Fring and Plugoo: Guaranteed To Increase Your Business, Geek Street Cred, And Marital Strife

July 17, 2007

Like many other re.net bloggers I am more than a bit of a tech geek, quite content to play with Wordpress widgets when I should be, oh, I don’t know…doing an open house?  Sending out postcards?  Signing up for $800 color ads in the Palo Alto Weekly?

I was an early adopter of Meebo and found it quite useful.  My clients — many of whom are just as about as geeky as I am — would IM me without having to log in to their own IM client or have me on a buddy list.  The occasional web straggler would come by now and then to ask real-estate related questions.  The re.net’s very own sock pocket would come from time to time and anonymously try to get my hopes up by pretending to be an unattached seller of a pricey $350K home.  (Hint:  To get us salivating about a prospective listing in this area, the home’s price has to have seven digits, the first preferably not a “1″.)

The problem is, I would have to actually log on at Meebo in order to be reachable, and Meebo does not (I believe) have a mobile client yet.

plugoo.jpgfring.gifEnter Plugoo — already in use on some other re.net blogs –  and Fring.  Plugoo provides an IM widget with support for Google Talk and the usual suspects, while Fring handily tricks out my Motorola Q with a mobile client for the same.

So now…yep, you guessed it…I don’t have to miss that potential lead who’s just dying to IM me a critical real estate-related question.  As long as I have my Q with me and on (ie. I’m awake and the Q’s battery hasn’t drained) and I’m logged on to the Fring application (ditto)…you can IM me from my blog!

Now that’s what I call progress.

How many legit (non-sock puppet) conversations do I have?  A lot more than I thought I would.  On average, when I remembered to actually log in to Meebo, I probably had one chat every three to four hours.

The dear wife, however, is not impressed.  You’d think she would be — I mean, if she needs to contact me now from across the room, she no longer has to email me!

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Written by Kevin · Filed Under Real estate 

Comments

7 Responses to “Fring and Plugoo: Guaranteed To Increase Your Business, Geek Street Cred, And Marital Strife”

  1. Loren Nason on July 17th, 2007 9:47 pm

    Fring looks sweet
    i’ll have to try it

    since your using it here is the question. does it automatically login when internet connection goes off during phone call and then comes back after hanging up?

  2. Jim Duncan on July 18th, 2007 3:00 am

    Nice service; have you had any success with Jaxtr? I just signed up for Grand Central, and am debating how best to implement that.

  3. Kevin Boer, Realtor, Alain Pinel Realtors on July 18th, 2007 9:26 am

    Loren — It does indeed seem to automatically log back in after a phone call, which is pretty nice, though it probably will drain the batter even faster than normal.

    Jim — Very little action from Jaxtr. Probably largely because of its poor placement on my sidebar — which I’m in the process of evaluating.

    BTW, Fring has a Skype client. Unfortunately, over Verizon’s network, the call quality is absolutely dreadful. My Q doesn’t have Wifi, so I can’t test Skype-over-WIFI, sadly.

  4. Sock Puppet on July 18th, 2007 3:24 pm

    Pat Kitano is still the all time worst offender for “I want to buy a house” pranks. The sod actually called me on the phone and did his routine on me….

    -Athol

  5. Kelley Koehler on July 19th, 2007 7:15 am

    See, the trick is to marry someone as geeky as yourself. Then you can sit in your separate offices (side by side in the house) and send text and IMs during the day. Really cuts down on that terrible talking thing…

  6. Jackie Colson-Miller on July 19th, 2007 6:04 pm

    Does it work with a Treo, too?

  7. Kevin Boer, Realtor, Alain Pinel Realtors on July 19th, 2007 8:01 pm

    Jackie — Looks like it does. See here.

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