I started to care about the Real Estate industry and the anti-competitive practices when I wanted to develop web-based real-estate tools for developers.  I had been looking around at what was out there and found that the offerings from the brokers/agents were tough to use, and didn’t tie into the geographic components of the market well enough.  There were no maps, limited pictures, etc.  There wasn’t much else on the market at the time (probably around 2002), and I thought there would be huge consumer demand for good home-buying tools.

What I learned is that it was basically impossible.  The brokers/agents have a strangle-hold on the MLS (Multiple Listing Services) and wouldn’t allow anyone to access or syndicate the data–indeed if I partnered with a member agent they would face heavy fines for sharing the data with me.  I was forced to look at alternative and non-definitive data providers like newspapers, craigslist, which were spotty at best.  I read about a lot of similar stories from other like-minded individuals, discount brokers, FSBO (For Sale By Owner) groups and sellers all of which have butted heads against the industry, who despite supposedly a group of competing independent business acts as one cabal.  The industry as a whole fights anything that make shake up the status quo and encourage competition: discounted listing rates, FSBO listings on the MLS, independent websites, etc.  Despite lawsuits and government investigations, the industry had been able to stay just away from serious legal trouble for anti-competitive practices.

And this is all still true today.  There are some third party websites like Zillow, and the FSBO folks have been making progress, but still face stiffoposition from the real estate industry and MLS folks.

The Federal Trade Comission released a FANTASTIC report about the state of the industry, anti-competitive practices, some proposed solutions, etc.   Despite the dry nature of the content, it is very easy to read and aimed at the average homebuyer or consumer.  Very, very well done.

In any case the Justice Department finally took action and reached a settlement with the industry–hopefully it will shake things up a bit and make buying and selling a home a bit better for the consumer.

In my line of work I occasionally have to repair/restore various notebook computers. I recently had a Dell Inspiron E1505 dropped off at my desk which was having “Vista Issues”.

The machine wouldn’t shut down properly, and had various issues, even after applying updates, searching for spyware, etc. At some point someone had installed Vista Home Premium over the factory installed Vista Home Basic that came with the machine. I figured restoring it to factory defaults would probably be a step in the right direction, but I didn’t have the factory restore DVD (if indeed they even came with one). Luckily Dell has a restore partition that includes the factory image.

Normally, to access this restore partition and re-image the computer, you’d reboot the machine and press CTRL-F11 as it is booting into Windows. Unfortunately, when you install a new OS over the top of the Dell-tweaked one, you lose this functionality. So how do you restore the factory image if you don’t have the factory image installed anymore?

On the D: partition, there is an image file in D:\Dell\Image\ falled “factory.wim“. This is the factory image. In D:\tools\ is the necessary Microsoft imagex.exe utility needed to restore the image.

So basically boot up the system into a command line, either using a Vista disk, or even a Windows 98 Boot CD/disk.

Run the following command:

d:\tools\imagex /apply d:\dell\image\factory.wim 1 c:

The “1″ argument represents the “image number” in the .wim file.

If it is working you’ll see the following

X:\>d:\tools\imagex /apply d:\dell\image\factory.wim 1 c:
ImageX Tool for Windows
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. 1981-2005. All rights reserved.

Progress: 0%

It will take perhaps 5 minutes for the progress meter to start working–are you suprised? When was the last time Microsoft gave us a linear progress indicator? I’m just happy it didn’t go backwards. In all the process took around 20 minutes.

The full imagex syntax for imagex with the /apply flag is:

imagex /apply image_file image_number image_name image_path {/check | /ref | /scroll | /verify}

In recent weeks there have been two similar scenarios in which a company has attempted to stiffle or cover-up information that is on the internet by threatening/taking legal action, pulling domains and/or hosting services of certain websites.

This seems like a reasonable course of action, but the issue is that even if the legal arguments win–the cat is already out of the bag.  The information is cached, blogged about, and indeed covered in the media.  When one threatens legal action against a site, all you’re going to do is draw more attention to what you’re trying to cover up.

First example:  Wikileaks, a site where whistleblowers can anonymously post confidential documents, received documents alleging money laundering, asset hiding and tax evasion practices by Bank Julius Baer.   When Bank Julius Baer went after Dynadot, Wikileaks’ domain registrar, pulling the wikileak.org domain, it drew intense scrutiny.  Frankly before all this happened I’d never heard of Wikileaks or Bank Julius Baer, and never would have if they hadn’t draw so much attention to themselves with the legal action.  If they’d have done nothing, nobody would have ever heard about the scandal, but now, regardless of if the allegations were true, when anyone thinks of Bank Julis Baer, they will think “money laundering off-shore bank”.

A similar thing happened with a site called Howard Forums.  A user posted a link to an unprotected XML file on the servers of MobiTV (a mobile streaming video provider), which listed the company’s unprotected streaming QuickTime URLs that enable anyone on the internet to watch TV for free (albiet in low resoultion form designed for cell phones).  Rather than implement security methods that would prevent this from happening, they decided to threaten legal action against the owners of the site under the DMCA. What ended up happening though, is that by threatening the site, they ended up stirring up a hornet’s nest of interest from bloggers, forum members, and news site.  Now the information that they are trying to cover up is available from hundreds of different sources.  I’d never heard of Hardware Forums or MobiTV before but now I know how to get free TV on my mobile phone or computer.

The bottom line is that the Internet is about information–and once it is out, its out.  There is nothing you can do to put the cat back in the bag.  By attempting to do so, all you’re going to do is draw more attention to the thing you’re trying to hide.  You’re giving validation to your detractors.

When it comes to dealing with false information on the Internet (although it is just as valid for true information) my advice is to ignore it.  Or in the case of when you’re trying to hide a security breach, just fix the breach as quickly and quietly as possible.

A lot of people feel this is the best MiniDV camcorder ever made, and I love it. But I haven’t used it in the last year or so, and it is a waste to have it sit.

A great camera for an aspiring filmmaker or film student, it has a lot of great manual features that are uncommon on consumer camcorders. Can adjust the aperature, shutter speeds, manual focus and zoom (on lens), white balance, zebra pattern, etc. Has an color eyepiece as well as a flip-out LCD screen–a lot of camcorders these days just have the flip-out screen which isn’t always enough. You can also set it in automatic and just point-and-shoot for great results–it is easy to get great results even if you don’t have a lot of photography experience!

It is in very good overall shape, everything works perfectly including the on-off rotator switch (which I guess fails sometimes on these units). It has a couple of light scratches, but I’ve tried my best to take great care of it. The only thing I have to mention is that were the microphone mounts to the handle is cracked, but it works perfectly, just have to be a little careful when handling/packing (and obviously don’t drop it!) not to break it off. Under normal or even rough conditions you should be fine, but it is possible that it could break if mishandled. Sony does stock the replacement parts if this should happen and they are inexpensive.

Camera Specs

• 3CCD Progressive Scan (Very Important!)
• Built In Stereo Microphone (Sounds Great!)
• 12X Optical Zoom, 48X Digital Zoom
• 2.5″ Color LCD Viewfinder
• Color Eyepiece Viewfinder
• RCA Video Inputs/Outputs
• SVideo Input / Output
• LANC Remote Support (works great have tested)
• Lens hood & cover
• Digital Video on MiniDV Tapes

The upgraded NP-F750 battery that comes with it is really great. You can shoot several hours with it.

Comes with a bunch of Accessories

• 2X Telephoto Lens & Covers, Bag
• .5X Fisheye / Macro Lens & Covers, Bag
• Polorized Filter
• UV Filter
• Flourecent light filter (for shooting indoors)
• Filter case
• 8 MB Memory Stick
• NP-F750 Infolithium Battery
• Shoulder/Carrying Strap
• AC Power Adapter / Charger
• AV Cable (RCA Audio & Video)
• New headphones
• Original Manual
• Lens cleaning cloth and wipes
• Hard 1450 Pelican Case with Divider Kit (worth well over $100)

Camera originally retailed for about $3500, accessories worth about $250.

I’d like $1100.

Please only email if you’re serious and have the money–it takes a LOT of time dealing with folks that end up flaking out. Cash and PayPal only (due to check and western union scammers). Located in Issaquah, WA. Am willing to ship, but only domestically and only with PayPal. Buyer to pay actual shipping charges.

Got back from Ignite Seattle 5, was a good time had by all. In general the event was more political and less humor than 4. 30 minutes before the start of the event, the place was already standing-room only, and by the start it was packed to the rafters (literally) again. There were probably between 350 and 400 people, and folks were getting turned away due to (I assume) fire codes and lack of oxygen… I’d say that the event has definitely outgrown the venue.

Ontella was looking for developers, and giving out free drink tickets.

I really enjoyed the talk by Vj Vijai entitlted “Hacking the Technical Interview“, which, ultimately dealt with psychology of interactions, and influencing people through interaction.

I also enjoyed the talk by Ramez Naam about bottom-up concept in business–and how democracy has overtaken dictatorships in most other social forms, but not in most businessed. Naam goes on to discuss ways of integrating a bottom-up structure and ideas into businesses. He’s working on a book which I think I may have to pick up.

I was also intrigued by the talk Justin Martenstein gave about creating a new ’startup’ in a weekend.

I will post links to the videos of the talks when they are posted.

I also promise to begin working on a talk for the next Ignite!