Luxury Clues

Hot Green, Luxury, and Other Gift Ideas for 2009

 It's the holidays and time for gift giving. Keeping with tradition for this blog, here are some outrageous, over-the-top gifts, as well as some great ideas for those with a more limited budget.

1.  The folks over at Squidoo have compiled a list of the best "green" gift ideas, the best "luxury gift ideas," plus a host of other "best" gift ideas for people of every age and every pocketbook.

2. Nook or Kindle? For those of us who are bookworms, the Nook is the newest attempt from Barnes and Noble to compete with Kindle. It's slightly smaller than the Kindle, although it weighs more. The Kindle has a traditional keyboard and can surf the web. The Nook relies on a touch screen and does not have web surfing capability. Kindle is on the Sprint Network, the Nook is on AT&T. What captured my attention, however, was that the Nook allows me to highlight key parts of books, it then compiles them, and I can download them on my computer. You can't do this with Kindle. I can also read books purchased from B&N on my iPhone. There are over 500,000 e-books on the Nook and 1,000,000 titles. You can also share books with other Nook users. (If you have tested both, I would love to hear your feedback.) 

3.  Give the Gift of a Memory. One of the most wonderful gifts you can share is your special memories. For example, for your parents or grandparents, write down your very favorite memories of the time you spent with them. Share what made you laugh, what made you mad, and the things they did that you will tell your children or grandchildren. For your spouse or partner, write down your memories of when you met, the anxieties you may have had about whether that person would fall in love with you, plus as many of the special times that you can recall. If you have small children or grandchildren, help them make memories. Have them help you with the holiday baking, picking out gifts, or going to a very grown-up lunch or dinner where they can be the center of attention. 

4. And in keeping with our tradition at LuxuryClues--the Victoria Secret's 2009 Fantasy bra. (The price, in line with the challenging economic times--down from $12.5 million in previous years to a mere $3 million this year.)

Happy Gift Giving!

Posted by Bernice Ross, www.RealEstateCoach.com, the Place You Go to Make Real Estate Dough(R)

What Will the Cell Phone of the Future Be Like?

The iPhone may be the sleek cool phone to have for 2009, but it will look like a clunker compared to what is coming in the future. 

About a year ago, I wrote about Nokia's morph. (Click here) to see the post with pictures) This is concept phone that uses nanatechnology to change shape. It goes from keyboard, to head set, to watch/bracelet that can photograph what you are wearing and match it perfectly. It will be able to clean itself (no more sticky touch screens) as well as detect harmful substances in the environment. You can see the concept and a YouTube video on the Gizmodo site.

While the Nokia phone is an amazing concept, the coolest designs go to a Japanese designer named Mac Funamizu. He has several different versions he has created that are well worth seeing (click on the link above). The most intriguing of his designs, however, is the totally clear cell phone which is on the Pricy-Spicy site. 

Now if they could just combine this concept with the Morph (no fingerprints), you really would have the phone of the future. 

Posted by Bernice Ross, CEO www.RealEstateCoach.com, the Place You Go to Make More Real Estate Dough(TM) in Your Business.

The Top 100 Most Expensive Zip Codes & The Top Ten Cities Where People Are Relocating

The folks are Forbes Magazine have published a list of the 100 most expensive zip codes in the country as well as the Top 10 cities where people are relocating.

It probably comes as no surprise that cities such as Beverly Hills, Manhattan, and Miami had some of the most expensive median prices. The list was still dominated by cities in both Southern and Northern California plus New York. New Jersey also boasted a substantial number of expensive zip codes as did Florida. Other prime zip codes were located in Charleston, Hawaii, and downtown Chicago. 

Texas has now become the number one relocation destination in the U.S. Austin came in #2 behind Raleigh North Carolina which finished first. Nevertheless, Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston also finished in the the Top 10. Low unemployment, a robust economy, and no state income taxes make Texas a popular spot for businesses to relocate. Other cities finishing in the Top 10 included Phoenix and Denver. 

Posted by Bernice Ross, follow me on Twitter @bross

The Future of Real Estate Virtual Tours?

Joel Burslem posted this on his blog this morning. This amazing video by Bruce Branit called "World Builder" runs 8.5 minutes and is an incredible glimpse of the future in terms of how we will create virtual worlds (and virtual tours) in the future. It took two years to produce. Joel, thanks for sharing this! 

Posted by Bernice Ross, author of two of Real Estate's best selling training books--Real Estate Dough Your Recipe for Success (the #1 best seller at NAR 2008) and Waging War on Real Estate's Discounters--your path to earning a full commission on your listings. 

 

World's Ugliest Building--Why Not Demolish It Vegas Style?

 Weird Asia news had this great post about the world's ugliest building. It's a 3,000 room hotel where they began construction in 1987 and then stopped in 1992 in Ryugyong, North Korea. The hotel is so ugly that people who take pictures of the city generally airbrush it out.

What would be cool would be to see them demolish it like they have done in Vegas with the old hotels. I saw the old Frontier hotel demolished in 2007 it was an amazing experience, complete with fireworks leading up to the demolition. To see pictures of   more Vegas implosions, click here

Posted by Bernice Ross, CEO, www.RealEstateCoach.com, the place you go to make Real Estate Dough!

The Journey from PC and Palm to iPhone and Mac--Throw them all out the window!

My first experience with computers dates back to the 1970s when I was in college and was doing research for my doctorate. We had to write our own programs using something called SPSS and punch the directions to the computer and the data cards on a keypunch machine. You never knew if your program would run or not. If you made a single mistake, the program would abort. Needless to say, you could have 10-20 abortions in a single afternoon. The whole notion of punchcards may be something that you younger folks had no idea about. The "in" nerds had their own "tapes" of their data. 

I bought my first personal PC back in 1983. It ran on MS DOS and did not have a mouse. You did everything with keyboard strokes--I still tend to rely on them because it's faster than using a mouse in many cases. 

Byron has been a long time Mac user and the battle has gone on between us about the two different platforms. Windows XP is a good, stable program. Vista, however, continues to have problems including frequent crashes. Furthermore, they designed the program so it was not backward compatible with previous Microsoft programs. Than meant that your new computer would not read your previous "doc-files" and that anyone running an earlier version of Microsoft would by unable to read your "dot-x" files.  

My tablet PC has been great, but the accessories were starting to fade after 3.5 years. I lost a key on my portable keyboard, the docking  station is working sporadically, someone tripped over my power cord at a seminar and broke it in two, and the backup battery works sometimes, but only with some coaxing. It was clearly time to upgrade.

The problem was that no matter what I chose, I would have to learn a new operating system. I didn't want Vista, so that meant moving to Mac. I thought that I would make the move to the Mac Powerbook and then migrate my Palm Treo to an iPhone at some later date. I was waiting to 2009 for tax purposes. Then, my beloved Treo died at Christmas time. On January 1, I headed off to AT&T to buy a new iPhone. We spent two hours trying to get my voicemail to work on the phone. It turned out that I had a bad SIM card. 

Then off to the Apple store. Picked up the new Macbook Pro--it's a beauty. The problem was that I couldn't get any of my data put on the new machine unless I waited 2 weeks and gave them BOTH computers for 3 to 4 days. Furthermore, the email on my iPhone didn't work either and neither AT& T nor Apple could figure out what was wrong. I literally spent 6 hours with respective customer service representatives trying to figure out why I could only receive incoming emails. When the Apple representative had me reset my phone in New York, it wiped out all of my past emails. I was ready to fling everything out the window. Finally, Shane, our general manager, contacted our web host who gave us the settings to get my iPhone working properly. 

Now to the computer--Windows for Mac looks like Vista. If you make the switch, you will have to learn two new operating systems--the Mac system plus whatever Microsoft has done to nice familiar programs like power point and Word. I still haven't figured out a way to get my 3500 email addresses off my tablet and on to the Mac. The good news was that a  "1:1" at the Apple store did get my Palm data transferred. I love being able to get a live person face-to-face rather than having to deal with customer service 7,000 miles away. 

What was easy was building the library of iTunes and transferring them to my iPhone. "Mobile me" is great. It synchs everything effortlessly and will save considerable time in collecting blog photos and inserting them. The bottom line--I feel like a have a beautiful Ferrari parked in the garage that has a manual six speed transmission and I only know how to drive an automatic.

(To be continued)

Posted by Bernice Ross--Make More Real Estate Dough Today with Real Estate Dough Negotiation--the most fun real estate game ever!  

Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend--What's Hot, What's Not with Nature's Hottest Rocks

One of the most popular gifts at the holiday season is the gift of diamonds. When it comes to choosing the perfect diamond, regardless of it's size, your choice should be guided by the four "C's"

1.  "Carat "refers to the diamond's weight. Each year there are approximately 130 million carats of diamonds mined. South Africa is the world's primary source of diamonds, however, they are also found in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, and Russia.

2.  "Clarity" refers to how transparent or clear the diamond is. Ideally, it should be free of noticeable scratches, carbon dots, or other flaws.

3.  "Color" refers to whether the diamond is a fiery bright white or other color. In the past, this type of stone was the most desirable. Today, however, there is a huge demand for colored diamonds that were once considered inferior stones. These include red, brown, yellow, blue and pink. The most desirable color right now is pink, followed by yellow.

4.  "Cut" refers to the shape of the diamond. While traditional cuts are always popular, the hottest selling new shape heart shaped diamonds.

Among the wealthy, big stones (5+ carats) are selling much better than smaller stones set with pave (smaller diamonds in a flatter design surrounding the main stone.) In fact, the demand is so high that those prices are increasing while prices on other commodities have been falling. Another important trend is a throw back to more Victorian styled jewelry. Brooches are also making a comeback, especially to wear for daytime on women's suits.

Posted by Bernice Ross--need more dough to buy your diamonds? Get Real Estate Dough, Your Recipe for Real Estate Success--the #1 Best Selling Book at NAR in 2008. www.RealEstateDough.com

Google’s New Android Phone vs. the iPhone—Which One is Right for You?

You're considering upgrading your smart phone. Do you get the Blackberry, the Palm, the new iPhone or Google's new Android telephone?

I'm probably going to upgrade my computer system in early 2009. As much as I love my tablet, I don't want to run on Vista. I played with the new HP tablet that had Vista on it--the computer booted up Power point and other programs more slowly than my 3.5 year old machine. Vista crashes much more frequently than XP as well.

I'm considering keeping my old machine for it's handwriting to text functions and going with a new Mac. I was ready to make this move including getting the new iPhone until I discovered some of the challenges that my husband is having with his iPhone. The most notable of these challenges is that the iPhone does not let you do cut and paste. If you are responding to a blog post or any link with a URL, that means that you have to retype the entire thing. That's hard enough to do when you have a keyboard. It's almost impossible on the iPhone where you have to use your finger on a touch pad. The other challenge my husband is having is that the iPhone and Mac calendaring system changes the calendar based upon the time zone it think's you are in. The time changes are quite confusing and have sometimes been wrong. I suspect there is a work around for both of these issues, but shouldn't these simple functions be right on such cutting edge technology?

On Sunday at the NAR trade show, Brendan King had one of the new Google Android phones. Compared to the iPhone, it looked clunky. It did have a keyboard plus most of the Google functionality. That means it can map out where you are using Google Earth as well as accessing the other functions that you normally use on Google. One cool new application application is that you can use the phone to scan bar codes and then the phone will tell you which store that is nearest to you that has the lowest price. Talk about a money saver--both gasoline and timewise. Erikson, Nokia, and Sony all supposedly have Android phones under development. It will be interesting to see how the next round of smart phones address these issues. Nevertheless, there are some serious problems with it as well. Check out the Gizmodo review to learn more. 

Posted by Bernice Ross, author of the #1 selling book at NAR's 2008 Convention; Real Estate Dough: Your Recipe for Real Estate Success. Visit www.RealEstateDough.com to learn how to make more dough in your business. 

Photo by Miss Karen

Flip Video Mino Create Videos Effortlessly and Get Google Juice

Are you thinking about blogging but intimidated by writing? A great alternative is to "vlog." A "vlog" is a video blog. The new Flip Video Mino is a great bargain at $159.00. It's very simple to use, takes clear videos, and best of all, you merely have to plug it into your USB port to play or download the videos to your computer. You can also create a custom design to make your camera stand out from the run-of-the-mill black or write version.

You can use www.TubeMogul.com which syndicates (sends your video out) to at least 15 video channels including YouTube, Google Video, and Yahoo Video. There is no charge (at least right now) for this service.

At NAR, a new company had a real estate specific application that helps build your web rankings as well. Check out www.Zipvo.com to learn more about this application.

To create a blog post, merely record an interesting event, interview someone else, or use your flip video to give your luxury relocation clients a flavor of your local market. There are so many ways to use this in your business. If you want a more detailed look, get my new book, Real Estate Dough(TM) and check out the Chapter entitled "Lights, Camera, Action!"

Posted by Bernice Ross, author of Real Estate Dough(TM)--Your Recipe for Real Estate Success. The #1 Selling Book at the NAR Convention 2008--don't wait, order today!

The Ultimate Gift of Diamonds and Vodka

Looking for an unusual holiday gift? How about a brand new type of vodka that is distilled seven times and filtered through diamond dust? Double Cross Vodka launched with a splash as it not only won a gold medal at the San Francisco Spirits competition for its taste--the bottle also won an award. The vodka, with a hint of white pepper and lemon zest, has received great reviews. It is also the only Slovakian vodka to be sold in the U.S. Best of all, it won't break your pocketbook. A 750 ml bottle of this award winner is about $50.00

Posted by Bernice Ross, www.RealEstateDough.com Are you ready to dominate your market and make bundles of Real Estate Dough--we can show you how. order Bernice's new Book, Real Estate Dough Your Recipe for Real Estate Success.