That’s the pitch, but what about the price? The good news is, there is a free trial option, but from there its subscription packages start at US$99 per month.

So is ClickTale worth it? Judging by the recent glowing write up on geekestateblog.com, we’d says it’s at least worth a try. “It’s probably only a matter of time before some of their features are incorporated into Google Analytics and other analytics software I would imagine,” Matthew Swanson predicts.

Of course, we’d love to hear views and reviews from anyone who has experience using ClickTale.

If you’re an agent running your own website, the prospect of a detailed picture of how it’s performing will probably sound quite enticing. That’s exactly what the newly-established service WooRank is offering, and at the moment all its reports are free.

A WooRank report shows you three traffic estimates, gives a run-down of your in-site and off-site SEO, and measures your website’s usability. Areas that need work are clearly marked with an orange dot, or a red dot if things are really dicey.

As the WooRank blog explains, the aim here is to find out what you need to work on to get your website noticed by Google. “Only 16 percent of Google searchers look beyond the first two pages of search results,” the website warns.

Perhaps more exciting than receiving information about your own website’s performance is the option to check on your competitors. Because you don’t have to own a website to check its performance with WooRank, you can compare results from any web address you choose and see what everyone else is doing right (and wrong).

As techcrunch.com points out, WooRank isn’t the first to offer free online reports on website performance. Website Grader lets you plug in your website’s address along with those of your competitors, while HitTail offers a similar service with a free 60-day trial.

Liaise is an email add-on for Outlook that allows you to do three things: capture, manage and collaborate on the information that comes into your inbox.

Liaise explains that every time an email arrives it finds tasks, issues, dates and priority levels. This information is then converted into an action list, complete with details on who needs to complete the task, which can be integrated into Outlook’s calendar. Multiple users can view this action list, so everyone involved has an idea of how each task is progressing.

Liaise won Best Business Product at the DEMOfall ’09 conference in September, and is currently available in limited beta for free. Co-founder and chief executive Sidney Minassian told venturebeat.com that web-based email is next in line for the Liaise treatment, and that paid services will eventually cost between US$4.95 and $9.95.

Tungle

Like Liaise, Tungle is another application focused on making collaboration easier. Tungle offers a free web based application that helps people find the best time to meet, and also recently released a version for iPhone.

Tungle shares people’s availability across calendar systems. Its iPhone application, side-stepping the difficulty of viewing calendar details on the iPhone’s small screen, lets users shake their iPhones (or tap a button) to instantly find a meeting time that suits everyone. The iPhone application also displays Tungle contacts with icons that show their availability, allowing you find out whether someone is available before you call them.

Evernote

Not quite as new as Liaise or Tungle, Evernote is no less useful. The free application works by collecting everything from digital text and screen captures to photos of meeting notes on whiteboards and sound files, storing this content, and making it all searchable.

As James Kimmons points out on about.com, agents could use Evernote for a vast range of tasks, such as documenting reactions at showings, tracking progress on construction and repair work, or even gathering new marketing ideas. “I consider Evernote as one of my most valuable ‘stress reduction’ tools,” Kimmons writes. “It makes me feel more in control of today’s information overload.”

Of course, these few examples don’t begin to cover the many time saving applications currently available. As always, propertyadguru.com is interested to hear which have worked for you, which to avoid, and what kind of time saving applications you’d like to see developed in future.

As the world of social media grows, so does the number of related applications that aim to improve the way we use it. Here are three new tools that could make social media that much more useful to you and your business:

my6sense: A Twitter Revolution?

Not yet released, the new tool from my6sense has techcrunch.com buzzing with excitement. The tool will reportedly offer Twitter users the ability to filter news feeds, allowing them to follow as many people as they like and still be able to easily access updates that are most important to them. As techcrunch.com explains:

“The company is focusing on ranking tweets with links—and we all get quite a few of those. From my6sense’s perspective, your friends provide the first level of filtering. It then provides the second level by taking it upon itself to re-rank these Tweets so a users’ focus is directed to the information that is most important to them.”

my6sense can already rank RSS feed content in terms of relevance, and has just released a version of that service for the iPhone.

socialtoo.com: Update to Everywhere from Facebook

socialtoo.com describes itself as “your companion on the social web” and offers a number of different services across Twitter and Facebook.

For Twitter accounts, socialtoo.com provides options to automatically follow or unfollow people, block direct messages from other services, and create and send polls and surveys. Facebook users can also send out these surveys and have access to a short socialtoo.com address that redirects to their Facebook profile.

The website has also just announced its “SocialToo Status” tool that allows Facebook users to update their status to other online networks, such as Twitter, from their profile page.

Linksify: the Ultimate Address Book?

linksify.com, which has just received US$500,000 investment, bills itself as “the last address book you’ll ever need”.

Essentially, the website is an online address book that allows users to connect with anyone while controlling the information others are able to view. It also lets users to sync with their existing address book, automatically and wirelessly, to keep contact details updated.

There’s a strong emphasis on privacy at linksify.com, with the website stating:

“With linksify.com, you can give your work profile, office number, and company email address to your colleagues and business associates, and your home address, home number, and personal email address to your friends and family. And you can give your cell phone number and your birthday to everyone. Or to no one. With linksify.com, the choice is yours.”

Meanwhile…

Finally, at the other end of the spectrum, we have the new “anti-Twitter” service, Woofer, which only allows you to post status updates with a minimum of 1400 characters. We would say the “macroblogging” service will never catch on, but there are already over 9,000 users who agree that “140 characters is not nearly enough”.

Here they are …

issuu.com … quick online magazine development … and its free.

viralheat.com … monitor your brand 24/7 and join into the conversation about what people are saying about you

drop.io … create a space online (a webpage) in a couple of clicks for every listings or a presentation and its free for most purposes

jimdo.com … create a full featured website with lots of social media tools … in a few clicks

feedmingle.com … allows you to take RSS feeds from blogs and websites to create one simple feed

mailchimp.com … a simple to use and powerful online emailing tool

screentoaster.com … a simple application to record what is happening on your screen and then you can share it with others

geochirp.com … allows you to find out who is talking about a certain topic on twitter around where you are located

tumblr.com … allows you to create a blog and to post articles to it through a range of media including online, mobile phone and so on

usertesting.com … allows you to test webpages on line in real time

99designs.com … allows you to post a design project online and to have a group of designers submit proposals and you select the winner

joby.com/gorillamobile … a tripod for your iphone

The UK’s Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has launched the Blue Book: Residential Estate Agency Standards – a guide for agents on how to conduct their business.

The book, described as “jargon-free and easy to navigate”, replaces the RICS Manual of Estate Agency. As Georgiana Hibberd explains on isurv.com, the recent creation of the UK Property Standards Board prompted the publication of “Standards for Estate Agents Dealing with Residential Property”, which forms the basis of the Blue Book.

RICS spokesperson David Dalby told propertywire.com about the intended use of the new publication:

“With the current pressures on the property market, estate agents’ practices are under the microscope more than at any time in recent history. It is more important than ever that agents work to the highest standards, and that consumers understand not only what a good agent does, but also the scope of the services available.”

The book costs £75.00. Buyers receive a copy in paperback along with access to the online version, which is updated regularly.

“Social media overload” is a phrase that has been gaining prominence over the past few months. As we discussed last month, agents who use social media have to make sure they balance the amount of time they spend creating and updating their online profiles against the number of leads their efforts generate.

When you consider how easy it is to lose time using social media, it’s hardly surprising that a number of online services have popped up that promise to simplify and streamline your online presence. Let’s take a look at a few examples that could be useful for agents.

card.ly

card.ly says its main aim is to provide people with “mini business card profiles” at their own personalised .ly address. Once you have your address and a short bio written up, you can then add links to all your other online profiles: your Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn profile, Flickr photos, blogs – in fact almost 50 types of online profile are currently supported. It’s free to register, however some business card themes are only available to members with premium accounts.

Who could use this?

Agents who love social media but don’t have their own personal website, and who want to draw all their profiles together at a single location.

chi.mp

chi.mp is similar to card.ly in that it provides you with a personalised .mp address, but instead of linking to all your other online profiles, a chi.mp account brings all the content you post to websites such as Twitter, Facebook, or your blog and displays these in a chronological stream down the page. As well as an “about me” section, chi.mp accounts also have a section that links to your contacts. chi.mp community director Laurel Boylen’s account is a good example of how it all works.

Who could use this?

Again, agents with a love of social media and a desire to bring all their content together in one place could benefit from a service like this, and while it doesn’t have the same sleek presentation of a card.ly online business card, the single stream of information coming from all your online profiles means a quick glance at one location will give people an idea of your latest activities.

unhub.com

unhub.com says it offers “simple, smart profiles” with a “personal profile bar”. Giving people the address to your personal profile bar will place a persistent bar at the top of their web browser, and from there they can navigate to your various online profiles under headings such as “My Bio”, “My Videos” and “My Status”. unhub.com directs us to Barack Obama’s account to understand how it works.

Who could use this?

unhub.com could be the perfect fit for agents who want a balance between the more formal presentation of card.ly and chi.mp’s ability to allow people to see all their information at a single source.

As always, we’d love to hear from people who have used these tools, so let us know what you think in the comments section belie.

Another iPhone application has surfaced to tempt agents using Apple’s iPhone: the “Agentworx” contact management and productivity tool just released by AppSpice.

Agentworx draws together information on listings, upcoming activities and tasks, earnings, buyers, and leads. A digital flyer about a particular listing can be sent to a client while you are speaking with them, and their email address is captured automatically. The application also displays year-to-date earnings, estimated earnings and financial goals. A free version is available but the full version of the application costs US$9.99.

The number of iPhone applications aimed at real estate agents is growing. One example is mobileapploader.com’s customisable “Real Estate – Real Easy” iPhone application, released earlier this year, which includes agent contact details, a search function, an “about” page with an “add to contacts” link, and a location based feedback page.

Another option is Smarter Agent’s mobile application, which covers not only the iPhone but other smart phones and mobile devices as well. “Homes for Sale”, which recently received an enthusiastic review on agentgenius.com, uses GPS to allow homebuyers to search for MLS listing information on the move, and can be branded by agents and connected to their own websites.

And property portals are getting in on the iPhone App too, aiming mobile versions of their website listings at the every increasing mobile market.

A post on US real estate marketplace zillow.com’s blog reveals their iPhone app has set yet more records. And it’s also having another unexpected effect – converting agents to using the iPhone.

The free app has been available for just on two months and version 2 is already available. The app allows users to access property values and other information on the move.

“Over the weekend we hit another exciting milestone with our Zillow iPhone app: over 1/2 million downloads — 513,213 as of this morning,” zillow.com write.

The company says that it’s not just good news for zillow.com in terms of increased web traffic. According to some of the testimonials they have received the Zillow iPhone app is giving real estate professionals a reason to switch to the iPhone.

For instance, a blog post from Richard Stephan of Engels and Volkers on activerain.com tells how he converted to the iPhone because of the zillow iPhone app.

Joel Burslem also discussed the application on futureofrealestatemarketing.com, saying:

“This is where the potential for real estate search gets really interesting. Imagine the ability to get real time updates from your clients as they are conducting a home search. Alternatively, as a home buyer, you could location-tag properties with “search update” and view them all collectively once you return to your computer.”

Privacy concerns have also been discussed by many, including activerain.com blogger Wayne Golliday, who points out that Google Latitude allows you to hide your location, share your city level location only and block contacts.

At the other end of the spectrum, those who wish to make their locations even more visible can now use two new applications released for Google Latitude: “Google Talk location status” automatically updates Google Talk or Gmail chat with your location, and the “Google Public Location Badge” publishes your location on your blog or website.

For any business, reputation is everything.

With an online presence comes an online reputation. A good online reputation is worth its weight in gold. But how do you know what’s being said about you, and how do you manage it?

Enter myfrontsteps.com, and their latest idea: StepRep. Basically, it sorts the good from the bad, and makes the good appear higher up on the Google rankings.

“People are rating your services on sites like ServiceMagic and Yelp,” says Brendan King, CEO of myfrontsteps.com. “They’re blogging, and commenting on each other’s blogs. One comment can be seen by tens of thousands of people. It’s really upped the stakes.”

“Small business owners might think, hey, I’ve got a low profile, no-one’s talking about me,” says King. “But when you don’t have a large online presence, the effect of each comment is magnified. It’s even more important to keep on top of what people are seeing when they Google your name.”

Between blogs, your own website, portals, facebook, linked in, and other social media websites your name is being mentioned in many places. Googling yourself or setting up Google alerts can only take you so far. “From the front page of the New York Times to some angry little blogger with a grudge, StepRep finds it all”, they say.

The idea is that you can embrace the power of social networks and let your clients recommend you, and your work, to their friends and family. You can monitor, manage and build your reputation.

StepRep is best explained by their own video:

Once released, the StepRep widget will allow you to broadcast positive stories to anyone who visits your blog or website. Best of all, it’s completely free.

Behind myfrontsteps.com and StepRep are VendAsta Technologies, a software development team based in Saskatoon, Canada. In August 2008 the startup received $3 million funding from Victoria Park Capital to develop a social networking initiative that would combine the founders’ expertise in software and real estate services.

StepRep is only one of the company’s projects. In March, myfrontsteps.com will launch Homebook, a place for homeowners to share photos of their homes and get ideas for design and renovation.