Peter Vatistas

Since 1947, Russ Lyon Realty has been synonymous with fine properties in Phoenix, Flagstaff, Prescott and Sedona, Arizona. On May 19th, 2008 another Arizona luxury real estate giant, Equitable Sotheby’s International Realty, merged with Russ Lyon Realty to become Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty, one of the largest Sotheby’s real estate franchises in the world.

Equitable Sotheby’s International Realty is owned by John N. Vatistas, who is now co-owner and co-chairman of Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty. His firm’s chief executive officer and designated broker, Dominic Scappaticci, will serve in the same capacity for the new company. Russ Lyon Realty Company’s Jim Lyon succeeds his father, Dennis Lyon, and is now co-owner and co-chairman of the new company. Todd Gillenwater, Russ Lyon’s current designated broker for its Northern Arizona operations, will serve as president.

ABOUT EQUITABLE SOTHEBY’S INTERNATIONAL REALTY
Equitable Sotheby’s International Realty was founded as Equitable Real Estate by John Vatistas in 2005 and quickly grew to become a significant force in the luxury resort corridor extending from Scottsdale and Paradise Valley north to North Scottsdale, Carefree and Cave Creek. It drew national press in October 2007, when it became the first Arizona real estate firm to become an affiliate of Sotheby’s International Realty.

ABOUT RUSS LYON REALTY COMPANY
Russ Lyon Realty Company has evolved from its beginnings in 1947, when it was founded by Russ Lyon, Sr., into a state-wide professional real estate company operating 10 offices in the Valley as well as four independently owned and operated franchises in Prescott, Sedona and Flagstaff, with total Company revenues exceeding $1.9 billion. More than 650 licensed sales associates provide real estate transactional services to more than 4,000 clients.

Dennis Lyon, son of Russell Lyon, Sr. and residing CEO of Russ Lyon Realty Company, attributes the company’s success to the sales associates’ utmost professionalism. He is succeeded by his son, Jim Lyon, who now represents the third generation of Lyons.

ABOUT SOTHEBY’S INTERNATIONAL REALTY AFFILIATES LLC
Founded in 1976 to provide independent brokerages with a powerful marketing and referral program for luxury listings, the Sotheby’s International Realty network was designed to connect the finest independent real estate companies to the most prestigious clientele in the world. In February 2004, Realogy Corporation, a global provider of real estate and relocation services, entered into a long-term strategic alliance with Sotheby’s, the operator of the auction house. The agreement provided for the licensing of the Sotheby’s International Realty name and the development of a full franchise system by Realogy’s subsidiary, Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates LLC. Affiliations in the system are granted only to brokerages and individuals meeting strict qualifications.

Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates LLC supports its affiliates with a host of operational, marketing, recruiting, educational and business development resources. Franchise affiliates also benefit from an association with the venerable Sotheby’s auction house, established in 1744.

External Links:

Equitable Sotheby’s International Realty

Russ Lyon Realty

Sotheby’s International Realty

Owning a business can be difficult, especially when it comes to technology implementations and expenses. I always try to find the best possible solution for my specific needs at the lowest possible price available. I’ve had a lot of experience with VOIP devices and servers like Cisco and Altigen but I really didn’t like spending thousands or tens of thousands when I can spend nothing.

Trixbox CE is the most flexible PBX system available today and best of all its FREE. Trixbox CE is an open telephony platform that combines the best of the open source telephony tools into one easy-to-install package. Based on an enhanced LAAMP (an open source bundle of Linux^®, Apache™, Asterisk^®, mySQL^®, and PHP), the Trixbox^® dashboard provides easy to use, Web-based interfaces to setup, manage, maintain, and support a complete IP-PBX system.

Trixbox CE 2.4 comes stocked with hundreds of features including:

• Unlimited Extensions
• TDM/SIP/IAX Trunks
• Remote Extensions
• Voicemail
• Fax Support
• Voicemail to Email
• IVR Menu System
• Ring Groups
• Call Queues
• Conference Rooms
• Follow-Me
• Time-Based Routing
• Music On Hold
• Paging and Intercom
• Web Access to Voicemail
• Admin Status Screen
• Package Manager (for easy updates)
• Phone Provisioning Tool
• Network Settings Tool
• Enhanced CDR Reports
• Echo Cancellation - OSLEC (Open Source Line Echo Cancelation)

Trixbox CE 2.4 is based off of:

• CentOS 5.1 kernel
• Asterisk 1.4
• FreePBX 2.3
• Web MeetMe 3

Best part about Trixbox CE is many Aastra, Polycom and Cisco VOIP phones are compatible! Here are some screenshots of the Trixbox CE 2.4 administrative interface:

Trixbox Links:

Trixbox Certified IP Phones

Trixbox Certified Servers and Interface Cards

Click here to download Trixbox CE

As you all know I am an avid user of Web CEO for my SEO/SEM solutions company. Although there are a few other tools and applications I use, Web CEO is by far the most powerful and stable application I have ever used in this field. I easily spend the majority of my day using Web CEO for just about all steps of my search engine optimization for all my clients.

Become an expert in SEO quickly and easily:

* Web CEO software package consisting of 12 potent tools to organize your efforts
* Professional Training Course in Search Engine Marketing to learn all the best practices

Web CEO is a full-range search engine optimization software with advanced site troubleshooting and web analytics functionality. Here are a few facts about Web CEO:

The choice of 440,000+ businesses.
Web CEO stands on guard of the rankings of IBM and Motorola. These companies have no right to make mistakes. What about you?

Simple and user-friendly.
Packed with powerful features, Web CEO still can boast an ultra user-friendly interface that turns a novice into an SEO expert right away after installation.

Completely Safe.
Employing Google API and cutting-edge human emulation techniques, Web CEO makes the optimization process absolutely safe for you and your site. Some of the important tools you will find in the package will help you:

* Get suggestions for new keywords relevant to your business and research your own keywords
* Get optimization advice and tweak your Web pages in friendly editing environment
* Create link partnerships
* Keep track of your site’s rankings and links
* Get comprehensive real-time visitor reports

I’m sure your looking at this like I just wrote a sales pitch but if you’ve read my blog before you’ll know I don’t sell a damn thing. In addition to that fact - WebCEO is free! Just download, install and get your rank on.

Download the free edition of Web CEO and get access to the Training Course now!

In addition to Web CEO’s awesome application and training program I totally recommend that you grab the latest copy of SEO Book by Aaron Wall. It doesn’t matter how much you know about search engine optimization/marketing, SEO Book is by far one of the best (if not THE BEST) reference and training materials available today.

That. Just. Happened.

Just got back from Blogworld 2007 in Las Vegas and I am beat. First impression of Blogworld was good, as time went on it wasn’t so good. The keynote went okay for a few minutes and then when down the drain with almost everything else at Blogworld. The award show was held at the Hard Rock Casino and I though the food was great and the music was cool too. The big problem with the award show was no one cared and the guy on stage giving out the awards was almost completely drained out by the noise, I couldn’t hear a word he said and I was sitting 15 feet away!!

Some sessions were good, one was great but in almost all of them people were talking about how great they are and how everyone should advertise on their sites… Lame. I am at Blogworld to learn and to network, I acheived one of those (I met a lot of cool people). I walked out of 2 sessions and just banged my head against the wall, I learned more that way when I met a few smart guys with some great products doing the same.

Walking the floor with all the vendor booths was cool too, I made a few vital connections for my companies socal network that is in development and found a few neat solutions that I am going to dig deeper and learn more about. I got a massage, won an iPod shuffle, an iPod Nano, and made $20 in chips (by wearing Hackersafe’s tag beneath my nametag).

All in all I plan to attend next year’s Blogworld convention with hope that they will learn from the many mistakes they made from this years event. I loved being in Vegas too!!

 Currently there are quite a few solutions on the Internet that allow you to create an online community. I have made a list of all the community applications I implemented and tested before choosing the one I did. The first application I tested was Community Server 2007 which depending on the scope of your needs can be very expensive (upwards of $20,000). Community Server is used by major companies all over the world for it’s forums, blogs, media gallery, CMS, and back-end administration. I was blown away by how robust and scalable CS2007 could be and the ease of use setting up all the pieces of an online community and adding content. The part that made me look at other out of the box online communities obviously was the price tag but also how difficult it would be to customize a theme and get CS2007 to look and operate exactly how I wanted it to, .Net2.0 with master pages is still new to me but not a road block.

The next application I stumbled on was DotNetNuke which came with a huge online following and loads of plug-ins and support. DotNetNuke was a lot less to look at on the front and back end but seemed to be a bit easier to skin and customize. I wasn’t entirely impressed but I did install it and played around with it for a few days before looking at my next option, which was Joomla.

Joomla knocked my socks off when it came to how many plug-ins the community had to offer and again the online following. Like DotNetNuke there was a lot less to look at on the administration side but from a customization standpoint seemed a little easier. At this point I just kept going with my options and moved on to my last two options, Handshake and Boonex Dolphin.

Handshake sold me right off the bat, a small price tag of $400 or $500 bucks and how easy they made it look I was pretty impressed. The part that kind of threw me off was how they didn’t have a full online demo or much of an online following but even still it looked pretty slick. I purchased, downloaded, installed and right off the bat it didn’t work 100% so I contacted support. A week later they said they weren’t sure why I was having that problem and were not sure what they could do for me at that point. Right at that very moment I decided that whatever CMS/online community I buy they will have to have a support phone number, LOL.

The last of the online communities and probably the most impressive out of the box was Boonex’s Dolphin/Orca/Ray solution. Right out of the box it had everything I needed, it installs without a hitch, back-end administration is very strong, and it is very easy to skin/customize. From what I noticed there wasn’t a strong online following and there were only a handful of plug-ins but it still had EVERYTHING I was looking for, so I continued to configure and test.

After about a week of full blown implementation and further customization (still in test mode) I started thinking about Community Server and how scalable it is and how so many large companies like Microsoft, Intel, and other use it. Then I realized something, there are not very many sites using Dolphin and the ones that do are very small. Then the big problem comes when I contact their support (which I had no need for up until I was deeper into customization) but when I did it was just horrible.

Boonex has a support forum and an support email address but the thing that made me sick to my stomach was how they offered support. Every time I submitted a support post in their forum it would take upwards of a week for a response (sometimes longer). Most of the time it was one of their main developers (only a couple guys) that would have me contact him on his personal email account and try to get me to pay him for the work that should have been free. He would tell me how he needs the extra cash and that’s the only way I could get their support. I dropped Dolphin when I read that email and never looked back, kind of sucks because they really had something good going.

After looking in at all my options I chose to move forward with Community Server, mainly becuase of the massive level of support and the programming behind it. Now from my understanding, the person who started Telligent (Community Server) came from Microsoft and was the Project Manager of .Net 2.0, under Scott Guthrie.  That was a big selling point for me!

I ended up purchasing the enterprise license of Community Server and have it running on two servers, one for the CS application/IIS and one for the SQL base. Soon I will add a third server for their enterprise search feature but for now everything is running great. Because I don’t know enough of .Net 2.0 to make Community Server work the way I need it to I contacted Telligent to see what they recommend. Immediately I was put in contact with a very nice woman at Telligent who gave me two options, first being the use of their development staff. This would seem like them best choice but unfortunatley there was a 3 month waiting list and comes with a minimum price tag of $45,000. My next choice was to work with an external developer that they have experience with and highley recommend. At the time of my conversation with Telligent only one developer came highley recommended, Robert McLaws with Interscape USA.

The best part about their recommendation is that Robert McLaws lives in Scottsdale, AZ (where my office is) and within two days we were face to face, building the scope of my project and getting the ball rolling. The price tag for Robert’s time is very reasonable compared to Telligent and his complete understanding of my needs and timelines made it very easy for me to hire him on full time to this project and keep a long term development relationship for months to come.

I will write more about the further development with Community Server and my experiences a long the way so please check back soon. Below you will find a list of links for the applications I looked and the contacts I have made, like Robert.

Online Community Solutions 

Community Server

Dolphin/Orca/Ray

Joomla

DotNetNuke

Handshake

Community Server Developers

Robert McLaws, Interscape USA

I just registered for the Blog World Expo which is on November 7th - 9th and I am extremely excited for this conference!  I am especially excited for the SEO Best Practices session on the 7th with Aaron Wall, the author of SEO Book. Blog World is in Las Vegas this year so I will be making the most of my trip by staying an extra 3 or 4 days to reflect of what I learned and the new contacts thousands of dollars I have made.  ;)

If your attending be sure to leave a comment, email, or IM me and let me know; maybe we can grab drinks and shoot the shit. Although I have been heavily involved with SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing for a couple years, I am new to blogs and blogging; I think Blog World is perfect for me and I know I will make the most of it. Make sure to click the links below and check out Blog World’s schedule, speakers, and what they have to offer!

Blog World

Blog World Schedule

Blog World Speakers

Blog World Pricing

Have you ever wondered how cellphone stores make their money? Well here is a quick look at how much money you shouldn’t spend at an indirect wireless store. Cell phone dealers make the majority of their money off of activation commissions and performance commissions from wireless carriers like T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T. So how much do they make? Well that depends on a couple different factors; the plan, the phone, the additional services (txt messaging, data), and accessories (car charger, bluetooth headset).

Now these values vary depending on the market, carrier, and performance and contract between the dealer and the carrier but on average you can expect the dealer to make around $220 on a $59+ a month plan. In addition they make $$ on data plans, usually $20-$35 per activation, and a ton on accessories. The average aftermarket car charger costs the dealer $1.00 but you’ll pay $20 and the average bluetooth headset costs $30-$50 but you’ll pay at least $70.

Of coarse your thinking “they have to make a profit right?” and your right, then need to but as a prior wireless store manager and district manager for a major wireless carrier you need to understand that the real deals take place at direct carrier stores and carrier owned retail stores (Verizon owned store, not authorized dealer for Verizon - BIG DIFFERENCE).

When it comes to accessories your always going to get ripped off unless you go direct to a distributor. Obviously for convenience that may be an issue but next time you need a car charger, leather case, or bluetooth headset check out QDI Wireless located in Phoenix, Arizona. This is one of the largest cellular and accessory distributors in the USA and they allow customer public walk-ins and online orders.

Now one thing I did not mention is indirect wireless dealers (who are private owners authorized to sell for the carriers) is that they make can make deals based on how much you buy and how high of a rate plan you sign up with. The best way to get the most out of your cellphone and accessory purchase is to sign up with a plan over $75 per month (they get more commission and are able to discount the phone more) and add data, insurance, and whatever else you don’t need. Doing something like this will can get the phone for cheaper and/or get free accessories.

Just ask for the deal, let them know you’ll sign up for the high plan, the data, and the insurance if you can get some free accessories for it, they’ll go for it most of the time. Once you leave the store just call your new service provider and let them know you want to lower you plan and don’t need the data or insurance, don’t worry because all carriers allow at least 30 days for you to do that. Now you got the best possible deal without paying for it monthly, morally wrong maybe but they still make money.