It’s a Friday here in DC, and I’m in the office on a beautiful day. Judging from the traffic report I heard on the way in today, I’m probably the only one in an office in the entire metro area — except for all of the hard-working people in commercial real estate, of course.

I’m not sure if your town is like mine, but the DC area tends to shut down in August. In previous years, that has extended to July as well. But this year has been different, judging by the high attendance I experienced at several functions last month. Everyone was blaming it on the economy and high gas prices, as well as slower business conditions causing more people to attempt to prospect for more deals.

This month, though, it seems that the tumbleweeds are meandering down the streets of the DC metro area once again. Like every year at this time.

But I digress (that happens on a slow Friday). So today is a good office day. Time to catch up on a bunch of little things I’ve let slide because I’ve had to do some major projects, especially the impending launch of Sibdu, and our new video newscasts — we’re #45 in the iTunes Store for the Top 100 of Business News video podcasts, by the way (as of this writing, anyways, as it keeps changing).

One of those small things was to bring you up to speed on some good Web sites I’ve seen across the Internet as of late — sites that can help you with your business. More on them after the jump.

First is a site called RadarFarms:

We take the entirety of the web - which is a chaotic sea of websites, newsgroups, blogs, RSS feeds, news, jobs, advertisements - and filter it down to the topics you care about, bringing you consistent new content and saving you the trouble of finding it. We call them News Radars.

I call them pretty cool. Anyhow, I worked with them (well, it was mainly them, but you get my meaning) to set up a News Radar for commercial real estate. Here it is. We’re also planning on including it in the public groups within Sibdu when we launch. (Don’t know what that means? Sign up for Sibdu and find out. Sorry, a bit of shameless promotion there. Hey, it’s Friday.)

Second, our friends at CREmunity.tv are ever aware of our mission to bring video into the marketing and communications mix of commercial real estate. Stephen Hopkins of the site has pointed me to just a few of his members’ outstanding efforts:

NY Developer Breaks Ground on Green Condo and Boutique Hotel

WindowGain Digital Storefront Display at Bluewater in the UK

Get Up Close Personal With Aliens …

Three very different videos that show a lot of creativity, and from different areas of CRE, too (not just brokerage). I mean, c’mon, you can’t go wrong with aliens in a bathroom … ? So if they can do it, so can you, right? Right. Thought so.

Speaking of video, the third site presents a way to get into “video” without having a camcorder or Web cam. I haven’t really gotten a chance to dig into the site, called SpotMixer, but from the once-over I gave it, it looks interesting.

Here’s what the PR person who let me know about it had to say about SpotMixer:

… it’s a fast and inexpensive way for Realtors to get into the online video advertising game. SpotMixer is an easy-to-use video creation and distribution platform that enables businesses to produce their own professional-level video ads, complete with music and special effects, and distribute them to targeted audiences with just a few clicks.

It’s already had some press coverage, too. I hope to try the site out in the next few weeks, and come back with a full review. In the meantime, I invite you to check it out — and let me know what you think of it if you use it.

And now, back to work. Have a good weekend, all.

Sibdu News, with commercial real estate stories and headlines, is delivered twice a week via video / podcast. Look for the stories here at Sibdu Blog, and in our channel at Viddler. Sibdu News is also available as a video podcast in the iTunes Store.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 @ 9:56 am on the category Marketing/Sales, Video, Web Sites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.