Real Estate Virtual Assistant

A few weeks ago, ActiveRain released a new feature that allowed members to export an archive of their individual blog posts. In the announcement, Brad said, "It's open nature will allow for the development of third-party import tools."

So, I sent the link to my partner, Steve Zehngut, and we put "create a Wordpress Plugin to import ActiveRain posts" on our to do list. Today we tested it and are ready to release it into the wild. You should be aware that the ActiveRain export does not include categories, tags or comments. So, our plugin imports the posts and gives them a category of "Active Rain" in your Wordpress blog. This will make them easy to find. If you're importing your posts into an existing blog, I would import them as draft. The video below will illustrate.

You can download the ActiveRain Importer here.

Let us know if you have any problems with it.

 

Jeff Turner aka respres

In August 2008, I attended the Inman Conference in San Franciso. Now how I even happened to end up at the conference is an interesting story unto itself. Earlier that year I had attended an e-Pro presentation given by Frances Flynn Thorsen and Joeann Fossland at our local board office. They inspired me to start blogging. I had been thinking about doing it, but did not know where I was going to find the time. Well, I decided to dive in. I wrote my first post on July 1, 2008 on the RealTown platform. Long story short, there was a blogging contest going on at RealTown to send someone to Inman for the winning blog post. My post won. I was thrilled and enthusiastically jumped on a plane to California with very little notice.

Now I am at best, a very un-techie person, and even though I had a website (static to begin with), since the mid 90’s, I really knew nothing at all. Was I to get an incredible eye opening experience at Inman. I really had no idea what I was going to be exposed to.

The first day I attended the all day blogger’s session, and found myself fascinated listening to a man speak by the name of Jeff Turner. I didn’t know them at the time, but during the session, I was sitting next to Heather Elias and Kim Wood. They were talking about how @respres was such a wonderful guy and a terrific follow. ( I didn’t even know what they meant by “a follow”). I didn’t even know what twitter was. The terms flying around my head were as if everyone was speaking Greek. But I was most definitely engaged and wanted to learn.

So the learning process began. (It’s ongoing!) I figured out how to sign up and use twitter, and I began to follow Jeff. He was extremely informative and was very helpful. Then I began to notice that someone named @headmutha showed up a lot associated with Jeff. Ok, I started to put it all together, it was his wife Rocky. Then I began to read Jeff's tweets about Rocky, and I saw the work she was doing, and I was extremely impressed. Rocky was giving her time doing volunteer work in Africa. Boy was she doing some volunteer work in Africa. Rocky is so wonderful, she started the organization Mother’s Fighting for Others. Their mission is simple. They are dedicated to providing orphaned girls with opportunities their parents would have provided, if they could; a loving and nurturing environment and a quality education, so they can learn, thrive, and achieve their highest potential.

I watched Rocky’s work over the last couple years, and become a true fan, and committed believer in their mission. That is why I am supporting her now and asking that you consider helping. Mothers Fighting for Others is currently raising funds to create a new home for 34 orphaned girls. I have agreed to match funds contributed (via the widget you see here) $ for $ up to $2500 to help them do this. Please step up and help out such a worthy cause.

Thank you for your consideration.

Come and join us on the Beach at

Ocean City Real Estate Talk

Copyright 2010 |Monica McNamara | McNamara & Associates| Ocean City, Maryland

How To Add a .PDF File To Your Blog Post or Website

Once you've learned to add photos, embed video and audio files, create hyper-links and anchor text etc, inevitably you'll want to know how you can add a .pdf file to your Blog post.  An Adobe Acrobat .PDF (Portable Document Format) file is a document that typically cannot be edited and is usually created from an original document using the Adobe Acrobat software or similar application.  .PDF files can be viewed by downloading the FREE Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Adding a .PDF file to your Blog post can be done one of two ways.  You can upload the .PDF file to a host server on the Internet and simply create a link to it using the location URL or web address. IE: http://www.DomainName/DocumentName.pdf  The second way is to use a program or tool that creates an HTML embed code which you can add to your Blog post or website.

Scribd.com is a site that offers users a tool that lets you upload your .PDF document onto their server, then use their widget/player to embed the file into your Blog post or site.  The site is FREE and once you've signed up and registered, the process is fast and simple.  The benefits of embedding the .PDF file vs linking to it are that visitors and readers don't have to leave your post or site to access the shared PDF document.

How To Add a PDF File to Your ActiveRain Blog Post

1. Join Scribd.com and setup a Profile

2. Upload your .PDF file to Scribd.com

3. Click on the .PDF File you want to embed to Blog Post or Website

4. Copy the embed code from the "Share and Embed" Toolbox

*Notice the options to share on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Buzz
(You can also create a hyperlink to Anchor text using the Link/URL)

5. Place/Paste the HTML embed code on the HTML tab of your Blog Post.
The code can also be added to your website using your HTML page editor.

6. Save your post or page and you're done!

 

Here's a sample of a .PDF file I created a couple years ago here on ActiveRain.

Brad's Top Free Online Website Tools and Picks

As an Absolute Last Resort

One last option would be to take a "screen shot" or capture the PDF file as an image (if it all fits on your computer screen) and save it as a .jpg file, then you can add it as a photo or graphic to your Blog post. Unfortunately, even a single page PDF file is hard to display the entire page on a computer monitor or single screen. To capture any computer screen image, use the "Shift+Print Scr" keys on a PC, or the "Shift+Command+4" on a MAC to capture the image. You can always crop out what you don't want in the image using a photo or image editor like picnik.com or Adobe Photoshop. If you'd like a free photo or image editing software similar to Adobe Photoshop, check out Gimp.org.

 

 

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Sam Callahan, the son of a Realtor (and my friend & Active Rain member) in Silicon Valley, is 14 years old and has cancer which is not responding to two different types of chemotherapy.  His cancer, Ewing's Sarcoma, had metasticized before it was discovered on September 22nd. 

Sam writes about his battle with Ewing's Sarcoma on the Sam's Team website: http://www.samsteam.org/About_Sam.html He is an amazing 8th grader with a good attitude who wants to beat this thing.  If you read his "about Sam" page, you'll find he's a great writer, too.

Normally, we can feel very helpless to "do anything" besides offer our compassion, thoughts and prayers. 

But this time, there IS something you can do, and it only takes a couple of minutes.  It may not change how he feels after radiation or chemo, but it will lift his spirits and those of his family and friends to see an outpouring of support.  And it will help Sam and his family to make a little goal they've set up for themselves.

In addition to the website, Sam's family & friends have a "fan page" on Facebook.  It's called I'm On Sam's Team.    Their modest goal is to have 5000 fans by St. Patrick's Day.  I'd like to help them get there.  As of this moment, they have 2608 fans.  They want people to know about Ewing's Sarcoma and they want people to know about Sam and his battle with this cancer.

What To Do:  So, my Active Rain friends, I know a lot of you are on Facebook.  If not, this might be the right time to join! 

1. Please take a moment and log into Facebook.
2. Go to the Search bar and key in I'm On Sam's Team
3. At the very top, in the middle, there's a button which says Become A Fan - click on it

That's it.  How easy it is to send some support and encouragement!  Of course, read through the website and the FB page too!  But it only takes a minute to "fan" a page. 

Just to reiterate, Sam is someone I know, it's not one of those fake internet hoaxes and he's part of the real estate family (his dad's a Realtor).  Join us on Sam's Team!  Please re-blog!