Classic Christmas!

Enjoy the show and more important, have a safe and happy Holiday season!

QR Code Generator

Have you seen this? It is called a QR Code.

QRcode is two dimensional code which is categorized
in matrix code.

In simple terms, your phone can likely take a "picture" of
this and take you directly to a web site.

Many phones already have this capability, and I just
downloaded a 99 cent program for my iPhone and
I simply opened up that program, aimed at this graphic
and it linked me right to a virtual tour.

How about we print up signs with a graphic like this
pointing people to directly to the tour of that property??

Wow.

24-Hour Open House

You've heard the old adage "24 hour open house" before regarding virtual tours.

We're taking that one-step further.

We have added a new tab called "Chat" which allows you to chat live with anyone that may be browsing your virtual tour.

Sitting at your office with time to kill? Login to your chat (we will be using Meebo, perhaps more later) and have someone join you to discuss the property in more detail. Point them to other parts of the tour while you're at it...show them the video, or have them go full-screen with the photos.

Heck, even mention that their tour gets syndicated to all the major Real Estate portals, typically shows up in the top 10 results, and gets pushed locally through our community blog network.

In fact, you can use these cheat sheets to help you with that listing contract! Yes, we'll customize for you.

Contact us for more information on how to get this feature working for YOUR tours.

http://bit.ly/REVideo Here is a post about RE Video - a couple of major points highlighted - full article is linked.

Video - the game changer?

Read the full article here from Inman News

One of the highlights of this article is that 73% of sellers would list with an agent doing a video, yet only 1% of agents use this technology.

Two other major highlights revolve around indexing of your listing. YouTube is the second-most used search engine in the world - second to Google. Also, the professional voice-over that we include in our videos are even searchable via Google.

Two ways we can help:

1. We have shot over 150 videos in 2009 and we not only upload your video to YouTube, we also upload them to all the other major video sites - like Yahoo, WellcomeMat, and a bunch more. We take are of all this for you all for under $100. We'll even include your Zip Code in the professional voice over to be indexed better by Google.

2. We can also help you take better video if you do it yourself - and we can edit them FOR you, and include all of our syndication and professional voice-over.

http://bit.ly/Video2010 Great article from Inman News today about Video - things we can help you with!

http://bit.ly/WhirligigHDPlaxo Come join me on Plaxo! It rolls everything you do all into one stream - check it out!

http://bit.ly/BadMLSPhotos Yes, we ARE here to help! We take great photos, but can also help you take better ones!

http://bit.ly/MiddletonXmas Christmas tree shopping fun in Middleton, WI! Thanks Cathy Lacy and Pam Widen!

New! Chapter your videos

With every video order, we upload your video to WellcomeMat.com.

That's not new.

What is new is that you can login to your WellcomeMat account (that we setup for you) and you can quickly and easily setup your own chapters for your video.

Check out the above sample - it took us about 10 minutes to set the chapters up in this one and that was knowing NOTHING about the process ahead of time!

http://bit.ly/BerbeeDerbee The fastest Thanksgiving Day Parade and participation alone allows you to eat more! Have fun!

Thanks, as always, to all our past, present and future veterans

http://ping.fm/Ef4t8 A double-whammy...visitors love it, and more syndication for Realtors!

Can Your Tour Provider Do This?

We ran our October special of $30 off any package with Video. John and Vicky Schroeder took advantage of that and for only $119 -- they filled in all the blanks! Photos, panoramas, AND video! OR DO THIS YOURSELF FOR ONLY $10 A LISTING!

Click here to see this tour in action

View on a map

Content - here is what John and Vicky got:

• 54 High-Quality, wide and bright photos (we never count photos...it varies).
• 5 Partial panoramas - no dizzy feeling here! It's a better way to spin. We focus on what counts - the main rooms and usually do 3-6 panoramas.
  
• Full-Motion video complete with professional voice over, editing, and syndication
  
• Professional virtual tour interface that has all three forms of media (photos, video, panoramas).
• A way for agents to login and edit property information, add captions to photos, and add associated documents.
• Interactive map with driving directions and a search feature to find find what you wish for.
  
• Interactive street view map where available.
  
• Interactive 'Nearby' map to show the closest restaurants, parks, schools, stores.
• A fourth interactive map to show nearby schools and their ratings.
• Interactive mortgage calculator with charts, payment options, and payoff amounts
  
• Agent interface to display information, listings, video(s), web site and blog links, Facebook, Twitter feeds, blog or data feeds, and testimonials. Agents can also upload documents or sales-flyers about themselves.

Tour even works on Mobile phones! The landing page is designed to display all property information and 8 photos. Many other tabs work as well on the mobile. The mobile generation is here to stay!

Syndication:

• Agents can upload the virtual tour links to MLS and any of their personal web sites. We provide two links - one branded with agent information, one un-branded for MLS.
• We can upload the tour to Realtor.com - which has about 120 syndication partners.
• We can also syndicate to all the major Real Estate web sites (Trulia, Zillow, Google, Oodle, etc.) FREE if your company doesn't do this already.
• We blog for you! We host and maintain 14 local community blogs in the Madison Wisconsin area. We can setup a blog in your community, too...contact us for details.
• Video gets syndicated to approximately 12 video sites, including YouTube, Metacafe, Wellcomemat, Yahoo, HDHatHomes, and many many others. Don't want full-motion video? We can create a video from your photos so you can benefit from this syndication.
  
• We promote your listings through a property feed site automatically to get extra exposure to your tours. This will help get it ranked higher in search engines like Google and Yahoo.
• We are also syndicating your tours into a dynamically-generated map which also gets your tours indexed better and higher via Google and Yahoo and other search engines
  

Reporting:
We can set it up to send you a weekly Analytics report to show hits and where they are coming from.

Now...check out our latest news and monthly specials here and come take us for a spin!

Playroom of Hope

A local Stoughton family that we are friends with are raising money for the "Playroom of Hope".

The family of Nevaeh Rae Wallace is working to raise money to create a special playroom at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. Thankful to the hospital for the exceptional care their daughter received, they wanted to take action to honor her memory and help other families in need.

You can read more about it here.

If you unable to donate, you can download and print flyers here that you can hand out to kids at Halloween this year. On Tuesday nights at BounceU, they can go in and have their regular good time and help the cause!

http://bit.ly/WebYou-0 Realtors - it's about Web You.0! If you're reading this, you ARE connected. Show it off.

Don't have a video?

For whatever the reason, you don't have a video of the property.

No problem.

Our new tour interface allows you to embed up to 2 videos per property - think outside the box on this one! You may not have a video of the property, but perhaps a quick YouTube search reveals a video of the community or neighborhood!

Simply embed that code into your tour and there you have it...instant gratification of both buyers and sellers. You're doing all you can to make it inviting.

Check out this sample tour where the agent simply ordered the photos and took it upon themselves to showcase the community with a video found on YouTube!

Awesome thinking!

Want Perfect Weather for Perfect Photos?

Dynamic Range.

The two confusing words I use for agents or businesses that only want photos on perfect, sunny days. I would love nothing more than for it to be sunny everyday for personal reasons, but the fact is...it's sometimes better to shoot photos and certainly video when it's overcast.

I agree that rain and snow does pose a problem, but I love cloudy days for interior shots. Our cameras (and most) can compensate for the dreary days...while you may not see blue sky in the background (that's rare in itself), the camera will typically brighten it up for you. Especially if you're photographing a home that has a lot of shade, like below:

This photo was taken today, a very cloudy rainy day - but you wouldn't know it. I didn't even brighten it up...this is what I got.

So back to dynamic range. The best I know how to explain it is the light differences between inside and outside - when thinking about Real Estate photos. Our eyes have incredible dynamic range and can see light and details both inside AND outside.

Cameras are not quite to the human eye yet...if they are focused on a darker interior, then the light from the windows on a sunny day will really, REALLY overexpose the windows. I am sure you have seen it. Or, when you point at the windows the camera thinks "I have enough light!" only to see that the interior is now really REALLY dark!

The best, cheapest solution to get some good dynamic range going with your camera is to flash every photo. We use a very bright bounce flash that is good for about 100 feet...typical on-camera flashes are good for about 15 feet, but anything helps.

Video - since we don't use a flash to brighten the room for video, we prefer cloudy days as the sunlight through the windows doesn't overexpose the windows and you end up with a more-even light.

This virtual tour sample shows photos and video from a cloudy day - do you agree that the video lighting looks more even?

A little early?

Google Launches New Picasa Update

Yea! That's all I can ever say about Google's Picasa.

It's an amazing piece for the price - which by the way is FREE.

WhirligigHD prefers to use a web-gallery to upload your photos to, and we do that for many of our customers. For those that we still email them to, we highly recommend downloading Picasa here. Again, it's FREE and it's from Google.

It's a great way to download our photos, store them on your computer, manipulate if you must (we usually do that for you), export them, or even create your own web gallery.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and County Exec Kathleen Falk declares Women's Health Day in Dane County Wisconsin and Madison Wednesday Sept. 23rd, 2009 http://ping.fm/AJkdM

WhirligigHD Community Blog Network

Here is a simple video to help you understand blogs in more detail...

Why do we bring this up? We blog for you! Look at the RIGHT sidebar of any of our blogs, and you will see that WhirligigHD has created a new, hyper-local community blog network just for you.

It's included with any full or self-service tour. We post your listing on the Dane County blog as well as the closest community blog.

We don't just stop there, either...we update the blogs on a regular basis to make this a one-stop shop for the community. Our goal is to give an accurate depiction of what it is like to live in that community with local listings, news, and other items of interest.

Want to become a contributing member? Contact WhirligigHD about how you can increase your exposure at the same time as being a leader in the community!

Wisconsin National Guard: 115th Fighter Wing going to Iraq - Our hearts go with you!: http://tinyurl.com/knkv6b - chicagotribune.com

The best after school snack!

What better place to go in Stoughton Wisconsin for an after school
snack than Fosdals bakery!

2009 Wisconsin Realtors Assocation Golf Outing

Want to feel better about your own swing AND watch some really good ones? Check them out! Second installment coming soon!

This is about the first half of the golfers from the 2009 WRA Golf Outing up in Wisconsin Dells.

We will never forget September 11th, 2001

FREE:WI Realtors:Whirligig WRA Booth 4:DIY tour w/local syndication-Community Blog Network-14 blogs in Dane Co! http://ping.fm/oj86G

Wishing all the workers out there a Happy Labor Day!

Back to school! Here is an idea: get those sample-size hand sanitizers for the kids lockers and desks. Have a healthy year! http://ping.fm/zM1QP

Our Wisconsin water-ski team wins! Mad City Ski Team first at Nationals, not bad for living on the frozen tundra: http://ping.fm/2BIQR

About Whirligig's Corporate Office...

So where is the "corporate" office of WhirligigHD? I bring this up because I just got asked TWICE today! It's not the first time I was asked this, either...I hear it every couple weeks or so.

Maybe it's a credit to some decent brain-storming trying to come up with a name that sounds larger than it's place of "birth"? Well, as cool as it would sound, the big office building above is NOT the corporate office. The messy office is more like it. 

The name, brains, operations, hardware, etc. were all born in my head and home office (which is not as messy as the one shown!). I was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin and know the area very well. My primary focus is on Dane County and surrounding and I have built this business on dedication, quality, service, and all of you.

Did you know we even have our own software, too? We have built it from scratch with you in mind. We are not restricted by the corporate office that some believe exists!

Did I mention that we only work with Realtors? A very important distinction when shopping for a tour provider.

Photography, videos, panoramas, cutting-edge virtual tours. Locally grown, locally focused, local for over 7 years.

Check out the golf swings - good and bad at last week's outing!

Here is a link to all the fun videos from the golf outing!

Click here for our video channel

Thanks to all my Realtor friends...get a full-motion video tour/photos for $99. Details here: http://ping.fm/Yqjs2

Fun with golf today!

Enjoying the day taking group photos and video of everyone's swing!
What happens here gets shared on YouTube!

Blog by Mobile

With the increasing popularity of high-tech phones, did you know you
can update our blogs with your upcoming listings or news right from
your phone?

So Why Video?

We have shot over 50 videos like this in the Dane County area already.

Agents, buyers and sellers love our photos and virtual tours...video is sure to impress! We have been doing photos and panoramas for over 7 years now and have kept ahead of the curve each year.

Check out what you get at www.whirligighd.com We include professional voice over and syndication to major Video portals.

We think the video replaces the panoramas. The original idea behind the panoramas is to give you a feel of the layout of the room. Video can accomplish that even better - we don't only show you the layout of the room by panning side to side, video shows the layout of the HOME as we walk into each room and pan it.

It's like you're on a showing - you look around the neighborhood, you walk in the front door and move around the house to see it.

Don't get us wrong - we are STILL doing panoramas, we have just offered this great service to go along with it.

What else is the big deal? Well, do you currently syndicate to all the major video sites out there like YouTube, HDHatHomes, WellcomeMat, Onestopview, Zipvo, and Viewr? Chances are you don't - we'll do all that for you.

It's a whole other level of syndication to showcase your listings!

Vet or Injured Kid?

Snapped this shot over the weekend of my son - who recently broke his leg and is in a cast for the next 4 weeks...thought it was good imagery with the flags in the background. It was taken at Navy Pier.

Realtor.com Syndication

Did you know that your virtual tour can be linked on Realtor.com? Why would you do this? More exposure! Realtor.com’s syndication partners spread the listings out to over 100 sites now!

More exposure, more traffic…simple. Show them the best that you have to offer.

How much? if you are a current Realtor.com “showcase” member, it’s FREE! If you are not, it is a $24 fee for us to load it.

Bringing you the power of the spinning red house!

It's all about you, Realtors

Did you know we only service Real Estate agents? Except for the occasional friend that just won't take our advice, No FSBOs or flat-fee customers…we strongly believe in the efforts and dedication of full-time (and part-time!) Realtors.

We only wear one hat - with two bills - one bill for awesome photography, the other for marketing. Nothing else. What we do full time is help you get listings and present the home professinoally so you can get people interested. It’s why we can help you when you need us.

From staging to choosing the right photographer, and handling all of the showings, paperwork, and playing mediator…greater rewards come from greater efforts all while you provide realistic pricing and unrivaled marketing that makes the sellers wish they would have started with you to begin with.

Other national chains occasionally creep into markets and typically cater to the FSBO or flat fee market - or are owners of such companies in Dane County.

We have been local and full-time for over 7 dedicated years.

Take Control of Your Tours!

This latest edition of Virtual Tours from Whirligig allows you to take more control over your listings…this brief write-up explains how to login and edit property information (price, description, etc.) and edit your personal information, and even re-arrange photos or add/delete photos, add a video…etc.

Don’t have a Video? Embed one in there!

Visit the site here: www.whirligighd.com/admin

To get your username and password, simply enter your email address in the last box to have the system send you your username and you can reset your password to whatever you wish.

In the admin section, you can see where you can edit your personal information - such as your photo, site link, blog link, blog feed (just use the RSS feed URL for that), and several other items you can update. Coming soon - a way to embed more graphics so this looks and acts more like a regular web site! Not all items are currently live, so most of what you have in there we did already. Currently just edit the testimonials, web site link, and information about you. We are working on the rest.

In the admin section, you can also edit your listings. Click “edit listings” and in there you will see that you can edit the information. You can also edit the photos by adding, deleting, and even adding Captions for each photo. Under each photo, you will see a box that says “Caption”. Fill in what you wish for this and that caption will appear under the photo in the virtual tour.

Check it out! You can even upload associated documents to each listing - those will show up in the Tools section of the virtual tour. Upload Word or PDF brochures or other documents you wish to share.

What about Video? Did you know we do complete full-motion video of your properties? If you have us do them, we will take care of that for you. However, let’s say you do the video yourself or you have another video you want to display…you can! As long as you can pull the “Embed” code, you’re good to go. Simply copy and paste the Embed code (from YouTube or other video site) and it will be in the tour.

Don’t have a video of the property? Maybe there is a video of the neighborhood or City that you found online that you want to share…as long as there is embed code for that video, you can use it in the tour.

Whirligig HD DIY

Welcome control freaks!

While we have been the top local choice for full-service photography and videos, we also understand the fact that many of you do your own work - and hopefully enjoy it as much as we do!

Now we have a locally-grown, full-featured do-it-yourself system! For only $15 per listing, you can upload your own photos and panoramas, embed video, add/edit property descriptions and features, and now you can even upload associated documents to your listings! Condo docs, property condition reports, brochures, whatever you want!

That's $15 per listing - no contracts, no monthly fees.

Here is a sample virtual tour complete with photos, panoramas, and embedded video! This agent is able to login and add captions to photos, edit descriptions, and even upload other documents

Click to view sample tour

Want more? You can even add/edit personal information for a full-featured agent "site" like no other...link your web site, blogs, add blog feeds, add Twitter feeds, and even add your Facebook badge. We'll even link your listings on a map.

You can even link to your video channel and embed a Vlog or sales-pitch video about yourself! Oh yea...upload PDF flyers about yourself or even a PowerPoint slide show!

Click here for a sample

Want to join the Video revolution? We can help you with that, too. If you are already taking your own video tours of your properties, we will edit those videos for only $40...complete with professional voice-over and linking to all major video sites for Real Estate. Take all the guesswork and time out of the editing process.

We'll be happy to include your listing in our local community blog network and syndicate your listing further to major sites as well as our heavily-indexed mapping sites