Seems I am on the right track…

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Hi Tony

Recently read this piece about social networks and the like,
interesting what he says about older people:

Social Networks, the next generation

All the best

Craig

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Hi Craig,

Many thanks for this – it says in a clear way what I have been trying to express – the time is correct for applied community sites to develop to displace many areas of classified sales presentation.

My aim, as you know, is to create an accommodation rental community, starting with France.

I have similar plans for a real-estate community for people buying property in France as they are needing a lot of investment and practical help, plus the strong interest in Fractional Ownership, all this is fertile ground for integrated communities and I am right in the middle of this with a good owner base and client lists to start.

I am building a trial site at the moment to evaluate the standard software add-ons to Open Realty we think would work best and I am also advertising for technical people to start to get a team together for this.

Best wishes

Tony

I am experimenting with adding a few more adverts into the writing – if you find them useful, please visit the sites advertised. If they are really annoying I would appreciate a comment or email from you.

But I do believe there is a future in community networking and social websites – we just have not found it yet. Perhaps the Greater Manchester Police ideas will make use of the leverage of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to find missing people of enable us to report crime as it happens.

This blog is written from my Facebook account and is an experiment to see if this simple integration works – I may mean I can write to a number of blogs simultaneously.

I wrote on www.Twiku.com last year about using mobiles to help find missing children – perhaps this is one step towards that.

But I do believe there is a future in community networking and social websites – we just have not found it yet. Perhaps the Greater Manchester Police ideas will make use of the leverage of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to find missing people of enable us to report crime as it happens.

This blog is written from my Facebook account and is an experiment to see if this simple integration works – I may mean I can write to a number of blogs simultaneously.

I wrote on www.Twiku.com last year about using mobiles to help find missing children – perhaps this is one step towards that.

You can even check on me to see my official working status, and registration details.

If anyone who offers services is not registered, then don’t use them, it is illegal for you to employ the services of anyone in France who is not correctly registered and you risk severe penalties by employing them.

Recently I have been writing about using Google and a mashup of searching tools to look for property to buy, in a recent blog post on Twiku I mention an application from Trulia and today I found another ingredient from the European Space Agency which adds one more tool to make searching for a home a simple and inexpensive experience and, importantly, a lot of fun.

I am working on my community site to give a service for people thinking about changing their lives on www.PortableSoup.com – being able to find a new home is probably the most important single decision and I hope that I will soon offer a search, find, identify and contact service using these new techniques.

This example simply drops in my latest Flickr photos – they offer a pile of other community and bookmarking services

When you ask a question you really only want one answer, not to be told there are 133 million other pages of information and maybe the ones Google show you are in the right order.

There is a shift to semantic search which should give search results accurate and relevant to the “thought” behind the phrase or words entered.

An application of this is Askmenow which works like a human and will give one answer to a question from your cell phone by sms – great if you happen to live in the USA

I have used Google in preference to everything else since 1999, now it is getting to be a habit although I know there are some interesting options – when I need to search I can never remember the name of the new service and just go to my Google search box.

For Google, I am using the Google beta from Google labs of their “Google Suggest” searches Google Suggest

Google Suggest is not really a true semantic search facilty, but it is moving in the right way I think. The new semantic search engine I am watching is http://hakia.com/ – this gives good results.

This will mean that for the huge search engine optimisation industry and our daily efforts to get to the top of the Google listings by fair means or foul, will go out of the window. It is back to what I was saying in 1997, content is all that should matter and if your website looks like a duck and quacks like a duck – then it is a duck.

If you are not already into RSS, you should be, as it will simplify your subscriptions and newsgathering and is the only practical way to get what you want to read when you want it.

The http://www.rssfwd.com/ service makes this even simpler by using you normal email delivery.