Wednesday, February 15, 2006 5:00 AM
Just a bit off topic, but I have recently been impressed with a couple of new sites out there.
First up, Zillow. Talk about transparency. Zillow is a huge online database that is well on its way to indexing every home in America. You can type in your home address and get its estimated value. You can also get the estimated value of every other house in your area. You can also check the actual sales price of every other home in your area. You can also check the taxes levied on each property, plus the rate of appreciation of the real estate via various charts and graphs. And...more is coming.
Sure, all of this has been available to real estate agents using closed databases for years. But, for the average homeowner trying to find this information, there is a lot of time and trouble involved. Not anymore. I don't see a service like this necessarily replacing an experienced real estate agent because there may be intangibles that can't be captured in the database. On the other hand, for all of the 'for sale by owner' crowd, what an unbelievable valuably new tool. At the very least, I have to wonder if the 6% real estate sales fee will stay a sacred cow?
Up next, Podzinger. Frustrated by searching for podcasts or other multimedia content? Podzinger may be onto something. In its own words:
What is the difference between PODZINGER and other podcast search sites? Most podcast search sites provide directories of podcasts by subject, category, or they search only the metadata provided by the creator of the podcast. PODZINGER takes search a step further by searching the spoken words inside the podcast in order to find more specific and relevant results. The text-based search results include snippets from the audio to help you figure out if the result is relevant. You can even click on the words to listen to the audio from that point.
What does this mean? Basically, it appears that Podzinger is converting audio to text for indexing and searching and then converting it back to audio for previewing and downloading. Very, very slick. This may just be my new favorite Podcasting search site.
Good stuff.