Contents ...
1. Online Digital Photo Tours
2. E-mail Calendar Coordinating

1. Digital Photo Tours... From Hans Hansson of Starboard Commercial Real Estate in San Francisco: "In the past we would take single digital photos and e-mail them to our clients. Now we set up a URL (web address) on our (password-protected) FTP site that allows us to digitally show all of our tours as thumb nails and full images. This allows our clients to actually see the individual photos and choose which one they would like to see. I recently closed a deal with a Canadian software firm. This client had no knowledge of the San Francisco market. We created two URLs -- one of existing headquarters sites of Internet companies and the other of sites that could work for his firm. He shared this URL site with his partners in Europe and on the East Coast. We actually came to agreement on the space without the main decision-maker partner having to fly out and bless the site." ... Note: Paul Steffen, Starboard's web guru points out that the advantage of an FTP site is that a client can download a whole directory of digital images, rather than having to copy them one at a time off a web site.

2. Calendar Coordinating ... Michael Yaros is with CLW Realty Group in Tampa, FL, which represents PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Yaros frequently needs to coordinate meetings with six or more people from different organizations. Rather than relying on a fancy calendar scheduling application, he sometimes resorts to basic e-mail -- with a twist. He sends e-mail to each participant with a simple "table" built using dashes and plus signs (in other words using basic ASCII characters) and asks each to fill in Y or N according to availability. He then digests the responses and sends everybody one more e-mail confirming the time and date. This saves dozens of e-mails zipping between all the various participants. Here's part of what a table might look like.

--------+-----+-----|
Time. | T1. | T2 |
--------+-----+-----|
Peter |Y... | N. |
--------+-----+-----|

Question ... What is your favorite web site? Do you have a tip? Send e-mail to me at , and I'll report more in a future Dispatch.

--Peter