From James Kimmons,
Your Guide to Real Estate Business.
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I had a liberating experience when I finally freed myself from MS Outlook. It may not be for everyone, but a real estate agent or broker can very effectively operate their business with free services. And with under a dollar a day, they can operate at a high level and from any internet computer without software. In this series of steps, you'll get set up at absolutely no cost, and be able to:

• Check multiple email accounts all in your Gmail system.
• Sort, archive and easily locate all your email from now on.
• Integrate your Gmail with the Calendar, with automatic recognition of events in emails.
• Get tasks into your Google Calendar wth Remember the Milk, and do transaction management.
• Build Gmail filters to automatically "file" emails so that you'll never lose them again.
• Get events, meetings and tasks into your system with your voice from your cell phone.
• Keep emails related to contacts, and follow your email discussions as threads.
• Have unlimited emails for tracking sources and the success of marketing efforts.

This step-by-step process is designed to walk you through using a Gmail (Google Mail) Account, as well as other services (all totally free), that will have your real estate practice humming along. You'll start up your computer home screen every morning with all of your day's tasks, meetings, news and email right in front of you. It will all update in real time. Let's start with a look at my screen and how I like my information laid out for efficiency. Here are the numbered item explanations:

1. A box to provide a limited display of my Gmail Inbox. Though I keep another Tab open in Firefox with Gmail full screen, I don't go there unless I see an email here that needs immediate attention.

2. Here is an abbreviated display of my Google Calendar, with an add for holidays. It shows me today's and future appointments. This is for meetings, events and such, not tasks. See the next item for them.

3. Using the free Remember the Milk service, I can show a box here with a customized display of my upcoming tasks. I can add tasks from here, and I can complete or delete them also.

4. This is a custom box widget that allows me to place my most used bookmarks or links. You might place a link to MLS here, or any other site you use frequently. I have online databases for contact management and accounting in this box. You can also create more than one of these, so you can group links by topic.

5. If you're not into RSS and Newsfeeds, this box might not interest you. However, if you want to keep up with what's happening on any subject, you should learn how to use the Google Reader and subscribe to blog feeds that talk about your subjects of interest.

Last is igoogle: This igoogle home page will be our last step, as we can then place the calendar, gmail and Remember the Milk boxes after they are all set up.

All of the boxes on this igoogle page can be dragged and dropped wherever I want. This is just the way I like to see my screen and what's happening at all times. In the steps of this article series, we'll be looking at setting up a Gmail account, getting the Calendar going, and setting up Remember the Milk for tasks. We'll also check out the Reader, and then we'll look at some ways to get tasks and meetings into your system with your voice from cell calls.