Sneaky, easy real estate research

My wife and I bought our first house in November, 2007 after relocating to Wilmington, North Carolina from northern Virginia. The homes that we looked at in the area were delightfully affordable when compared to those outside of DC where I had recently rented a crappy little three-bedroom apartment for almost $1,900/month.

I put my analytic skills to the test and decided to find the best possible deal I could on a home. I was enlightened to two free research tools with no registration requirement that proved to be absolutely priceless:

1. My county's Register of Deeds website - a county-sponsored site that has information about all of the real estate in the county. It's updated weekly with data related to sales dates and prices, square footage, number of bedrooms, etc. Real estate agents will use this to discern a fair sales price for a home by searching for recent sales in a neighborhood and calculating an average price per square foot.
   
   A simple search might look something like this: "Show me the sales prices of all the homes that sold in the past three months in neighborhood #2145 with at least three bedrooms and at least two bathrooms." This is extremely useful when making an offer on a home, and a good way to keep your Realtor honest.
   
   Most counties in the US have a site similar to my county's. I searched for information on Otsego County, NY -- the county I grew up in. Their site has the same basic data, but a different interface. To find the real estate site for your county, Google is a place to start. Search for the county name, plus the words "GIS," "tax," "assessor," or "deeds." One of these will usually get you where you need to be. If you're not having any luck, try going to the county's website and looking for a sub-site for the office of the county tax assessor, register of deeds, or GIS department (which may be classified with the Planning department).
   
   Keep in mind that with the county sites, you have the potential to get really stalky/creepy with your searches. At least with my county's site, you can search for people by name and, if they're homeowners, you can find their address, the size of their home, and how much they paid for their home. If you've ever wondered who the noisy neighbors are at house 1523 on your street, you can look that up by address and get as much info as you'd like about them.
   
   
   
   
2. Zillow.com - A website that is essentially a single interface and repository for the nation's county real estate websites - It doesn't have the same level of data as most county websites, but it adds some additional features like estimating a home's market value, showing a map with recent sales, and the giving the option to claim a home and add a subjective description.
   
   Zillow is particularly helpful if you're searching for a home in a county whose real estate website is either non-existant or poorly designed . If you want to know how much houses are selling for in a particular neighborhood in the country, simply enter as much of the address into their search bar and let 'er rip!
   
   The site also provides services to connect you with lenders, etc.

It's not that I don't ever trust realtors, but I don't just trust them automatically. If you're working with someone that you don't know or haven't been referred to, there is a serious potential for a conflict of interest between their goals and your own. Agents, whether you're buying or selling, can steer you in a direction that will allow them to hasten the sale either by convincing a seller to accept less or encouraging a buyer to pay more. Though their pay comes from comission and is tied directly to the sales price, a difference of a few thousand dollars in sales price can mean a lot to the party that is buying or selling. Convincing a client to pay or accept an unfair price -- even though it may harm the agent's commission -- can save the agent days or weeks of work (well worth a slight reduction of commission).

Give yourself the tools you'll need to make wise decisions with real estate. Don't just take your agent's word for it that you're getting or paying a fair price for a home. Look up the recent sales for yourself. Just proving to your agent that you're no rookie in real estate research will truly keep him or her bargaining effectively on your behalf.

In the meantime, try and find your county or city's real estate website. They're fun tools to play with! Just don't get too creepy with your analysis...

Discover your inner loan shark with prosper.com

Last summer I began to research prosper.com, a site that specializes in peer-to-peer (P2P) lending. Essentially, it's the ebay for personal loans; except with 'wanted' listings instead of 'for sale' listings. In your listing, you can include a picture and give an open-ended explanation of your credit history, your plans for the money, and your current financial situation. Prosper.com claims to cut out the middle man (well, except for the new middle man: prosper.com) and is able to help people with all different levels of credit get a cash loan for a lower interest rate than they would find with a traditional lender. Additionally, those willing to invest (partially funding loans with as little as $50) are likely to earn a better return on their money than they would by placing it in a bank, mutual fund, or stock.

One can loan his money to an extremely low-risk borrower -- one with a 2% chance of defaulting -- and earn about 8% on his money. Or with a high-risk borrower, he can earn up to 35% return! To put that in perspective, I just received my 401(k) quarterly statement and found that my quarterly earnings were -.29% (that's negative-point-two-nine, not negative-twenty-nine...I'm not THAT bad at investing). If he wants, the lender can spread his loans out, $50 at a time, for no extra cost. So if there are no added costs to diversify, the returns are above average, and the risk is relatively low, why hasn't everyone signed up with a prosper.com account? I'll tell you why.

The thing is, prosper.com isn't really an apples-to-apples-comparable investment to something like a CD, savings account, or a stock. All of those things can be turned in for cash at any point (possibly with a penalty or sales fee), having nearly the same liquidity as cash; and liquidity isn't free! Let's not forget that savings accounts and CDs are FDIC insured, too.

Loans made on prosper.com all have a term of three years. So a prosper.com investor will receive a monthly payment (which includes interest) each month for three years unless the borrower pays the loan back early.

This brings up another interesting difference between prosper.com loans and traditional savings/CD accounts. It's not as easy to compound your interest earned with a prosper.com loan. As a bank investment will automatically start paying you on your earned interest, prosper.com just deposits cash into your account. Because of this, that money will sit sans interest until you take the time to reinvest it. This means that once a month you need to find another borrower to whom you can lend your money. And because each loan has a different due date, to maximize your return, you'll need to find new borrowers for the interest you earned on each of your current loans.

So am I saying that you shouldn't invest your money in prosper.com? Absolutely not. Am I saying that it cannot be compared to savings and CD accounts? Well, I'm saying that it can't be looked at in the same way. All investments can be compared, whether you're putting money into a 401(k), buying stocks, or raising and selling cattle. What must be analyzed when comparing investments is the risk, the return (the only two things people tend to look at), and the liquidity and fees associated with the investment. Like all investments, prosper.com loans require tender care and maintenance. You get a higher return because 1) YOU perform that maintenance (instead of paying a bank of a mutual fund to do it) and 2) the liquidity of your loans are very limited.

As much as people tend to hate banks, they do provide a service. We never have to worry about reinvesting our interest and we're welcome to come any time and take our money out. In fact, they make it easy for us by giving us checks and debit cards. But banks charge us dearly for these services -- a point that's proven by prosper.com. When a borrower is willing to borrow at 10% and a bank is willing to pay 1-3% in interest, it's not hard to figure out how much a bank charges for its services.

If you want to lend with prosper.com (I haven't yet), go ahead -- it's quite an opportunity. But do it with the understanding that your returns will not be compounded unless you are a disciplined caretaker of your account. And be sure to only invest an amount of money that you have 'forgetten' about and would not need in the event of an emergency. Also, be sure to check out http://www.ericscc.com, which is a neat site dedicated to the analysis of individual lenders' successes and failures on prosper.com. Study the best and worst lenders and find what their strategies have been.

Borrowers: Sorry, but I don't have any advice for you. If you'd like to borrow $10,000 at 35% interest to 'pay off credit cards with high interest,' you've got some serious problems.

Automatic transfers -- fuhgeddaboudit!

Just as most online banks can pay our bills for us regularly, they can also automatically transfer funds. This is a wonderful way to take the guess work out of saving money or paying down debt. At work, your 401(k) contributions are automatic -- they don't seem to hit as hard because you're not writing a check every pay period. You can, and should, apply this same concept at home if you need a little discipline with your savings and debt payoff.

I have automatic transfers/drafts set up for a few accounts: my 401(k), car loan (regular payment and extra principal), college savings account, and an emergency fund. Each month, money goes into those separate accounts automatically to be used for the specific purpose the account is given.

Before deciding where to start sending your money, do some planning and think of the few big-ticket things you need to save for or pay off. I decided I needed to save for retirement, my wife's college, and an emergency fund (just in case the roof caves in tomorrow). Also, I have a loan on one of my cars and would like to pay that off as soon as possible. If you have debt, analyze the situation before deciding to pay it off instead of saving.

Once you have the three to five accounts into which you'd like to start putting your extra money (if you don't have any, make some spending cuts and find some!), use the computerized discipline of your online bank and fuhgeddaboudit! If you're paying down a debt, make sure you're reducing the principal and not just paying the account early (sometimes to be sneaky they apply your extra payment toward next month's payment). If you decide to save rather than pay down debt, open a separate savings account (for saving for college, I recommend a 529). E*Trade is currently offering 3.3% on their savings account with no minimums -- a great place to get started.

After you've set up your automatic debt payments/savings, readjust your monthly budget as if you just took a pay cut. Then, don't even look at the balances of your selected accounts for a few months. When you check them, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

By treating your savings and debt reduction like regular monthly expenses (hey, you've got to pay yourself first!), you'll be pleasantly surprised in a few months when you find yourself in a much better financial position. Good luck!

Who's going to pay for all this?

It seems like every time I come online, I'm surprised to find a new site or service that's entertaining, useful, and absolutely free: blogs, podcasts, online banking, classified ads, videos, photo sharing sites, and more.  And just about all of them are ad-driven.  As developers and writers spend their workdays creating free content and services, the demand for online advertisers will increase proportionately.  But as more services move to a free-to-the-user, ad-funded business model, won't the supply of advertisers decrease?  Or at least stay the same?

There are very few services that I pay for on the internet.  And I can't really say that I click on many advertisements.  A big reason for this is that I know that so many things (that I use) are available free of charge.    Plus, many of the ads I see are for companies that sell complete crap -- work-from-home opportunities, ringtones, credit cards, etc -- whose days in business, I pessimistically believe, are numbered.

Google challenged the traditional online advertisement model with the creation of AdWords and AdSense, their pay-per-click systems.  Speaking from my own experience, however, I'm not sure how many internet surers are willing to click on even the most relevant ads.  I have become so numbed to online ads that I hardly notice them anymore -- and I'm not the only one.  I built a website last year for a local water treatment professional and when we tried to advertise online with a strategic Google AdWords campaign, it took weeks before ever receiving our first click.  Most of the traffic came to his site via word-of-mouth advertising.

I am much more likely to visit a site if I followed a link from a friend or a favorite blog.  As more communication takes place over the internet and as more people build their own websites that allow them to recommend sites and businesses, the supply of word-of-mouth advertising will increase substantially, thereby lowing our demand for the less effective paid ads.  But as more services are provided free of charge, we will increasingly depend on the paid ads.

I believe that as time goes on, fewer companies will be willing to pay for advertising online.  With the exception of big-name companies like Coca-Cola and HP that have always spent millions on marketing, many of the ads we see online will be paid for by startups that will soon die after overestimating their traffic generated by paid ads.  It sounds bitter, but it looks like as time goes on, the ever-growing machine of free online services will be fueled by the failed ventures of others...creepy!

The next human evolution?

I love talking to my uncle Mike -- an auto mechanic from upstate New York -- about technology and the internet. His experiences online are limited (but more than you'd expect for an old guy), yet he always provides a good analysis into the usefulness of new offerings on the web. He loves to talk about his online stock trading site, some how-to sites, and a handful of e-stores. I remember something that he told me in 2000 or 2001: "These days you can do so much on the internet, one day you'll never need to leave the house! Everyone will just sit on their butts and live and work through their home computers. We'll be a society of computer geeks with weak bodies and oversized heads...like aliens!" I had a mental image of all humans looking something like this guy in the photo.

The funny thing is, Mike's foresight didn't seem too irrational. Already, I was doing most of my communication with out-of-town friends over the internet.  The internet was where I bought most of of my electronics and all of my plane tickets. It was where I was banking and paying my bills. Piece-by-piece, my brick-and-mortar errands were disappearing with each instant message and e-ticket. I could do almost everything from my computer room!  I wondered how long it would take for my head to outgrow my favorite ball cap.

But what Mike and I didn't plan on was the rapid development of mobile technology. All of the sudden we were able to do everything from anywhere. No longer were we restricted to the bat caves to which we expected to be damned for all efficient eternity. With wi-fi hotspots popping up like weeds and cell phone data plans, we could be out living our lives without compromising our new dependence on the net.

I believe that our natural human urges to travel, socialize, eat, drink, and be merry will ultimately drive our enhancements to technology and software. As much as Mike may think we'll evolve to greyish brain creatures, I doubt things will ever get to that point. As time goes by we'll be able to do more and more in simpler, more convenient ways, which will in turn enable us to do more of the things we love. Already we can bank online while hiking, make a hotel reservation while driving, or even attend a college lecture from the airport.

So if you've ever been worried about turning into a freaky weakling chained to the electronic lifeline in your computer room, don't fret too much...Improved technology paired with our ever-increasing demand for 'connected' living will only give us more flexibility to do the things we love...the real things we love.

With a simple routine comes comfort and ease

There was a point in my life, particularly in college, where I didn't exactly trust myself. From time to time, I promised myself lots little things that I would do to better myself: reading, writing, and exercising more, eating right, etc. I'd usually stick with it for a couple of days -- a week at most -- before slipping into my old habits again. I'd always seem to find a good reason to put the book down, stop writing, sit on my butt, or drive to Hardee's. Maybe I had writer's block; maybe I had to get up early that morning and just wasn't feeling up to exercising; maybe I was starving and had nothing in the fridge. Whatever it was, I compromised, and with each compromise, the next one became easier...and easier...and easier until there was nothing left to compromise; I had given up.

When I consciously compromised my behavior, I felt a little guilty. When I had given up on the goal of the week, I was no longer compromising and therefore never really felt guilty. As a result, I spend a good couple of years without doing many of the things differently than I would today. Watching TV instead of reading; speaking my thoughts instead of writing them down; sleeping in and sitting around; eating lots of fast food. Because I hadn't set any goals for myself (or a plan to achieve them), I wasn't viewing these behaviors as destructive.

Eventually I grew up a little bit and decided it was time to make a few changes. But how would I stick with them after having trouble in the past? I was the king of excuses, and I had been excusing myself for too long. So how did I fix it?

I could always find a legitimate reason to justify a decision to not do something constructive, so I took the whole 'deciding' part out of the equation. I came up with a daily routine and a small, achievable set of rules. In the past, though I always came up with achievable goals, they never materialized because I never enabled myself to achieve them. By establishing a routine -- a daily itinerary -- I was able to achieve my simple personal goals and improve the quality of my life.

By setting a few simple rules and establishing a routine, I began writing every day, finishing books on a weekly basis, losing weight, and lowering my cholesterol. Whenever I was presented with options related to my goals, instead of making a decision on the fly, I consulted my newly established routines and guidelines. Here are some examples:

• Each morning for breakfast, I will eat a bowl of oatmeal
• I will not eat fast food
• I will go for a long walk every day (which eventually turned into a jog)
• When I have free time and am considering turning on the TV, I will pick up a book instead
• I will write every day
  

By setting these guidelines, I took the decision out of decision-making in my weakest areas. Also, I set up allowances for most items, which was a key to changing my behavior. The allowances kept me sane and flexible. But it was important for me to define them, almost as I defined items in a budget. Examples are:

• I would allow myself to not eat oatmeal if I was traveling and it was unavailable (instead eating something else that was healthy)
• I allowed myself to eat an unhealthy breakfast twice a month
• I would skip the walk if it was raining all day (but if I anticipated rain in the evening, I would try and walk earlier in the day)
• I could skip reading two days per week
• I would write every day, unless I decided ahead of time the length of my hiatus
• I still would not eat fast food
  

By being mindful of my goals and their allowances, I changed my daily routine to something that I was comfortable with. Every morning, without thinking about it, I eat a bowl of oatmeal. Because it was sometimes hard to find time to write, I would get up early and write before starting my workday. Because I know I sometimes get writers' block, I'm always jotting down ideas for tomorrow's post. During my lunch break, I take the dog for a long walk around the neighborhood. After dinner, I sit down and read, unless there is something else pressing (hey, life happens); if I'm busy for a few nights straight, I try and play catch up.

Of course, I'm not perfect. My writing hiatus for my wedding was longer than expected; I sometimes skip the walk if my to-do list gets the best of me; and just the other day I caved and watched three back-to-back episodes of The Office instead of finishing my book. And that's OK -- that's life. We're human and we sometimes need to take time for ourselves and be lazy and forget about doing something constructive. But what we can't do is forget that we define our personal goals for a reason. We define them to better ourselves and enable ourselves to live fulfilling lives. We define them because we recognize our own weaknesses and maybe want to turn them into strengths. We define them because we need to take control of the only life we can control...our own.

The ability to set and achieve personal goals is an important component of our confidence and self esteem. For me, the easiest way to better myself has been to define my goals, come up with a plan, and establish a simple routine.

What works for you?

Keeping up with the Joneses: a look into my neighborhood's dependent featuress

I've been working at home since May, which helps give me a bit more free time. In the morning, instead of commuting and packing my lunch, I spend my time blogging, managing my finances, and leisurely sipping my coffee, all while watching my wife hurry out the door to brave her daily commute (such a shame). I tell you, it's the way of the future! My favorite part of the day is my lunch hour when I take the dog on a walk around the neighborhood...

As I walk around the same 1-1/2-mile loop, I play a little game. I try and identify similarities with my neighbors' houses that are in close proximity of one another. This started when I realized that only five houses in the whole loop (out of more than 100 total) had an outdoor basketball hoop. And four out of those five were right next to or across the street from each other.

If you ever read the The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell, you know that he discusses the lifecycle of viral trends -- iPods, Hushpuppy sneakers, and even those 80s wrist-slap bracelets -- most of which start because of an undeniably cool new idea/technology or because of a wildly unique and auspicious trend had been started. The book mentions that most fashion trends are started by the hipsters in New York and L.A where the technology trends come from Japan or the Silicon Valley. But what if a trend isn't necessarily viral? What if it's not particularly cool and wasn't started by a highly visible hipster with an appetite for ironic fashion? What if it was contained to, let's say, a small neighborhood in North Carolina? When I look around, I see that decorative copycats are all around me...

Everyone is different, and for the most part is able to operate independently and making their own decisions. But we can't deny the subtle influence our immediate surroundings provide us; 'Keeping up with the Joneses' is a very real thing. As we look to decorate and maintain our homes, many of us (especially me) have no idea what we're doing and rely on getting ideas from someone else.

Consider the following list of home features in my neighborhood, its premise being that the a home having the feature depends greatly on the number of neighboring houses with the same or a similar feature. All of the items on this list are features that had been controlled by the homeowner, not the original developer (so two-car garages, large picture window, etc will not be listed). The list is ordered by strength of dependency (higher on the list = more dependent on neighbors; lower = less dependent on neighbors).

1. Lack of a fenced-in back yard -- About 15 percent of homes in my neighborhood do not have a back yard fence. With almost no exceptions, those homes are in three separate clusters.
2. Front yard flagpoles (those mounted in the ground, not on a vertical surface)
3. Basketball hoop
4. Pergolas (you know, those sort of 'fake' roofs that are meant to provide shade rather than cover)
   
5. 'Edged' line between grass and pavement (it's clear who uses an edger and who doesn't) -- I'm assuming that this is dependent because neighbors borrow each others' tools.
6. Mulch around bushes
7. The color of mulch around bushes
8. Unkept lawn -- I assume that if you witness your neighbor not keeping up with his or her lawn maintenance, you're less likely to keep up with yours
9. Pickup truck
10. Uncommon trees
11. Landscaping bricks

There are also some common features in my neighborhood that seem to have no dependency on neighbors. These features are pools and proper yard maintenance. I assume that neighbors are likely to share pools and maintain their yards (unless of course their neighbors have 'given up,' in which case they are more likely to give up).

What kind of decorative dependancies do you see in your neighborhood?

If you want something, it's YOUR problem

In the first week of my first post-college job, I was introduced to an older gentleman named Will that still remains my valued mentor. On the Thursday of my first week, I sat in his office and listened to the advice that he gave all the new consulting rookies. One piece that I'll never forget was this: "When you're at work and you want something, no matter what it is, it's your problem -- nobody else's." As the years have passed, this statement has continued to prove itself to be so true.

My friend Jesse and I sat at the table last night and discussed the similarities and differences of our current and past jobs. We found common ground in that we had both been disappointed at a point in a coworker's lack of response to a request or comment of ours. Specifically, at one point or another, he and I had each built a tool to make our work lives easier; me, some auditing software and him, a data warehouse.

He joked about how he spent an entire summer building this data warehouse tool and how he wasn't even sure if people used it. I explained how frustrated I had become when I found out that someone had performed an audit for a client without using my tool. Though we both believed in our work and knew that we had created something useful, we hadn't convinced people like we'd hoped.

Sometimes we forget that the principles of marketing don't always apply to just business and sales -- they apply to us and our everyday activities. It's up to us to convince people that we're worth what we think we are and that the things we do and think are important and applicable to others. To get what we want in life, whether at home or at work, it's up to us to take the steps to get there.

When I built my audit software last year, I wanted my coworkers to use it for each of their future audits. So what did I do? I wrote an instruction manual and sent an email to all of our auditors with a product description. It received a little bit of interest, but few responses were tendered. Looking back, I see that only I and those with whom I worked most closely ended up using my software regularly. Though initially I grew frustrated with the lack of response, I realized the problem was mine -- and not anyone else's.

I thought about all of the emails I receive on a regular basis at times when I don't have a lot of time to read them -- especially from people that I don't consider to be very important. No offense to anyone, but there's a big difference between getting an email from my boss saying 'Call me NOW' and an email from the facilities manager saying 'all the cars need to be moved from the parking lot by five o'clock.' I'm sure that to many people I email, I'm most like the latter. Some of the auditors that I emailed didn't know me from a stick in the mud. Most already had their own way of doing things. And they probably received my looooooong email on their Blackberries when they were having lunch with a client. They read it and they forgot it...and I gave up.

That was a perfect example of ineffective communication and self-marketing on my part; my intended message wasn't received like I expected it to be. I wasn't empathetic with my audience, and I assumed that they would have the same passion as me for something they'd never heard of.

What I should have done was get creative with the marketing of my message. If I believed in the software so much, I should have made it my priority to market it. I should have set up a meeting with my boss and my boss' boss to demonstrate how it works and prove that it can save us time and money. After seeing its benefits, they would take over its marketing for me, particularly because it affects their bottom line.

By understanding my self-marketing mistake, I have learned to more carefully consider my audience when discussing my personal and career objectives. In a perfect world, every one of your emails would get answered in the way that you hoped. But your recipients are busy, distracted, and set in their ways. If you want something, it's your problem. Whether you want people to use and compliment your software, give you a job, or give your company their business, if they're not listening, you're the one that needs to do something different.

When have you been frustrated when someone just wouldn't listen?

Pandora on the iPhone

The first iPod that I bought cost about $375 with my college discount. It had an outrageous 60GB capacity, had the capability to display photos, and was only about .6" thick. When I showed it to my grandma the next time I was home, she was so impressed that she'd have believed me if I told her I could use it as a missile launcher.

-- On another note, this is the same grandma who, when we called her in 1995 from our Macintosh Performa 5200 with built-in speakerphone, believed my dad and me when we told her we were calling from the computer and could "see her." Apparently she waved at the ceiling a lot that morning. --

When I was home for Christmas last year, I was helping my dad with his own iPod -- now with video capabilities -- and showed him how to organize his ever-growing music collection. I shared stories with him about guys I knew from college that had long since filled their hard drives with twenty thousand + digital songs and needed to invest in beefier storage options.

As I explained this sort of behavior to my dad, it got me thinking about how we as a culture have been becoming digital pack rats ever since the internet exploded and especially since broadband connections have become so widely available. My first digital pack rat 'fix' came on November 15, 1999 with my first digital music download on Napster: Metallica -- So What (kind of funny when you think about it). Next was Rapper's Delight, and then some Steve Miller Band.

As a junior in high school, I considered myself to be a pioneer of illegal music downloading. I was one of the first in my class to have a collection of more than 1,000 songs; 2,000 songs; 10,000 songs...

Once I got to college, Napster had long been shut down and Kazaa and Morpheus were the new addiction of my fellow music consuming paupers. But when I saw some of my friends getting nabbed by the recording industry, settling lawsuits for a summer's worth of wages, I decided to quit while I was ahead. And I survived on my meager 20,000 songs for two years...until Pandora came along; in person.

Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, came to Virginia Tech in 2005 to speak and promote his not-yet-popular website and music service. When my girlfriend (now my wife) came to tell me about hearing him speak, we jumped on the computer and listened for hours. "Try Uncle Tupelo," I said. Our request for was granted initially, but after the song finished, we were introduced to a different band...one with similar 'country influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, major key tonality, and melodic songwriting.' Three years later, an old Pandora recommendation is what we used for our wedding song.

Now, with so little effort, using only the bands that I knew, I was able to discover new music. The next time I was talking to the hipsters at the college radio station (where my wife worked as the general manager), I was able to transcend my poseur reputation by name-dropping some esoteric band names whom I'd only recently discovered on Pandora. In an environment where what you're listening to determines your social status (right along with hair color) I was no longer the GM's redneck, top-40, loser boyfriend. I was the guy who could spit out chord-striking names like Spoon, Tom Waits, and Son Volt.

The great thing was that I didn't have to put any effort into it. Of course, there are many that would dread not putting any effort into their pursuit of musical omniscience. Not me. As a simple beast, I enjoy having music on when I work, hearing stuff that I like, and occasionally jotting a band name or a song down that I really like. My days aren't spent scoring record stores for obscure collections and rare live recordings. My days are spent living my life -- working, spending time with friends and family, writing, playing with the dog, and fixing stuff around the house. And as long as I had an internet connection and a set of speakers, I could let Pandora do the dirty work. As a DJ is hired for receptions and paid to keep his mouth shut (hopefully -- nothing worse than an obnoxious DJ that sings along) and play music that we're all going to like, Pandora had become my little DJ slave...but only at home.

The only downside to Pandora as I saw it was its need for a wired internet connection. It was fantastic at home, but as soon as I hopped in the car or went for a walk, I needed to break out my iPod, which had no risk of becoming obsolete as long as my cable modem was Pandora's ball and chain -- which it was until the other day; the operative word being until.

When Apple and Pandora announced the Pandora application for the iPhone, everything changed. The Carl Lewis of music was no longer tied to his starting blocks.

I remember five years ago when the iPod was criticized for not having FM radio capabilities. When the iPod evolved into the iPhone and the iPhone started carrying the Pandora application, Apple's MP3 player instantly became the ultimate music machine, now with smart, CD-quality streaming internet radio. With the now-impressive mobility of the internet, today's young music connoisseurs will be the first generation that can live without ever owning a single record or downloading a single song. Remember the old days? You'd hear your favorite songs on the FM radio in between "No Money Down! Sale of the Century!" car commercials. No Mas...

Of course the musical pack rat will never die. And we'll still all have our collections, which I predict to start shrinking slowly as our lists of custom radio stations grow. We all need to have that small collection of singles that we can play at any time to bring us back to way back when. But the rest of the time, when all we want is a DJ to play things we like without commercials, we'll turn to Pandora, whether at home or on the road.

Look out XM and Sirius: you've got more competition than ever! Subscribers: If you've already been considering getting an iPhone and currently pay for XM or Sirius, this is the perfect time to justify the op-front cost. And if the folks at Pandora were smart, they'd do some market research to help customize their ad selection based on music preference and possibly physical location. Af far as I can tell, whether I'm listening to Ronnie Dyson Doo-Wop or Queensryche 'Opera Metal,' the ads don't change. Something tells me there's a bit of difference between Trace Adkins and 50 Cent fans' product preferences.

As always, I can't wait to see what happens next. :-)

The future of media storage

Something happened to me this week.  I have been hiding from it, though I saw coming for a long time.  Like a person denying something as inevitable as death, I denied that I would ever run out of hard drive space; but it happened.  Now what do I do?  Just buy an external hard drive you say?  I'm sorry, but it isn't that simple...

What's eating up all my hard drive space is my digital photography (and rad-tastic 80s mix).  I'm a big fan of having everything stored on my laptop -- using an external hard drive only for backup.  I love having access to every single photo I've ever taken (19,500+) from the single interface of the iPhoto desktop application.  Until last week, if you asked to see a photo from my sophomore year of college, I would grab my laptop and produce the snapshot within seconds.  Now, every photo that I take will need to be stored someplace else -- maybe on an external hard drive, an online photo storage site, or, if I'm really stubborn, a new laptop.  And until I make a decision, I'm shying away from taking more pictures.

So what's causing my predicament?  Well, the increasing reliability of computers certainly has an effect.  When my parents bought a desktop in 1999 with a 20GB hard drive, I convinced them that by the time they filled their behemoth they would be long overdue for a replacement, which was the exact case.  But now, other than the fact that it's bursting at the seams, my 100GB laptop works as well as it did the day I bought it two years ago.  If I buy a new computer just for the convenience of being able to access all of my photos from the desktop application, I'd be spending money when I really didn't have to.

Therefore, if I want to be able to access any picture at any time without running to find some external drive, some sort of permanent online storage is my solution; and it makes sense.  After all, many tasks that were once performed locally are now managed online.  Remote storage is becoming more affordable and web-based services are becoming more sophisticated.  The local storage of media is becoming a thing of the past. Big-name manufacturer Apple is putting its money where its mouth is with the relatively low-capacity MacBook Air and the streaming media capable iPhone. 

Managing photos and other media online has benefits that simply cannot be achieved with simple desktop storage, like easy sharing and the ability to tag friends from social networks.  But the convenience of local storage is hard to beat.  As internet connections become more ubiquitous, photos stored online are easy to access.  But until fast connections -- I mean really fast connections-- become ubiquitous, it will be hard to justify online storage of actual size photos.

My solution is this: store all actual-size original photos on an external hard drive and upload reasonable quality photos to an online album.  For $20 or $75/year, you can snag 10 or 40GB, respectfully, on Google's Picasa, which should be plenty of space for anyone's personal collection (and is much less expensive than buying a new computer).  Or Flickr, if you prefer, gives you 2GB of space.  With given speed of most broadband connections and the increasing resolution of digital cameras it is currently impractical to store actual size photos online unless you have a tiny library or lots of free time.  My stance might change when FIOS comes to Wilmington, NC, but until then, I can't justify the time and effort of uploading gigabytes upon gigabytes of photos at 50-100k/second.

Picasa, here I come.

Back in town!

Well, it looks like my 'few days' out of town turned into a calendar month; but the sights and events were worth it! In my time off, I:

• Visited Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana
• Got married
• Hosted a 50-person Fourth of July BBQ (with lots of my homemade watermelon vodka which was renamed 'Freedom Punch')
  
• Traveled to the Outer Banks and Chincoteague, VA on my honeymoo

I'm finally back to my regular schedule; daily posts will now resume.