare by removing a couple of light weight glass tables from our porches. We also put our skiff on storm footing which means I raised the lift and secured both the bow and stern to the bulkhead.

With all of that done well ahead of Earl’s pass by the Southern Outer Banks, we amused ourselves the afternoon before Earl was set to arrive by going to watch the surfers over by Bogue Inlet Pier on Emerald Isle. While the waves were impressive, we have seen bigger ones. A friend and I actually went fishing in Bogue Inlet that morning. We are careful boaters so we were not tempting fate as you can see from the pictures.

The afternoon before Earl was to arrive in the evening, I went and bought 75 lbs of ice and stored it in a cooler. We had plenty of water and food on hand from our normal two to three visits to the grocery store weekly routine. After getting the ice, I took the opportunity to sneak over to Emerald Isle for one last peak at the waves.

I got to see some less successful surfing and a few bigger waves with winds cutting off their tops. I also got to see the closing of the bridge after the mandatory evacuation of Bogue Banks including Emerald Isle.

That evening we watched the weather and computers for any changes. I checked outside at the dock a couple of time to see if we were getting a surge. With none apparent and winds under 30 miles per hour, and almost no rain, we went to bed shortly after 11 PM. I got up the next morning early enough to see a healthy high tide but nothing more.

During the evening I had done both a Facebook post and a Twitter Tweet indicating that all seemed well on the Crystal Coast.

Still the next day we got a lot of calls from folks worried about whether or not we had survived the storm.

I sent a couple of folks a link to the Raleigh New & Observer article on Earl, and I published my own article on surviving Earl.

The question that is begging to be answered is why people were so worried about us when the only evidence of any danger was a Weather Channel Reporter standing in the surf a long way from our location?

I can only explain it by saying that unfortunately it is easier to believe what the Weather Channel dishes up than it is to actually find out what is happening.

Sometimes I guess, all it takes is a little spark for the imagination, and those prone to worrying can let their minds get carried away even when there is plenty of evidence that things are fine.

At the time everyone was worrying about us, I was actually concerned about friends in Nova Scotia which did appear to be the bull’s eye for Earl. In the end, Earl did hammer Nova Scotia and lots of people lost their power. Our friends were among the lucky ones who did not lose their power.

In these situations people seem very willing to make up their minds based on their perceptions rather than some serious fact checking. I see it all the time in our online world, and it is not just related to hurricanes and the Weather Channel. Someone jumps to an unfounded conclusion because of either sloppy thinking or no thinking at all.

Yesterday I had someone say to me on an online forum “it is still a fact that you do get clients by writing on this forum.” That statement turns out to be a jump to a conclusion that has no basis in fact. I have been writing on that particular forum for 3.5 years, and I have yet to get a client from the forum. Obviously I either am having trouble figuring that out, or I do not write to get clients. Of course the latter statement is the real truth. I write there because I like to write, and I want to make certain our area is accurately represented.

While several people who found out about me and my real estate service on the forum have visited our area and taken advantage of my real estate hospitality, none have ever turned out to a real client and bought something. I have had clients who found me via my other blogs and then noticed me on the forum, but none have ever done it the other way around.

It has reached the point that I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who comes to me by way of the forum. It seems that the people who really want homes get in a car and go visit them and don’t spend a lot of time on online forums. Either that or they write me and email or pick up the phone and call me.

It seems we have a problem with people not using their minds to analyze situations properly.

I think critical thinking is an important element in the foundations of our society. Based on the recent Hurricane Hype and observed tendencies of many folks to not want to be confused by the facts, I am not sure critical thinking is alive and doing well in our Republic.

With media hype twenty four hours a day, critical thinking is something we need more and more. I hope we see a rebirth soon.

Some iPad feedback

Sometimes I feel the iPad is like a wave in the ocean. It is inevitably going to hit me and get me wet even if I want to stay dry.

I am never surprised at the techno-lust that develops around new Apple products. A couple of decades at the company gave me a chance to see almost every rationalization for buying a new Apple product. I came up with a few myself.

While I have been gone from Apple for nearly six years, the problem has only gotten worse. Now we have the spectacle of folks waiting in line to buy products that have not even been reviewed. Steve says it is great, and there are hundreds of thousand of people who will buy whatever it is.

On top of that people will pay much more for an Apple product than they will for a product from Dell or HP. The perceived value of an Apple product is much higher.

Having said that, there are some significant challenges for Apple in leveraging all this techno-lust. While Apple’s commercials are very persuasive, the iPad is a new category of product, and beyond the faithful, most people need to be convinced that they need it.

The iPod was a solution to problem that a lot of people had with their music. The iPad is a solution looking for some problems.

I think the iPad is a good fit for some people and will solve a number of problems, but I also believe that a lot of people are going to have a hard time giving up their laptops. Many of the people that I know are uninterested in having another gadget in their lives especially one which might require a whole new set of applications.

One friend was all set to buy an iPad until I told her that no Apple printing solution comes with the iPad. Though I do not stay up on all things iPad, I believe this is still the case. Apparently Steve Jobs when asked about printing recently said simply, “It will come.” My friend decided to wait until printing was native from Apple.

Another friend wanted a device to read electronic books. She evaluated the iPad and the Kindle. She ended up with Kindle because she thought the iPad was too heavy for her old hands.

I know two ex-Apple employees who bought iPads in the first wave. As far as I can tell, they both love them. There is about a 90% chance of anyone who has worked at Apple is a hardware junkie so their motivations are not as interesting. I would put myself in that category, but I am older and trying to spend less money so that curbs any appetite for new gadgets. My gadgets end up being small and cheap.

The final person that I know who considered buying an iPad also bought one. I thought his reasons were the most interesting of all. First of all he was an iPhone user except that the reception on his iPhone was so bad that he had to give it up for a Verizon phone. Secondly he spends a tremendous amount of time on airplanes.

He told me that giving up his iPhone was a whole lot easier because he could use his iPhone apps on his iPad. That actually makes sense to me. He then said that he found the iPad much better for use on an airplane. I can also see that.

I would have a hard time deciding to use an iPad because I would have to learn new ways of doing things which are already get done in very sensible way. In spite of Apple telling me that I already know how to use it, likely getting my daily chores done would require some new software or new ways of doing things. This is not change like when I went from a typewriter to a computer. That was change that saved me days of work.

Having an iPad with me is not that much different than having my smart phone except the screen is bigger.

I am actually really happy with my Droid, laptop, and desktop combination. Things are working well, and I don’t see any reason to interject another device with yet again another series of tools.

I was around when we had to convince people that they needed computers. Maybe it is easier to convince people that they need iPads, but I suspect it might be harder than Steve thinks to convert the world to iPads.

Anytime you ask people to do something different there is resistance. Based on the number of commercials, Apple is going to give it a serious shot. Apple never spends money on television commercials unless Steve is fully committed.

Actually if I am going to get wet, I would rather it be a real wave on a great beach day.

What is it with faxes?

I often think of technology as a wave that washes everything before it away. The reality is a little different.

Years ago when I was working as a higher education rep for Apple Computer, I covered Va. Tech. One of the tools of my job at that time was a fax machine. I often had to fill out several bids a day and fax them to the procurement people. This was in the late eighties. I would get the bids by mail and have to fax them back. It was not a lot of fun.

I moved up the ladder at Apple, and I suspect purchasing from the universities also moved beyond paper bids. When I went to work in real estate, I expected that I would find some technology resistant people. I had no idea that I was headed for the last stand of the fax machines.

Real estate law does require some type of signature on documents. There are some acceptable electronic signatures, but most older clients are highly resistant to anything that requires anything but basic computer skills.

The net result is that we often work with contracts which have been faxed multiple times which results in the contracts being almost unreadable.

It is not like there is no technology to help us from this situation. Unfortunately few people make the effort to get away from faxes. From the beginning of my real estate career, I have been fax resistant. I have seen clients struggle to get an eighteen page document sent.

So here is how I have been proactively trying to cut down on the number of faxes. First of all if my client has a computer and not all do, I sent any documents that need to be signed as PDFs with detailed signing instructions. The real estate software that I use, RealFast, has the ability to convert documents to faxes, but typically I use CutePDF writer on my Windows 7 laptop to turn the forms into PDFs.

I then give my clients the choice of faxing them back to me and then mailing the originals or immediately sending the originals by FedEx.

Once I receive a signed, written and complete contract I convert it to a multiple page PDF. I have a HP AIO 6180 fax, printer, and scanner. It is hooked to a Mac running OS X and VueScan. VueScan has this wonderful option of automatically scanning documents through the document feeder on the HP AIO 6180. It saves each page as an individual PDF.

Once VueScan is done, I open the first page of the scan using Preview on the Mac. I save it under an intelligent name and make certain the page sidebar is open. Then one after another I drag the scanned PDFs in order to the page side bar.

Then I save it, voila I have a multiple page PDF which I send by email to the bank and the law offices. They greatly appreciate a document that they can actually read.

I have tried eFax, but I like my system better. I just wish more people would figure out that the fewer faxes we have, the clearer things are in this world.

A society hooked on the quick response

Years ago, I went to a military high school in Chattanooga, Tennessee. One of things we had to do was write home each week. The letter was graded and sent to our parents. My real communication with my parents happened by telephone. Each Saturday or Sunday, I placed a collect call to home.

When I got to college I wrote fewer letters, but I still wrote. When I got out of college and moved to Nova Scotia, I continued to write letters. They were private, and we were on a party line with a bunch of other people. In 1974 we moved to New Brunswick and after a lot of battling got a private phone line.

That was not the end of letters, but it certainly slowed them down. Then in the eighties came the start of email. By the nineties it was spreading rapidly. Eventually instant messaging and text messaging showed up.

Now email is often done on the small screen of a smart phone. It is actually a bad way to communicate. A cell phone also becomes a lousy way to communicate when you are doing something while you are talking. Talking to someone while you are reading emails on your cellphone is a slap in the face.

Somehow society has decided that quick and fast is better than deliberate and at your leisure. The whole idea of Twitter puts additional pressures on quality communication. I type small messages which are seen by hundreds of people some of whom I know only by their messages. Then there are others who see the message, and I do not even know them.

Facebook is yet another away to get in touch with people who have not been able to build either an email relationship or one based on writing letters. We almost always have a cellphone with us. It is actually easier to call someone on the cellphone than it is post a message on Facebook. Somehow the layers that Facebook adds to the communication process make it easy to type the message to the person you probably are afraid to call.

So are we better communicating small tidbits of information to people we hardly know or was it better to have focused on speaking our hearts and minds to those who mean something to us. How do you communicate today?

The siren call of new technology

Figuring out the right path to take in the world of technology is not as easy as following this marked channel to the river.

Right now is the perfect storm for technology users and addicts. Apple has announced a new operating system and hardware for the holiday season. Microsoft has also come running to the party with Windows 7. Intel has helped with its I5 and I7 processors.

Best Buy is even offering a PC Makeover for $1199.99. It includes desktop, laptop, and netbook with wireless network and setup for one price.

It is hard to believe that you could get three computers for that price, but I suspect you get what you pay for. I have had great luck with my HP hardware, but I know others who have not.

Of course Apple barely offers one of their new iMacs for the price of $1199.

Having lived and worked in the technology industry most of my life since 1982, the natural response is to want to get my hands on some of this new stuff.

My newest computer is a HP laptop that has Vista and is two years old. My newest Mac is a three and one half years old white MacBook running Snow Leopard. My desktop G5 Mac was a previous year’s model when I bought it in December 2004.

Surprisingly I have gotten along just fine. I did add Snow Leopard recently, but it only cost $29. I do have a 2004 vintage Dell Dimension that I just upgraded to the latest Ubuntu. It is likely my fastest system.

I suspect that I am getting to the point of upgrading to a new Mac. I have taken the hard drive size about as far as I want to go. I certainly need more memory in my Mac desktop unit if for no other reason than my iPhoto libraries seem to get bigger even when I start new ones. However, I am a little reluctant to put a lot more money in a system that is getting a little long in the tooth.

Whatever I do, I am in no rush. My wife actually needs a system before I do since her Mac laptop is almost seven years old.

How did I get beyond the need to upgrade whenever something new is announced? The simple answer is pretty easy, money. While you are working for a computer manufacturer new systems are a status symbol and rarely cost your wallet anything.

When you are out on your own, a new system has to be justified by the results that it will deliver. In my case, I doubt that a new system will bring me greater productivity. It will allow me to standardize my laptop and desktop operating systems.

While that is not a big deal right now, my guess is that a year or two from now, it will be a big deal.

The other thing that has helped me resist all this new technology is that I have yet to see the killer application which requires new technology. Internet based applications have brought me more functionality than computer based ones.

I continue to be able to do my computing tasks on whatever computer is put in front of me. That includes the ancient Windows XP Dells that are at our real estate office. While I would likely not do photo work or website work on them unless I was desperate, my other work could survive.

Certainly if my main desktop is a Mac that is likely six years old technologically, I would question the need for new hardware for any other reason than mechanical reliability.

Actually if I could get better bandwidth for my Internet connection I would trade it for at least another year on my old hardware.

So how do you feel about that choice? Would you give up buying new hardware for a year, if you could get faster Internet?

While I have a good solid cable connection, I work with enough large files that I could use some extra bandwidth if it were available here on the Crystal Coast. I would like to see Internet sites almost jump into my lap.

When I go to work at our office where we have DSL, I almost die while waiting for pages to load.

In my situation new hardware would be nice, but more Internet speed would speed my work and be even nicer.

Of course I would trade both faster Internet and new computers for another day of great fishing like we had recently out in the ocean off of Bogue Inlet.

Not seeing the water for the trees

waterforthetrees Computers are a little more complex than some things, and often computer people in response to this are a little more hard headed. Much of the figuring out how to fix a computer problem is done through trial and error by people who probably do not understand the issues.

Sometimes people are so wedded to their hardware and software, that they cannot see the problem is exactly their hardware and software.

I recently did a website for someone and enabled the email that came with the site. When I do something like a website, I usually check it for compatibility in XP, Vista, Linux, and MacOS X. Except on Linux I will do multiple browser checks.

All of this means that I have a variety of flavors of computers around our house. I also get the rare “privilege” of working on an ancient Dell system running XP. I have a much newer Dell running XP at home, an HP laptop running Vista, a MacBook running Leopard, a Zonbu running Linux, and a dual G5 Mac running Leopard.

I just loaned out a five year old Dell laptop which had XP and Ubuntu running on it. This fall I will probably get a new laptop with Windows 7 and add Ubuntu to my older HP.

With all this computer stuff, it is pretty easy to run tests and to know what is working and what is not working.

So after I created this website for the gentleman, he brings out his Dell laptop which takes five or six minutes to boot and can barely launch an application. It is clearly a sick machine, and I told him so. It is also using old versions of software. In my mind, it is one of those systems where the only hope is to reformat the drive and start over.

Clearly he is incapable of doing it, and I certainly do not want to tackle it because I am pretty sure he would expect me to throw it in with what I am charging him to build his website.

During one of the many times we are waiting for his system to do something, I configured the Ubuntu laptop to get his mail. I also showed him how it will boot in less than one minute. Though he is impressed, he has no interest in giving up what he already knows.

I get the email working on his system when using an ethernet cable to my network. I run an Airport wireless network so I was not interested in digging out a Windows wireless key. His website is working fine, and I think that I am done with him. He quickly cuts off any conversation of a maintenance agreement for his website, but I know how to handle that when the phone rings.

About a week later, he calls me and says he is having trouble sending messages using his wireless at the local library. I invite him by our real estate office and again hook him to a network with an ethernet cable and his mail works fine in spite of the clunky software and hardware.

The mail I configured for him is POP and uses an external STMP server which is far better than an ISP STMP server if you travel at all. I actually have a third party run a monitoring report on my server from the same company. Most of the time it comes back with 100% uptime and no problems. Since it is Linux, that is what I expect anyway.

I prefer IMAP email but I would have had to get my client email from a different provider, and he did not want to spend the extra money. Considering his very small volume of email, it made little sense.

Fast forward a few weeks, and I get an email from his daughter-in-law asking for my help in configuring his email as a forward only account. She has determined that it is best to leave him on his ISP mail even though he regularly travels to another place where he does not have that ISP. She has already logged into his email accout and set it to auto forward his emails.

Without getting too deep into the details, her diagnosis of the problem was that he would be better off without the external SMTP which in her mind was preventing him from sending mail.

Since I had tried his mail from two networks with wired ethernet connections and seen zero problems, my first suspicion would have been his wireless card and/or Windows XP and the Outlook Express that he was using. To be honest his system was in such bad shape that telling what was working and not working would be a great challenge. However, of all the possibilities, the external SMTP server is probably the least likely.

However, the lady who wanted my help was so wedded to Microsoft and Outlook, that the SMTP server was the only problem that she could see. She ended up creating a solution that did not even solve the problem because when her father-in-law traveled, he would be faced with having to do ISP webmail to send his mail unless they operate with a totally unsecured SMTP server which would be scary.

I spent nearly an hour composing my response to her. I am sure she spent hours on the computer.

At this stage in the computer revolution, it would make far more sense to buy a new computer with reliable wireless connection. It would cost less than $600.

I am certainly not spending any more free time on the problem. I even told the lady that I had personally switched to Thunderbird because Outlook was unresponsive so often on Vista.

That might be a clue the problem is a lot closer to home than a remote SMTP server.

An even better solution would be to buy a Mac even an old one. I have a ten year old desktop at home that works fine. My wife is even using a Mac laptop that is s six years old. Her home iMac is hooked by wireless card to our network. The iMac would be close to six years old.

I have a hard time relating to a solution which configured POP email so that you had to manually go and remove the mail from the server while it was forwarding it to a computer which could have received the email and be set to automatically remove it from the server.

I think that I need to go sit by the water and let my head rest.

The paradox of the smart phone

I am one of the few Realtors® in my circle of friends who does not have a smart phone.

Having spent over twenty years in the world of technology, I probably know more about computers and technology than all of them put together.

Yet I choose not to have a smart phone. Recently our management sent out a list of people who had leads which had been emailed to them and which still had not been handled over the last few months..

I was not on the list. Nor was the person I regard as the least technological in my group of friends. Yet many of the people on the list who had five or six leads still waiting for a response were people with smart phones.

Smart phones are supposed to keep you connected all the time and to make it easier to have instant responses.

I am not sure that I buy it. I have had managers who lived by their smart phones and who were among the hardest managers to contact. I have had managers who were barely computer literate and could be easily reached at any time.

How quickly you respond and how easy you are to reach have more to do with you character and your work habits than your technology.

I sometime think that people carrying smart phones use it as a prop to make them feel connected and possibly to appear to be responsive.

I recently got a Google Voice account. Will it make it easier for people to reach me? I think the answer is perhaps. I am pretty easy to reach now. I almost always have my cell phone with me except when I am in church. About 98% of the time I will answer it, even if I just tell you that I will call you back when I have time.

Would I be easier to reach with a smart phone? I doubt it. The odds of a critical email in the rare 3-6 hour period when I am away from the computer are probably very low. I am rarely in an area without cell phone service.

Until I see more utility from smart phones, I doubt that I will worry about getting one.

I have seen very few times one would be useful, and even then the cost for the service far outweighs any benefits that I can imagine.

I am as connected as I plan to be. If you have trouble reaching me, you are not trying very hard.

Of course I might be stuck in traffic on the Emerald Isle Bridge.

Sheets by the crossroads

In a world increasingly wired, I am sometimes amazed at the effectiveness of low tech communications. Webvillages of Blacksburg, Va has developed a great free electronic village for the Crystal Coast of NC. Yet the intersection of highways 24 and %8 always seems to be a fertile spot for hand lettered signs or even sheets with a message.

When we tried a marketing event for some lots in a subdivision, we advertised in a number of newspapers including USA Today. We had something of a web presence but we also put out signs the day of the event. The signs turned out to be as effective as anything. Several people called on the print advertising, but none showed up for the event.

Humans can be very spontaneous creatures. We will look on the Internet and plan trips, but we are less likely to look on the Internet for a restaurant for tonight’s meal.

We are much more likely to ask someone that we meet on a boardwalk than take the time to search out restaurants on the computer.

Tonight we were driving across the bridge to Emerald Isle. Just after the bridge was a hand lettered sign advertising a “fifties-style drive-in restaurant” at a local church, Chapel by the Sea. We attended a similar event put on by Emerald Isle last summer so we head down Emerald Drive until we saw someone carrying a sign about burgers and hot dogs.

They had a good crowd. I suspect that they could have gotten some additional people with Internet advertising, but I doubt it would have brought a massively larger number of people.

The critical thing to remember is that no one method will get to everyone, but one method might be more useful than another. It just depends on what you are trying to do.

I recently took part in an online discussion which was part of the Toronto Globe and Mail’s series The Download Decade. It was only advertised online and ended up as successful as I could handle in responding to questions.

Earlier in the week, I spent time on a YouTube video of a house that I will be listing. It is also in the real estate section of the Crystal Coast Electronic Village. It has been very successful in both places. Still I cannot wait to get it listed and finally put a sign in front of the property.

People may have stopped reading newspapers and real estate magazines, but they still pay attention to signs and what they hear on the Internet.,

I suspect it will be several years before we can dispose of the sheets at the intersection. I am happy to write for those who enjoy it. My first for pay blog. Crystal Coast Living has become another good waay to to find out about putting down roots in our aea. It least it is very easy on the paper supply.

Social media, so close but so far

Social media seems to present the opportunity to stay in better touch with so many more people. Yet is the contact from social media the type that we need to sustain real social interaction?

Back in the seventies when I still wrote letters, it was clearly an effort to compose an interesting letter and go to the trouble to get it in the mail.

Yet it was worthwhile at the time. Long distance phone calls were expensive, and computers for the home did not exist. It was even more fun getting a letter back from someone. The letters represented a great deal of thought.

Today you can connect on Facebook, AIM, GoogleTalk, Twitter, and plenty of other places. Making the contact is easy. The conversations are usually short and often done while multi-tasking. The contact might mean little more than some random electrons have passed in the night.

Today’s social interaction is so easy to initiate electronically that the actual value of the contact may well be very little. There is not a lot of effort involved in responding to many people. You sometimes see this in people who seemed to be compelled to comment on something even if the thought they leave is worthless. They are typically more interested in volume of comments than in quality.

While I am certain that you can build some strong ties with social media, I just have not seen it happen very often. Very few people that I have met online has matured and made it past casual friendship.

The contacts that you make online can be very tenuous unless there is a previous relationship behind them. As someone who uses online advertising a lot, I know well that many of the people who contact you online will never end up doing business with you. It is far too easy for them to slide into the woodwork.

Someone who walks into your office, shakes your hand, and exchanges contact information with you is far more likely to end up a client.

This does not mean we should all give up on social networking. We just need to appreciate it for its ability to be instantaneous and easy.

If it is desirable to move an online relationship to something greater, emails and phone calls are a good place to start. If you really want to surprise someone, send them something in the mail. Being a Realtor®, I often send people packages of maps and local magazines. They rarely forget getting the package.