A couple of things happened to me this week that made me say Hmmmmmmm.
\nI find it interesting how often things happen in groups. Maybe when I’m doing or thinking about an issue I’m just “tuned in” to finding more.<\/p>\n
First I got a postcard form my old High School, Taylor Allderdice. They are putting together an Alumni Directory and they want me to give my contact information to a third party company who will catalog it for them.<\/p>\n
I’m not sure that I’m in favor of giving my personal information to someone who then plan to sell it back to me. They have a privacy policy that says they will not share it with anyone but alumni, but as we all know privacy policies can be easily changed with the stroke of a keyboard.<\/p>\n
That same day I see a post on Bruce Schneier’s blog called Our Data, Ourselves<\/a> and I thought Wow!<\/p>\n Then, the next day, I met with a Realtor about his site and we got to talking about the MLS. I have written before how I don’t like the MLS<\/a>. You give them your listings and they sell them back to you. Not only that they make it complicated, secretive, and very expensive. I explained to my potential customer that someone is going to do this better, make it easier and probably free.<\/p>\n The very next day while looking for something else I found Real Estate Search on Google Maps<\/a>.<\/p>\n