“The dramatic drop in foreclouse activity may have been a Christmas gift to homeowners”, says Sean O’toole, CEO of Foreclosure Radar.co
By Roger Ewing
For the first time, since the loan crisis began over two years ago, banks are canceling more foreclosures then they sell. For a complete analysis of the foreclosure situation read the full report from Foreclosure Radar here. Foreclosure Radar
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Life on Moonstone Beach
is more precious at midnight-
mysterious mist.
Copyright © by Roger Patrick Ewing, all rights reserved.→ 4 CommentsTags: Poetry
Snow is a coffin
of flowing Angel hair in
the dead of winter.
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James Cameron’s Avatar is a blockbuster movie , due largely to the technology of augmented reality.
By Roger Ewing
Imagine this for a moment. You point your mobile phone camera at a busy city street and instantly you see an overlay image on your phone of information about sales, promotions, events, food, coffee and other interesting stuff. All in real time.
No need to actually walk down the street and check out the menus, or look in the display windows. If you don’t like what you see, you simply point the phone camera in the opposite direction and check out the action there. Tonchidot, a Japanese company created an iPhone application called Sekai Camera that channels augmented reality technology into this exciting application.
Recently Esquire published it’s first augmented reality magazine. Readers must download software from the internet. Once enabled, the reader then holds the magazine page that includes the marker up to the webcam on their computer and instantly a video of Robert Downey Jr. springs to life on the computer screen.
There are additional augmented reality pages included inside the magazine that are quite amazing. You can see a demonstration of the application here. Esquire Magazine Augmented Reality Issue
Research into augmented reality involves the assimilation of computer-generated imagery into live-video streams. This technology expands the way we view the real world.
The Coca Cola Zero | Avatar promotion is probably the most amazing demonstration of this new technology. It provides a glimpse into the marketing opportunities available through augmented reality.
James Cameron’s Avatar Toys augmented reality demonstration is another example of the commercialization of this technology. Action figures are now 3D controllable images. Press a button, and the figure takes flight; press another, and the guns begin to fire. Add another figure, and they can interact. The possibilities are endless. Check out the video below.
It’s not difficult to envision a brochure or direct mail announcing a home for sale that possesses a marker, like Esquire Magazine, that when held in front of a computer webcam will trigger a virtual tour of the home to begin playing on the screen. This is the power of augmented reality.
In the virtual world of augmented reality, our understanding of entertainment and marketing has changed forever.
Avatar, The Movie
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Child Of My Dreams
For my son, Tyler
You are the child of my dreams
whispering to me softly
from the quiet darkness
behind your eyes.
You came into the world shimmering.
Rigged for silent running.
Braced hard against the helm.
Standing tall before the wind.
Physics will determine the course
of life’s many rain drops
crashing in clever cat paw patterns.
Leaving traces of accelerated particles
in your wake.
There is no science
no logical conclusion
no antibiotic for the infections
that wander after you and me.
Feel your sails rush
full bloom into the night?
Those maudlin clouds
no longer cling
to your precious feet.
Brave child of my dreams
take no prisoners in life’s grand game.
Quietly inscribe your enchanted heart
like a simple tattoo
on the shoulder of God.
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Is it possible to create a computer that can solve problems like humans, using intelligence?
By Roger Ewing
In his book Leviathan, English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes said, science is reason, and “Reason is nothing but Reckoning..”. Hobbes was describing either a computer and/or the human brain when he wrote those words in 1651.
Thomas Hobbes
Reckoning is computation and isn’t that what brains and computers do? And isn’t thinking just another term for computing? Artificial Intelligence has been described as the quality of a machine to have a mind, consciousness and a mental state. How to make a machine exhibit these qualities is the question on the minds of Google engineers as they steer the starship Google into the next decade. The magic of the search and the man-machine interface has become the new frontier of computer science.
John Battelle, in his book The Search, writes of the “Database of Intentions”. Batelle says search is the force driving the web forward and the ability of machines to understand what people are looking for is critical.
The capability of a computer to intuitively interpret our intentions is the Holy Grail of search. Search is becoming less about finding something, and more about understanding something.
The Turing Test
Simply stated, the Turing Test is the ability of a machine to demonstrate intelligence. Alan Turing in his 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, contemplates the question “can machines think?” The test goes like this. A human interrogator engages in a conversation with another human and a machine, each of which tries to appear human. All participants are separated from one another in different locations. If the interrogator cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test and is therefore deemed intelligent.
Alan Turing
The Loebner Prize
Hugh Loebner of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies sponsors a contest each year in which he offers a cash prize of $100,000 to the first computer that can pass the Turing Test. Thus far, the Gold (audio and visual) and the Silver (text only) have never been won.
However, Loebner has awarded the bronze medal every year for the computer that demonstrates the “most human” conversation among that year’s entries. Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity (A.L.I.C.E.) won the bronze award three times (2000, 2001, 2004) and AI Jabberwacky won in 2005 and 2006.
Space Odyssey
Lets cut to the chase. Can a machine have emotions, self awareness, creativity, benevolence, or hostility? Can a machine have a soul? Do we need to be concerned that some day a computer like Hal, from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, will take control and attempt to extinguish our life force? No, the answer is much more benign.
Battelle believes search will become intelligent as a result of clever algorithms that leverage the multi-millions of daily transactions, behaviors and links that compose the foundation of the web, The Database of Intentions.
What does the world want?
Google is determined to find out.
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The most successful business relationship is usually the result of a personal recommendation.
By Roger Ewing
Case in point. A sales associate in my office, lets call him John, understands the value of referral marketing. John enters into an agreement with a custom house painter who works on new speculative homes, as well as high-end remodels, in the toniest of neighborhoods. Pierre is the painter homeowners love to have on their project and then brag to their friends about the talented craftsman working on their home.
John is an enterprising and very successful real estate broker. He understands the value of referrals and decides to create a mutually beneficial relationship with Pierre the painter. John will refer Pierre’s custom painting business to his clients who are purchasing or selling homes. In return, Pierre will refer any potential buyer’s and seller’s to John that he meets on his painting projects. This symbiotic relationship should result in lots of referral opportunities for both.
John refers several custom painting jobs to Pierre over the course of the next few months. Pierre is delighted, but John has not yet received any referral leads, even though Pierre claims to have handed out every business card John gave him. What’s the problem?
It’s not enough for Pierre to simply hand John’s real estate business card to potential clients who happen to inquire about the home he is painting. That action alone does not qualify as a referral. A successful business referral requires more effort.
I recommended to John that he meet with Pierre the painter and “train” him in the way he should handle his referrals. Here are four helpful ideas to assist you in creating better referral opportunities.
1. Ask permission. Always create an environment where your friends or business partners acknowledge the referral process. “My business is predominantly the result of personal referrals. Would you be willing to help me by passing on potential buyers and sellers to me?” Assuming they say yes, you’re next step is to train them on how to refer you properly.
2. Set the stage. Some individuals will balk at referring a client to you because they worry it may cause problems in their friendship with you. Confirm that you keep your business and personal relationships well separated. Assure your referral source that regardless of the quality or outcome of any referrals they give you, the referral will have no negative impact on your personal or business relationship.
3. Don’t qualify the referral. Your referring source does not need to validate the quality of the referral. I suggest saying something like this. “Please do not evaluate or attempt to determine the quality of a referral you give me. Allow me to do that, it’s my job. Send any lead my way, good, bad, or indifferent.” People may actually not want to give you a referral because they don’t want to disappoint you. Do not allow your referring source to do that.
4. Control the referral process. You must initiate the call to the client, not the other way around. Instruct your referring source to obtain the clients contact information and tell the client you will be calling. This is critical. Taking control of the referral process from the beginning will ensure client contact for you. Leaving this to chance, by waiting for the client to call you, may result in a lost opportunity.
Lastly, the issue of providing an incentive to the referral source is something to consider. When a friend or business associate recommends you, they are taking a leap of faith. Their goal is to do a good deed for the client by giving them the opportunity to work with you.
Personally, I don’t believe in paying cash for a referral that results in a closed transaction weeks later. I want to reward my referral source to initiate referrals, not to close sales.
Therefore, I recommend you provide some small gift to the person who has referred you. This should be done as soon as you receive the referral. That is the behavior you want to reinforce. A coffee house or a restaurant gift card is all that is required. If a referring source wants to make a business of providing referrals to you, then they are referring you for the wrong reason and the quality of the referrals will reflect it.
WOM, word of mouth, is a new internet catch word, that describes a very old concept. People do business with people they know. The best way to expand your business is to train your friends, past clients and business relationships to refer you. The result will be many successful business transactions.
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Empowerment, everyone talks about it, but few know how to get it.
By Roger Ewing
In author Rod Serling’s 1950′s television series, The Twilight Zone, ordinary folks suddenly found themselves in extraordinary, usually supernatural, situations. The stories would typically end with an ironic twist that resulted in the guilty being rightly punished.
Mr. Serling opened each show with a brief prologue that always concluded with this line, “There’s a sign post up ahead, your next stop The Twilight Zone”. The television show was dependent upon our hunger for drama and capitalized on our need to experience moral balance in an immoral world. The victim was rescued, the persecutor punished and the rescuer rewarded. Isn’t this how it is supposed to be?
Vast opportunities become available to us when we no longer accept the role of Victim or Rescuer in our human interactions. The path to empowerment does not cross anywhere near the drama triangle.
The drama triangle (see my previous 3 part series Avoiding Drama in Business and Personal Life) is where effective communication and mature problem solving goes to die.
There’s a sign post up ahead, your next stop, Empowerment
Where then do we go to obtain this elusive Empowerment? The answer to that question, of course, lies within each of us. Once we have freed ouselves from the addictive nature of drama, we can make mature plans, realize our dreams and accomplish the greatest of goals. Empowerment is a high octane fuel that will work for anyone. It will work for Mother Theresa, Ghandi, even Hitler. Empowerment, it seems, has no conscience.
The power of the three “C”s
Commitment is the promise of accomplishment not yet realized. Great leadership to ourselves or others involves single-minded devotion to an ideal. An uncompromising attitude of achievement, no matter what the personal cost. Gandhi’s threat to starve himself to death if the fighting between Hindus and Muslims did not stop is a prime example of this thinking.
The power of commitment resides in each of us and can be used to accomplish our dreams and goals regardless of how great or small they may be.
Capable individuals, when committed to a course of action, will follow through with effective behavior designed to actualize the goal at hand. Empowerment is a non-exclusive quality. To actualize our desires we must be capable of performing the activities necessary to accomplish the goal. For example, if free climbing a vertical rock face is your goal, you must have the necessary training and the gear to accomplish the fete. Without it, you might be left hanging.
Cognizance involves taking responsibility for an intellectual decision. Our decisions must be based upon knowledge, awareness and observation. If I am having a bad day and I determine the only solution available to me is to jump off the nearest bridge, I am not making an intellectually correct decision.
Sounds simple, what’s the catch? To be empowered we must possess all of the three “C”s, every last one of them. Missing only one will deprive us the power we need to succeed.
Commitment, Capability and Cognizance work together to make self actualization a real result.
Without one ingredient, the system will collapse.
Welcome to the land of Empowerment.
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This Storm Was Written In Darkness
This storm was written in darkness
due to a power failure.
No one seems to know why power surges
or why lights dim and flicker out.
Electricity loses the will to live
in winter time.
Outside the storm moves
like a musician chasing notes
down the mountains with his silver flute.
Stars attempt meteor showers
against cloud cover.
Through my window
the wind bruises tree faces.
Throwing combinations heavyweight style
before the leaves have all fallen.
I believed I was safe
here inside the darkness.
Until I find the firelight
leaping in cadence
to the marching clouds.
Copyright © by Roger Patrick Ewing, all rights reserved.→ 2 CommentsTags: Poetry
Melting Snow
Melting snow lies hollow-eyed
and ill tempered.
Staring up at the sun.
How foolish was the snow?
To have wasted its precious life
waiting for winter.
→ 1 CommentTags: Poetry
