BIA can be used to promote a vast varieties of products and services targeting general consumers and business professionals. For example, real estate agents, developers and marketers can promote real estate listings or real estate projects using this full page wide advertising. As a general use, small businesses and self-employed individuals can use BIA as an affordable means to promote their products and services with long term exposure.

As a general advertiser, you can use a favourite image of your own and prepare a few lines of text to describe your image and your products or services and your ad is ready to go! BIA will help you capture the immediate attention of visitors and link them back to your target web location. (Your ad images shall be 1200×900 pixel in size – they can be of your own, from your friends, or purchased from photographers of your choice.)

PHOTOGRAPHERS connection via BIA Circle…

BIA Circle is a place where photographers and advertisers and consumers can connect with one another. As planned with the BIA development, HOMESmarketing will provide a place where advertisers and consumers can connect with photographers for services.

BIA, another creative advertising service from HOMESmarketing. Explore further via these links:
• Sample ad of a typical real estate listing
• BIA introduction page

Case Study – HOMESmarketing

Related links:

• For inquiry in any of HOMESmarketing’s domain names please visit this online Email Form.
• Credit to the author of the original hit counter: CodeLair PHP scripts (open in new window).

Recently I had no choice but had to send a 20-MB file as an attachment in an email message. After sending the message I checked my storage usage and only at that time I noticed that my Gmail storage has increased from 10GB to 15GB!

Information below is quoted from Wikipedia (about Gmail service):

The Gmail service currently provides more than 15 GB of free storage per account. Users can rent additional storage (shared between Picasa Web Albums, Google Drive and Gmail) from 100 GB (US$4.99/month) to 16 TB (US$799.99/month), but only 15 GB of this additional storage will apply to Gmail, in effect limiting Gmail storage to 30 GB total. On April 1, 2005, the first anniversary of Gmail, Google announced an increase from 1 GB. Georges Harik, the product management director for Gmail, stated that Google would “keep giving people more space forever.”

On April 24, 2012, Gmail announced the increase of free storage in Gmail from 7.5 GB to 10 GB (“and counting”) as part of the launch of Google Drive. At the same time, Gmail users became unable to upgrade the size of their e-mail inbox beyond a 30GB limit, irrespective of their price plan.

On May 13, 2013 Google announced the merge of their free storage across Gmail, Google Drive, & Google+ Photos allowing users up to 15GB of free storage to use across their accounts.

[Quoted from Wikipedia.]

Up to 20 images per MLS listing:
In a recent notice to its members, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver announced the maximum capacity of 20 images allowed per listing on its MLXchange and Fusion MLS systems. I mislaid the notice so I could not tell you here the exact date of that notice – write your comment on this blog if you know the date of that notice so we would have a complete record about this news (^_^). The process of adding images to a listing is the same so there is nothing further to talk about this feature.

Creatively designed and practical features you can use…

I have been posting my real estate for sale listings on the HOMESmarketing system for many years and enjoying practical features to help market my listings – there are quite some new features added recently. Here’s a brief summary of some available features that I’d like to share with you:

1. MoboLINK: Tell other people your new or existing listing easily, precisely by voice, text message, email or any form of prints – “ListB.com/S###” is all you need to tell people to reach your ad with full details (“S###” represents a unique ID# of an ad on the HOMESmarketing system). “Other people” can be your colleagues, cooperating REALTORS, and particularly can be any prospect having seen your for sale signs, your printed newspaper ads, your website ads, etc, etc – A short MoboLINK will certainly help them to memorize your ad and to get to it easily. Make best use of this feature – it’s INCLUDED in the advertising service at no extra cost to you!
2. Mobo VIEW: All classified ads (including real estate for sale or for rent ads) on HOMESmarketing are “mobile device friendly” – it means your readers can view your ads on their mobile devices with comfort: no zooming in and out or scrolling left and right required. To explore the Mobo VIEW and MoboLINK features further please visit the Mobo VIEW feature page

.

3. Data Mover: Submit your MLS listings to the HOMESmarketing system with minimal effort. This is a newly developed feature and is valid with residential listings (both attached and detached properties) served by the MLXchange systems in British Columbia only. If you are a BC REALTOR using MLXchange you can try this feature out for free – visit DataMover for details.

Promotion in effect – Try out the above features for free. Visit links mentioned above to explore the features on the HOMESmarketing site and try them out for free.

Sign up with this link now (both you and I will get free bonus storage ^_^):

https://copy.com?r=HEMq3u

To be certain the service is safe and sustainable, I have done the following research and am satisfied with the findings. The following are provided for your easy reference – you have to make your own judgement and do not quote me for future complaint – just in case ^_^

a) Domain name “copy.com” was created 16-Feb-1995. Its registrant is located at:

Registrant:
Barracuda Networks Inc
3175 Winchester Blvd
Campbell, CA 95008
US

b) Google Map street view of the above ddress:
Google Street View

Hope you find this info useful!

The HST in British Columbia will be gone and the old system of PST (Provincial Sales Tax) and GST (Federal Goods and Services Tax) will take place on April 1, 2013.

Here’s how REALTORS and business owners in British Columbia can save on the PST with a time-sensitive strategy…

With the sales tax system on and after April 1, many items will be taxed separately as:
GST 5%, and
PST 7%,
for a total of 12% on your purchases.

Under the HST system (before April 1, 2013), REALTORS and business owners can claim the full 12% HST back. On and after April 1, however, they can only claim the GST portion of tax back, which is 5%, and the 7% PST will be gone for good!

Make your saving today! So if you have many regular items to purchase that are subject to PST and GST, you can make the purchase before April 1 – you pay 12% HST and you can claim them all back. This will save you 7% on the PST should you make the purchase on and after April 1, where your 7% PST paid will NOT be refunded.

Cheers!

Related reading:
In British Columbia – What’s Taxable under the PST and What’s Not?

So let’s look into the details…

SMS normally comes included in your mobile service package – that is: you can send and receive SMS messages at no additional cost to you (except roaming or international cost to “out of coverage area recipients”).

However, be cautioned about sending photos from your cellphone – You think you are using the free SMS that comes with your mobile service package; in reality you are using a different service called Multimedia Messaging Service, or “MMS”.

By definition and nature, SMS refers to text-based messages only, while MMS covers also various media types including picture (image), video and audio, etc.

Most mobile service providers give you free SMS and charge you heavily on MMS, and without even letting you know the difference up front (when you receive your first monthly bill of your new mobile service and see the total sum charged to the MMS messages sent over the month, it could be a little too late).

Experienced cellphone users will choose to send images (or other media) via APP. An app could be free or cost you a small fee. However, you can only send to a phone number that is also subscribed to the same app as you would use.

If the other party (the recipient) does not have the same app you are going to use, and you don’t want to incur any MMS cost, here’s a solution for you…

To send images via text messaging to any cellphone numbers for free (other than cost on roaming or international service), please follow the steps below…

PART ONE – Online storage apps on your cellphone
===================

Step 1
——————-
Install an online storage service app of your choice to your cellphone:

There are many online storage services available but I have just had installed the following two on my mobile devices only. So I’ll only talk about these in this message.

SkyDrive: Search “SkyDrive” and look for provider “Microsoft Corporation”

Google Drive: Search “Google Drive” and look for provider “Google Inc.”

My comments on these two services: They both work well for me but one thing I have observed that you might wish to consider:
With SkyDrive: I can sign out (log out) the access on my cellphone; but with Google Drive, I cannot sign out the access – this could be a huge risk to your stored files in case your phone is lost or stolen. (There might be a way to sign out Google Drive but I just don’t know how.)

Step 2
——————-
Do some practice with your app. Learn (or make sure you know) how to upload images to the storage, how to select and obtain a sharing link of any specified image (or images) that you want to share.

With both the apps I mentioned above, you can either select and share an entire folder, or to share just one particular file in a folder – be very cautious and make sure you only select what you want to share with others.

Part One is now done. The services are available to you on your cellphone – i.e., store and access to files wherever you want. The function of Part Two next is optional but is the topic of this message, which is about sending photos from the camera on your cellphone via text messaging to anyone through a direct cellphone number, *without the use of any app*.

PART TWO – Sending images via text messaging to any cellphone number without using any app
===================

Step 1
——————-
Take photo using your cellphone camera as you normally would.

Share the picture from your cellphone: Share it by selecting an online storage service app. Follow steps of the app to store the photo to the online storage. After proper steps, your photo is now stored to your online storage account.

Step 2
——————-
This step is about sharing your image(s) from your online storage account, to anyone through a direct cellphone number, *without the use of any app*.

Open your online storage app on your cellphone, select the image you want to share to others; share it by obtaining a LINK (define a share permission of you choice where applicable); select a method through which you want the image shared – for the purposes of this article, let’s select “text messaging” as the method.

After the above steps, your text messaging program should open and filled with the LINK in the body of the message. From here, you can enter the cellphone number(s) of others to whom you want to share the photo with. You can send the message to any cellphone number you like, without the need to use any “message deliver app” or the need to ensure the recipients are also using the same app you are using.

And because you are actually sending a text link in a text message, you will not incur any cost for sending media (images, vedios, songs, etc) if this feature is not already included in your wireless service package.

CONCLUSION
===================
Sharing images from your cellphone this way has the following advantages:

1. You are using text messaging service (or “SMS”) – it is included in most wireless service packages at no extra cost.

2. You can send the image (a text LINK) to *ANY* cellphone number around the world – you don’t need to use any app at all, and the recipients do not need to install any app either. (No more guessing or uncertainty.)

3. You can send any type of media, including images, video or audio files, etc.

4. You can avoid paying heavy cost on sending media files via messaging services (for many wireless service packages it could be 50 cents or higher per image).

The new bridge is scheduled to its grand opening on December 1, 2012 when tolling will begin. And, whether you expect to travel through the bridge or not in the future, it is worthwhile to register your vehicle(s) now for its automatic tolling system. Register online by November 30, 2012 and get 20 free trips – for many out-of-towners this could mean free trips for many years to come!

The tolls for small vehicles seem to be moderate (my opinion). If you register an account you can enjoy discount rates for the first year. More details below…

Open an account and enjoy discount rates

To register your vehicle(s) for the new Port Mann Bridge, visit the TReO website:
https://www.treo.ca/tolls-and-fees

Below are some screenshots of the TReO website showing toll rates and discount information:

Tolling Rates Dec 2012 thru Dec 2013:

Discount details:

Watch bridge construction from Summer 2009 through Winter 2012 in less than two minutes:

I was the listing agent of an apartment unit in Vancouver East (BC). I sold the unit to a walk-in buyer. The buyer was a corporation located in Alberta. I didn’t represent the buyer – yes, the buyer worked on his own. He had his own lawyer to do the conveyance; and yes, the lawyer was also located in Alberta. All subject clauses were removed; and it was almost a month from the closing date. Final deposit was in place. Everything looked great!

Two weeks before the closing date. My client’s (seller’s) lawyer called me, informing that the buyer lawyer’s documents were still missing. I called the buyer in Alberta, asking if they had hired their lawyer in Vancouver and if they could give me the information. “Our lawyer will handle it, everything is fine,” he told me.

Two days passed, no news! I called the buyer again. He told me his lawyer was still looking for a lawyer in Vancouver to do the closing. I asked him if I could refer couple of lawyers and notaries public for him to contact. He said he should be fine. I could not call his lawyer directly for a clear picture – I had no agency status with the buyer to do that.

September 10, at 10:26am (8 days including weekend from the closing date of the 17th):
I received a copy of message sent from the buyer’s lawyer in Alberta to the buyer. In brief, the lawyer indicated to the buyer that he could not act for them in the transaction for a property in BC, and provided a lawyer’s name in BC for the buyer to contact.

At 10:51am, the buyer sent email to me, confirming a lawyer in BC said to be acting for them in the transaction. I informed my office to forward the transaction info to this law office accordingly.

At 2:00pm, my office received a fax from that “buyer’s lawyer”, advising that they could not represent the buyer for the transaction.

The buyer is still trying to find one himself. Meanwhile, I had organized a list of lawyers and notaries public from my past transactions and forward the list to the buyer for contact.

5pm passed; there was still no lawyer information from the buyer! Finally he called me on the phone, asking if I could help.

I quickly made few phone calls – no luck! It was after 5pm. Everyone is on the answering machine!

I suddenly thought of a lawyer I used to receive newsletters from. I sent a brief message to him about the situation, and asked if he could help the buyer. And within five minutes I received from him: “Yes I can help him. Who is the lender?”

So the rest is now history. The deal was concluded on September 17, as anticipated. As a matter of fact, all documents were ready and presented to the seller lawyer for execution within three days! I was very impressed with the efficiency of this lawyer!

P.S. REALTORS who wish to have the contact info of this lawyer please feel free to contact me.

There are some points worth mentioning for future reference:

• Foreigners are not prohibited from acquiring real estate in the province of British Columbia. However, an out of province corporation would need to have extra provincial registration in BC for that purpose.
• Lawyers from out side BC cannot carry the title transfer of real estate located in BC.

The theme of the event was A Night in Shanghai. Participants had to buy tickets to attend the event ($15 each). It was said that Concord Pacific had sponsored the event, while CREPA was responsible for finding participants who are mostly real estate licensees and mortgage brokers.

Concord Pacific is one of the major real estate developers in the Greater Vancouver area (concordpacific.com). CREPA stands for Chinese Real Estate Professionals Association of BC (crepa.ca).