So I wrote this monstrosity, which I’m tickled by, today:

function gaPush(cat, action, label, value) {
    var call = ['_trackEvent'];

    (cat) ? call.push(cat) : call.push('Undefined');
    (action) ? call.push(action) : call.push('Undefined');
    (label) ? call.push(label) : false;
    (!isNaN(parseInt(value))) ? call.push(parseInt(value)) : false;

    _gaq.push(call);
}

It makes pushing custom events into Google Analytics easier. Useful for in game analytics on the cheap.

That code snippet above does two things:

1. Creates an Array of values
2. Does it using ternary operators instead of if/else statements

The nice thing about the pattern is that if label or value were not supplied in the function call it won’t be included in the call array.

A few weeks ago I released (MIT licensed) a MongoDB PHP session handler. You can find it on GitHub at http://github.com/mostlygeek/MongoSession.

In the process of tweaking I wound up rewriting the whole thing from scratch. Some major and notable changes:

1. Concurrency safe.
2. Less code. Simpler code.
3. Easier to use.
4. Ties directly into PHP sessions with session_set_save_handler().

The toughest part was making the code concurrency safe. After using PHP for 10+ years I never gave this any thought. Probably because most of the application I’ve written before dimeRocker were synchronous. With more apps using AJAX a concurrency safe session system is important.

This mongo class sacrifices some performance for concurrency. The technique is simple, lock the mongo document on session open (when session_start() is called) and let it go when PHP finishes the request. The good and bad of this is that reads/writes to the session can happen only happen one at a time.

Illustrated:

1. Request #1 comes in that takes 2 seconds to complete
2. Request #2 comes in that takes 0.01 seconds to complete
   1. blocked… waiting for session lock … 2 seconds
   2. wait… wait… wait…
3. Request #1 finishes
4. Request #2 unblocks, finishes
5. Total time for both requests: 2.01 seconds

While this certainly limits the performance of an application to essentially synchronous serial requests, it is very safe. So if request #1 writes to the session data, request #2 won’t blow away those changes with a race condition / last writer win’s scenario.

While this seems like an edge case, the memcache session driver does the exact same thing. In fact the locking algorithm in MongoSession is inspired by it. Also the standard file based session system does an flock() so all the most widely used session handlers implement locking.

Even with locking the performance is very good (done on a linux VM on my Macbook Pro):

• Mongo w/ Locking : 781.86 trans/sec
• Mongo NO Locking : 944.29 trans/sec (bad!)
• PHP File based : 1225.49 trans/sec
• Memcache based : 840.34 trans/sec

Further note, the locking only affects a single session. That means each session, by the above numbers, is limited to 780 transactions/sec. That’s acceptable, even in the most demanding of applications.

(edit)

Why Mongo for PHP sessions when Memcache is awesome?

1. Mongo is fast.
2. Sessions are less transient. The loss of a server won’t destroy a session. This matters in online gaming.
3. More flexible. Easy to extend the class so other applications can query the data.
4. I couldn’t mind a good Mongo PHP session driver I liked.

Great sysadmins use aliases to avoid repeatedly typing common commands. Everybody knows lazy sysadmins are the best ones.

The Commands:

alias a='cat ~/.bash_aliases'
alias ea='vi ~/.bash_aliases; echo "Refreshing aliases"; source ~/.bash_aliases'

Here’s what they do:

1. the command ‘a’ now prints out a list of your current aliases
2. the command ‘ea’ brings up vi to edit your aliases and refreshes them when you’re done

Here’s the work flow:

> ea
... edit edit hack hack
> a
... list of aliases ...

Where to put it:

Using Linux: ~/.bash_aliases. This file gets read when you log in.

If you are using a Mac do this. In ~/.bash_profile add:

source ~/.bash_aliases

Then add everything into that file instead.

Here’s what mine looks like (well a part of it):

unalias -a
alias a='cat ~/.bash_aliases'
alias ea='vi ~/.bash_aliases; echo "Refeshing aliases..."; source ~/.bash_aliases'

# back up the day's work
alias bkup='sudo -i /root/backup.sh'

# ubuntu version
alias uver='cat /etc/lsb-release'

# manage apache configs
alias s='sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/combined.conf'
alias sr='sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload'

# git short cuts
alias gb='git branch';
alias gs='git status';
alias gl='git log'
alias gsr='git svn rebase';
alias gsd='git svn dcommit';

# misc short cuts
alias ll='ls -l'
alias zf='zf.sh'
alias vi='vim'

Now go do it!

Most good sysadmins already know how to forward a local port to a remote machine and vice versa. However, sometimes it is useful to open a port on the remote machine to the world and have that traffic forwarded through SSH to your local machine.

A practical reason for this is if your web development server is sitting in the wild and you are in your comfy office behind a firewall. Perhaps you just want a wild server to forward a port into a box on your local network without anybody being the wiser. Well here’s how you do it.

1. On the Remote Machine make sure this is in sshd_config, GatewayPorts yes
2. Restart ssh
3. On your local machine create the tunnel with:
   ssh -R 8080:localhost:8080 user@remotehost

Now you should be able to access remotehost:8080 and SSH will tunnel the traffic to your local machine.

PS: this could be a potential security problem if you’re not smart.

I get a lot of commercial email trying to sell me technology services. Even though these are commercial emails with an unsubscribe link it is still annoying to have to filter through them and unsubscribe. A simple email hack that works well is to filter all email into a separate folder that is not coming from your top 5 domains.

Looking at my email most of it comes from the same five domains. So any emails not coming from these are automatically moved into a “tier-2″ folder for later sorting. It is a simple hack that works quite well.

As a side note, I actually get quite a bit of spam a day. I have a pair of Barracuda 600 spam firewalls that are very effective at catching 95% of them. The ones that filter through the above hack gets the rest. The one or two that beats the odds only take a few seconds for me to delete anyways.

People who aren’t rich are always wondering how to make more money.  This causes a lot of suffering.  When we think about our richer future selves we take what we have right now for granted. When we are not grateful we suffer.

I was lucky to have a very smart and wealthy person tell me how to do it right. I was skeptical at first but I finally made it mine to share.

This is the right order to do things:

1. Solve a problem.
2. Build credibility and respect.
3. Respect will give you power and influence.
4. Power will reward you with money.

Most people have it wrong: get money, power comes from money and respect from power. They don’t solve anybody’s problems, including their own.

Knowing the right order is just the first step. The second is to enjoy building your success.

We have six core needs for fulfillment:

1. The need for certainty
2. The need for variety
3. The need to feel significant
4. The need for love and connection
5. The need for growth
6. The need to contribute

If each step does not fulfill some of your needs it is time to make changes.

1. Solving problems – needs #2, #3 and #5.
2. Respect and Credibility -  needs #3, #4 and #6.
3. Power – needs #3 and #5.
4. Money – needs #1, #3 and #6.

Image Courtesey of Tracy O, (image)

Getting happy right now is simple, be grateful. If you think about three things you are grateful for and avoid thinking about the future you’ll be happy. For a few minutes at least.

Staying happy is the tricky part. Human beings are the only animal that thinks about the future. We spend a lot of time thinking about our happier future selves and what we need to do to become that person.

We take what we have now for granted. We choose to suffer now so we can happier later. There is a better way to live. To have happiness and spaceships, medicine and the Internet.

The first step is knowing your core needs:

1. The need for certainty
2. The need for variety
3. The need to feel significant
4. The need for love and connection
5. The need for growth
6. The need to contribute

The second step is to plan your future around your six basic needs.

Finally remember to be grateful.

—-

Photo courtesy of a4gpa (photo).

Suggested further reading:

• Stumbling on Happiness – by Daniel Gilbert
• Anthony Robbin’s Six core needs
• Man’s Search for Meaning – by Viktor E. Frankl

I’ve been having a great discussion with Sylvia Sam (Sutton REALTOR®) about the marketing value of online video tours for a real estate listing.

Here are the two sides of the discussion:

• me: Make video tours. They show a home / listing much better than photos or a virtual tour.
• Sylvia: (paraphrased) Video tours create a security risk to the consumer and should not be used. What if the video tours are used to case out a home for a robbery?

To catch you up on the discussion so far:

1. I made this comment about the minimal acceptable quality for an online listing:
   • A video walk through – HD quality, plays right off the website.
   • 10 to 20 photos, high quality. Not pics of random things. Limited view of the seller’s clutter.
   • Information: bedrooms, bathrooms, property taxes and amenities. (that’s enough)
   • User friendly / focused website.
2. Sylvia made this comment from her extensive experience on a police board
   • videos and floor plans make it easier for a criminal to case and rob the place
   • a responsible REALTOR® should never put their clients at risk

So what do you think? Discuss in the comments.

Image courtesy of ibcbulk from flickr.

This is the follow up blog post to my presentation to Sutton REALTORS®: How To Really Use Social Media. Here is the talk part of my presentation, approximately 8 minutes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Presentation Materials

• How to Really Use Social Media Keynote Slides (PDF)
• Homework for How to Really Use Social Media (PDF)

Some Commentary…

Since I started my real estate technology training workshops I realize that REALTORS® seem to ask the same questions. I get a lot of questions like this “how do I use technology fad X”?

I use ‘technology fad’ because my top three questions are usually:

1. How do I use Twitter?
2. How do I use Facebook?
3. How do I blog?

However, what I think REALTORS® are really asking is this:

How do I get more leads from the Internet?

The answer is simple.

1. Have conversations with people (twitter, facebook, blogging). This is social networking.
   
2. Provide useful information for free. Blogging is the easiest way, but you can do an old school website too.

Just give me the answer…

I was having a coffee/one on one training with Leilani Fong (web/@leilanihomes) a few days after the presentation. Leilani is a REALTOR®, young, smart and enthusiastic about taking her marketing 100% online.

The enlightening part of the conversation is when she demanded, “just tell me the answer” and in frustration I blurted out “if I answer that you’ll just ask me more questions”. Since Leilani was the second person this week to essentially demand the answer from me I finally realized that explaining how the technology works was an ineffective approach to teaching.

Most people don’t care about how the pizza is made. They want this: order, pay, eat, satisfaction. Skip the process, the history and the culture and just give me the pie.

So what they are really asking is.. what can I buy to get online marketing?

Well that is fairly easy to answer:

1. Online ads. Banner ads, Google AdWords, advertise on yahoo, on other people’s websites.
2. A web site from a real estate website builder. They’re plenty of them.
3. Hire an online marketing company.
4. Hire a web developer, a graphic designer and have them work on your web brand.
5. Hire a content writer to write and blog for you.
6. Hire an SEO company to optimize your web site.

There are lots of company’s that provide those services. I’m know they’re more than happy to have your business. If you’re happy about their results that’s value. Why wouldn’t you do it?

Well, in my first presentation about how the Internet is Changing Real Estate, I said that the net has made communication cheap. It has made it accessible to anybody not just the people with large marketing budgets. So the point of taking your marketing online is to get the same number of leads for less money. You can do it yourself.

However, going online is challenging right now for people with limited knowledge. Training out there is limited and expensive. Getting somebody else to do it for you (just give me the pie) is expensive but it’s better than nothing. The return on marketing online just isn’t there for most people. Even more sad is that the results all still suck, consumers are still unsatisfied and REALTORS® are still confused. There must be a better way.

Maybe I should throw out the disclaimer that the opinions on this blog are mine and not my employers. (heh).

Is there something better?

Yes. I’m working on it. It’s not ready yet but the core values are (alpha version):

1. 100% online only marketing. Save the trees.
2. Training. Lots and lots of training and information. We enable. We’ve embraced technology and learning.
3. Better and more information. Set a new standard for quality and quantity.
4. Open data. Reciprocity and VOWs are user unfriendly. User unfriendly sucks. If you want this listing in XML, in JSON, in ATOM, just add .xml, .json or .atom to a clean URL. If you want all of our listings, here is a RESTful API. Steal from Twitter’s API.
5. More people makes the system richer for everybody. More is more!
6. For people who believe in the same thing. Don’t worry about catering to everybody.
7. Usability. Empower REALTORS® to do their own online marketing.
8. Valuable. Price is what you pay, value is what you get. I want you get lots.

I often get realtors asking me about blogging, what it is and how to get started. I wrote this guide to answer the most frequent questions and provide some direction in getting started with blogging.

Where to get a blog?

I recommend that you go to WordPress.com and sign up for a free blog. The sign up process is quick and simple. This will give you a chance to play around without much time or capital commitment.

About WordPress

Since I’m much more familar with WordPress I’ll give a run down of what to expect from this:

1. WordPress.com blogs are free to start out. You will get a  web site address like: http://myblogsname.wordpress.com. When you sign up you will be able to choose the name for your blog.
2. You will be sent an email to verify your blogs creation. Then you will be set up and ready to go.
3. For free you will get:
   • A selection of themes (designs) to customize your blogs layout
   • Good SEO (well, alright SEO) already for your blog
   • RSS feeds into your blog
   • Excellent comment spam filtering
   • Pretty much everything you need to start blogging right away.
   • Never have to worry about servers going down, upgrading software, etc.
   • A WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) blog editor. No need to edit HTML. Similar to MS Word.
   • Ability to upload pictures to your blog posts.
   • WordPress will add text-ads to your blog (somebody has to pay the bills)
   • Pretty awesome for free!
4. When you are ready to grow your blog or brand it some more there are advanced (paid) services
   • All the information is available here: http://en.wordpress.com/products/
   • The ones that you will most likely want are:
   • Custom web address: $15.00/year for the name, $10.00/year for the hosting. Like: http://mygreenblog.com instead of http://mygreenblog.wordpress.com.
     • Note: You can register the domain name anywhere, it doesn’t have to be with WordPress.com. They offer it as a convenience. I suggest keeping your domains together in one place.
   • No ads: $30.00USD/year
   • Custom design: $15.00/year. You still have to pay somebody to make the custom design for you. Contact me (benwong@mostlygeek.com) if you need this.

Should you Blog?

Writing content yourself is a lot of work and it takes a lot of time. You can outsource your web hosting and the design of your blog. You can’t outsource your blog’s content, that would defeat the whole point. Before you jump in read 23 questions for prospective bloggers.

Before committing, these are the top 5 questions I think you should ask yourself:

1. Do you enjoy writing?
2. Do you enjoy reading?
3. Are you willing to learn?
4. Do you have time? To get real marketing return from blogging you will need to write a lot. Do you have 3 to 4 hours to dedicate a week to writing?
5. Are you ready to be transparent and honest?

Blogging Tips

To get you started:

1. Blogging Tips for Beginners – this is an excellent series written by Darren Rowse a professional blogger.
2. Writing for the web is different than writing an email. A List Apart (alistapart.com), has excellent articles that I suggest you read. Here’s a direct link: http://www.alistapart.com/topics/content/writing/
3. For your posts, ask a question and then answer it as your blog post.
   1. What is the CMHC fee?
   2. What is the average price of a condo in Vancouver?
   3. How to work with a REALTOR®?
   4. How can I increase the value of my home?

Image Credit: ~C4Chaos of Flickr. (image)