Marilyn Wilson, founding partner of WAV Group, has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Council of Multiple Listing Services.  Wilson will serve as one of two Business Partner board representatives, who are appointed by the president. The WAV Group is one of the most successful technology consulting firms in the industry.  They work with many leading MLS organizations, associations, technology vendors and brokers in North America and Europe. Wilson has a strong background in technology and consumer products. Prior to forming WAV Group, Wilson was president and CEO of Surveyor Corp., a leading provider of web camera [...]

In a move that may separate Microsoft Virtual Earth from Google maps, Microsoft announced integration of Photosynth - an application that allows you to automatically stich groups of photos togethers into a three dimensional viewing experience.  This has tremendous implications for the mapping functionality imbeded into MLS systems including Cyberhomes (FNRES) and Marketlinx and others. Although Virtual Earth is much less popular than Google Maps, it is vastly superior on many levels - which is why leading technolgoy companies are opting to pay for Microsoft over Google.  This combination essentially combines mapping with virtual tour experiences.  This combination will have relevance for agents working within the [...]

Portland is the site for the Connections 2009 conference, welcoming a select group of real estate dignitaries to discuss the evolution of our industry and the painful realities that hold us back. I will be speaking briefly to the lawyers who write the pages of rules that govern order in the vast lands of MLS - I applaud their work. Sharing - the cornerstone of web 2.0 - is the terrorist threat to protecting MLS data from misuse, and I found some rather interesting mis-uses of data on the web that illustrate the challenges facing rules and rules enforcement.Although I do [...]