The Tour de France starts Saturday July 7th and goes through July 29th. For TV coverage VS will carry the event with multiple telecasts each day there is a stage.

This year’s route has 3550km (2204mi) of racing in a clockwise direction departing for the first time in London. Starting with a 7.9km/4.9mi Prologue the Tour will close down the heart of London to all vehicles except those with skinny tires. Racing against the clock, the 189 cyclists will give the short effort their best because the winner of the Prologue is guaranteed to wear the prestigious Yellow Jersey.

The TV schedule is located here.

Governor Mike Easley signed several bills into law that more closely regulates the Mortgage industry. One of these bills defines a new crime called Mortgage Fraud. This new type of crime becomes a felony on December 1, 2007. The bill defines the practice and makes it a felony to knowingly misrepresent or omit information about the mortgage lending process. The offender could still be charged even if the person victimized by the fraud isn’t harmed financially by the transaction. First offenses are punishable by as much as 16 months in prison. Repeat or multiple offenders could get as many as 31 months in prison.

The other bill would require loan originators to file public records, this law takes effect on April 1, 2008.

These two bills were signed on Wednesday and Thursday July 4, 5.

The US House of Representatives and US Senate are looking at enacting similar legislation on a federal level.

With the rash of revelations of computer breaches where credit card information is being stolen and then used by criminals to buy everything from clothes to houses, it is very important that you do all you can to protect yourself. One way that has been enacted by many states is the ability to freeze your credit. This method stops anyone, including yourself, from aquiring your credit information and thus prevents them from obtaining new credit, until you unfreeze your credit information.

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For those of you, like myself, that do not have a built in navagation system in their vehicles might want to look at this Bluetooth device. Semsons & Co. Inc. has started selling the Global.Top HG-100 HUD Bluetooth GPS Receiver. It will display your speed and heading on your windshield and pair, via Bluetooth to your mobile device running any number of GPS mapping applications.

For years a few vehicles have had a heads up display, now with this device you can also. Click on the link above to see full specifications or to purchase one today.

Are you one of the thousands of agents with an email address such as betty295@yahoo.com? Although free email is a good thing cost wise, is it good for your business. There are many things that people want out of real estate professionals and the key is in that very title, “Professional.” Unfortunately we are inundated with people who may know real estate but do not know how to market themselves out of a paper bag.

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With all the hype surrounding the iPhone, is it something you really want/need? If you are a real estate professional, maybe not!

The iPhone, while a marvel to look at, simply does not have the feature set a real estate professional needs. Let’s just take one feature for example, electronic lock boxes. Most of the country uses one of two systems. Both of these systems rely on software along with your hardware (phone) to make them work. In both cases the software is only available for the Palm OS or for Windows Mobile, neither of which is available on the iPhone. Having internet access is simply not enough.

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As I had mentioned in a previous post it is important to have a real estate website that differentiates you and your firm from the myriads of other template driven sites that abound on the network. One of the drawbacks of such an approach is that most real estate professionals are not web designers, and what they think look good or what they think will be easy to navigate turns out to be a disaster and many people bounce out of the site as soon as they view a page or two.

This is where a good site designer comes in. It also is a shame that some of the most respected people in real estate technology have some of the worst websites ever conceived by man or woman! At the risk of being called a heretic I will mention Saul Klein, the Internet Crusader, as he calls himself, as having one heck of a poorly designed personal website and template driven blog.

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It has come time to write down my experience with weight gain and weight lose.

For over 15 years I have struggled with weight gain. Of course as a young man I was thin and fit, when I got married I was 180 pounds. Life, as they say, has a way to sneak up on you and by the time I had been married 18 years, had a daughter and numerous career changes and moves, I had ballooned to 350 pounds.

My doctor told me that because of my morbid obesity that I had cut short my life by 10 to 15 years. I have obstructive sleep apnea. My blood pressure readings were in the 150-160/100 range. My cholesterol readings were in the 400’s. My blood sugars levels were near 200 every day, every time I measured it. I was slowly eating myself to death!

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It simply amazes me that there are so many Real Estate professionals without a website or with one of many cookie cutter template driven websites. There are just too many reasons this is plain wrong. Let me explain:

1. All cookie cutter, pre-packaged, template driven web sites look the same. It simply doesn’t matter what options you have to change the look, they boil down to a fixed width template that rarely follows any usability guidelines. They are simply boring and lifeless.
2. In many cases you will not own your domain name. If you are relying on a firm to give you a complete package of web-hosting, domain services, etc. please read your license agreement. In most cases you will not own your domain or any of the code used to produce your website. In fact, in most of these agreements everything you upload to their servers, the host provider will lay claim to!
3. When you want new features added to your site you will need to wait for the provider to implement it for you. You want an integrated picture gallery, too bad. You want an integrated Blog, again too bad. If you do happen to stumble upon a provider that is forward thinking, just remember item number 2, you don’t own any of the code.

There are several things you can do to make sure that you have a good web presence. Over the next few weeks I will outline what you will need to ask yourself, how you should prepare to get internet savvy. How to plan for your internet future.

I wanted to tell you about my ride, Monday, June 11^th. First I want to tell you that I have never been involved in any type of group ride that was this big. According to the local paper there were over 1600 riders.

Local Asheville newspaper article

Local Spartanburg newspaper article

The first 70 miles are relatively flat, you climb one small mountain called Bill’s Mountain at about mile 50. There is about 3000 feet of vertical elevation gain in the first 70 miles to Marion, NC. I rode with a group of guys from TN, they called themselves “The Big Turtles” and had done the ride in years past. Leaving Spartanburg @ 6:30a there was a police escort out of town, then for most of the route there were county sheriffs posted at the major intersections blocking traffic to allow the cyclists to proceed unhindered. It was also amazing to see how many people where sitting outside in their yards, ringing cowbells, holding up signs or yelling out words of encouragement as the riders passed. The weather was perfect, mid 60’s and overcast.

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