Apple wins Patent Infringement lawsuit against Samsung

After a swift deliberation of less than 24 hours, the nine-person San Jose jury awarded Apple more than $1 billion dollars in it’s lawsuit against Samsung, and awarded nothing to Samsung in their counter-suit.

Among the counts awarded are Samsung’s willful infringement of 5 of 6 Apple patents, due in no small part to a multitude of documents from Samsung executives that clearly indicated their desire to copy certain design elements of the iPhone when the initial work was being done on their highly popular Galaxy-series of smartphones. Some documents even contained slides where prototypes were put side by side and contained suggestions on how to make the Galaxy more like the iPhone.

For Apple, the verdict was not about the money. It was about the pride and respect of it’s products, it’s innovation, the hard work of it’s designers and employees, and it’s core values as a company.

What remains to be seen is if Samsung acts quickly to change the design of Galaxy, even amidst it’s inevitable fight to overturn the decision. Samsung believes that if this decision stands, it will mean fewer choices for the consumer, and stifled innovation by companies who may be afraid to also get sued by Apple.

Save Your Money: Avoid Rent-to-Own

Although the news reports say the economy is recovering, you are probably still living paycheck-to-paycheck with every penny spoken for. While some states allow you to shop around for utility rates – for example,  Jayton, Texas residents can do a web search for “Jayton Electricity prices” to find progressively better rates – you might still have trouble making ends meet.

So when it’s time to buy new appliances, furniture, or electronics, it could be tempting to go the Rent-to-Own route.

On the surface, rent-to-own places seem like a good deal. For a few dollars per week, you can treat yourself and your family to the latest products. You can keep them the end of the rental period, and own them outright; or trade them in at any point for bigger, better, and newer models. And credit isn’t an issue, all you need is a steady source of income, and a few personal references.

But as enticing as these programs are, they are ultimately a waste of your hard-earned cash for several reasons:

Limited Choices:
These stores have the most popular brands and with the latest features, but unlike an appliance store, you don’t have the option to shop around.  For example, if you want a laptop, you might have two to four manufacturers to choose from, and only one or two models from each manufacturer. Whereas, at a non-rental store you could have a wider selection of manufacturers and models, in a variety of price ranges and that’s not including any sales or specials. Having more variety lets you find the products that better fit your budget and needs.

High Markup:
The rental stores advertise low prices and affordability, but the truth is that these places tend to charge market rates on their items which make them very expensive. For example, the price of brand-new 17-inch HP laptop at a rental place is about $1,200. A very similar unit would cost you half that much at Amazon, or Best Buy. If the item is previously-rented, you’ll pay about half what you would for new, but that’s as much as you would pay for brand-new somewhere else.

Deceptive Payment Plans:
Walk into a rental store, you’ll see the weekly rates for whatever is on the sales floor. And most of the rates seem perfectly doable — I mean, who can’t scrape together $20/week, right? But, taxes and fees bring the price closer to $30/week, and the rental term can be as long as 35 months. So if you keep that $20/week flat screen for the full length of the contract, you’ll have paid $4,200.

It Distracts You From Saving:
It may not seem like a big deal to scrape together $30 every week, but that’s $120/month. After four months, you would have paid $480 toward that item, and still have 31 months to go on your contract. And if you cancel your contract, you’re out $480 and the item.  Every month that you pay a rental item, you could be saving and, use that money to get better deals at other retailers.

Unless it’s an emergency emergency situation, like your refrigerator is broken and the only way to replace it is to rent, your best bet is to avoid rent-to-own places.

These vendors prey on the impulse for immediate gratification; don’t take the bait. Instead, take the money that you would have spent on the weekly rental and put it into a savings account. Then, when you have saved enough, use that money to shop around for the best deal.

Trulia files for IPO

On Friday, Trulia filed an IPO of up to $75 million, to help it compete with it’s bigger rival, Zillow.  While Trulia has already received $32 million in private funding, they still have a way to go to catch up to Zillow, even with the IPO.

Trulia currently has over 22 million unique visitors each month, just over 21,000 paid subscribers. Those paid scubscribers, in addition to advertisers, make up the bulk of the $29 million in revenues. Even so, they are still showing a net loss of about $7.6 million, growing from last year. Clearly they are hoping the infusion of cash from the IPO will help turn things around.

Uniting Your Online and Offline Real Estate Efforts

In a recent analytic study, Denver, Colorado came in second place for the fastest selling real estate market, meaning that most homes being sold in Denver are taken under contract within a very small time frame.  The average is about 1 month.

This is both good and bad news for sellers looking to put their homes up for sale in the Denver area.  Though it’s nice to see that it has the potential to sell quickly, other real estate agents have seen the same market trend, which means there’s a lot more competition.  If you want to really bring in a sale for your recently listed home, you’ll need to follow some guidelines.

Right now, the average selling price for a home in Denver is around $235,000, a figure that has risen by several percent in the last few months.  People seem to be more lenient on paying the price of a new home, but don’t think just because the prices are going up that you can inflate the value of your real estate.  It’s important to keep the price somewhere around this figure because if not, another real estate agent will and then a potential sale is lost.

Try to offer things that other real estate agents aren’t, especially if the selling price is a little higher than the others.  Offering local storage in Denver isn’t something real estate agents typically do, so giving the buyers the opportunity to have somewhere to place their valuables as they move will greatly increase interest.  A package that includes a moving truck for the new homeowners’ belongings could go a long way in generating a quick sale. Never underestimate the power of stress levels.

Putting a “for sale” sign on the house isn’t enough these days.  List the property everywhere imaginable to get as many people as possible to see it.  There are a lot of websites dedicated to selling homes in the Denver area that are really popular with prospective buyers.  You also have the option of listing the property in the local newspapers and on Craigslist.

Think about people who aren’t local in the area.  Every year, thousands of people move to Denver for various reasons and they’re all in need of homes as well.  After your ad is placed all over the town locally, branch out.  Put your listing in newspapers from outside the area, list it in some other websites that aren’t specifically for Denver, and spread the news about it via social media.  People moving into an area like this are more likely to buy quickly since they don’t want the hassle of constantly traveling back and forth, so getting the information out to them will drastically quicken the selling time.

Before putting any kind of house on the market, take a look at the trends, do some research, and see what other real estate agents are doing.  If you plan for the sale, you’ll stand a greater chance of succeeding.

Evernote Resets All of Its Users’ Passwords

 

I found this interesting article in REALTOR Mag about Evernote and wanted to share this as I have many friends that use this service.

DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | TUESDAY, MARCH 05, 2013

A popular online note-taking service that many real estate professionals use recently faced a security breach that forced it to reset all 50 million of its users’ passwords.

The company says they reset the passwords as a precautionary measure, and that there is no indication that any of the content users have stored in their Evernote accounts was accessed or lost.

The company said that in investigating malicious activity in the program they found that scammers were able to obtain access to Evernote user information, which included usernames, e-mail addresses, and encrypted passwords.

Source: “Evernote resets all user account passwords following security breach,” TechSpot (March 4, 2013)

 

readvantage.wordpress.com: Mobile Websit

readvantage.wordpress.com: Mobile Websites ARE better for Agents than Apps: Real Estate agents looking to take advantage of the growing number… http://wp.me/pmIyS-EK

Google Tweeks Panda in August

For those REALTORS who take their SEO seriously, this might be of interest to you. Google tweeked their Panda update in August. In June, Google incorporated new data into the algorithm, and launched two data refreshes.

Keep in mind that this latest adjustment was just a data refresh. These tend to have a much smaller impact on results than actual updates. For more on the difference between an update and a data refresh, refer to what Google’s Matt Cutts has said on the matter.

This data refresh effects less than 1% of it queries but if you are in that 1% then this certainly be of interest to you.

Google has been focused on helping people find high-quality sites in Google’s search results.

Google tweeted on August 22 on its official Twitter account (@google).

The tweet read: “Panda data refresh this past Monday. ~1 per cent of queries noticeably affected.”

Google has also confirmed that future updates to the Panda algorithm will be considerably smoother and a great deal more consistent. Whilst the adjustments that it continues to make to Panda are relatively minor, Google has revealed that its planned anti-spam algorithm, Penguin, will be more significant.