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  Exciting News This Month!
The HomeGauge Platinum Web Service has had an upgrade! HomeGauge listened to your requests for new features and designs. We have built a brand new, easy-to-use, and extremely powerful Web Builder package. This is a completely new set of tools designed from the ground up to get you started quickly and easily with your own website.
New Platinum Features:
- Menu Manager: Rearrange items in your menu, publish items, and rename them to fit your preferences.
- Logo Manager: Upload any size logo you want and choose the template that fits your logo, not the other way around.
- Page Manager: Manage your page titles as well as their published status.
- Company Info: Manage your company information as well as your website's search engine optimization.
- Design Manager: Change designs on the fly -- it's now easier than ever to have a custom template design for your site!
Other new features include an unlimited number of pages, easier email address management, an improved “Contact Us” page, and much more! We have kept all the powerful WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) page editing, image upload and storage, Inspector Calendar, user report login, and other features of the original Platinum service.
If you already have a fully hosted site using the original Platinum builder, or are still on an original Platinum demo, please email wesley@homegauge.com and a new Platinum Version 2.0 demonstration site can be setup for you to test. If your domain is already active, it will be unaffected while you test Version 2.0.
We encourage everyone to test Platinum Web Builder Version 2.0. We are confident that you will be impressed with its power and ease of use!
To try out the Platinum web builder, login to HomeGauge.com and click on the "My Website" link on the left.
 Pocket HG (for the Pocket PC) Update!
It's been in use for a couple of months by over 200 inspectors and we have received nothing but praise!
Do NOT underestimate the “Jump" button when inserting pictures. It will save you at least 15 minutes (some say 30 minutes or more) and make inserting pictures fun!
Here’s how it works:
- Set your PPC time clock within a minute of your camera clock.
With your PPC on your waist, start inspecting as usual. Each time you take a picture, go to the inspection item on your PPC and click the camera button. If you take two pictures of that item, click the camera icon on your PPC twice.
- Each time you take a picture with your camera, stop, grab your PPC, and go to that item and click the camera icon.
- Do this throughout the inspection.
- Transfer your report from your PPC to your laptop (or desktop, tablet, etc.).
- Load your pictures (they appear like a filmstrip on the right of the screen)
- Hit the jump button on the picture and WHAM it takes you exactly where it wants you to go.
I am telling you it will save you a lot of time and actually make it fun! It also helps keep you from getting lazy entering in the inspection info. Because the digital camera works well in capturing problems, sometimes the inspector relies too much on taking a picture and inputting the comment later during the inspection. So, he ends up at the end of the inspection with a lot of data to input. By using the “Jump” button -- clicking the camera icon in the Pocket HG software every time you take a picture -- it encourages you to input the comment, since you are already there clicking the camera icon. So what happens is that at the end of physically inspecting, you are also finished inputting your comments.
The jump button always picks the picture place holder with the current time, so if it gets off track, it can get back on. Let’s say that you just took a picture of the leaking p-trap under the bath sink. Your next step is to go to the PPC and click the camera icon at that item, but you forgot, or were interrupted by the buyer pointing out something else. You decide to take a picture of the “Something Else” the buyer mentioned and now realize that you didn’t click the camera icon on the PPC for the first item (p-trap). So, you go to the PPC and click the camera icon on the "Something Else" and then the camera icon for P-trap (backwards, with no time between the two items). What happens is that when you are clicking the jump button at each picture, it is working smoothly until you come to this example. When you click the jump button on the P-trap picture it may instead point you to the inspection item of “Something Else”. No problem, hit the p-trap “jump" button again and it will move to the second closest item and you should be back on track.
Friends, this works so well, you can not only save time inserting pictures, but the process itself can encourage you to input comments along the way, saving you even more time in the long run. Some say that their 1-2 hours at the end of the inspection has been reduced to 20 minutes. Now that’s time savings!!
Try the PPC and shave hours off every week. Free Trial Download and Info.
You want to take advantage of this feature, but you don't have a PPC? Each time you take a picture, click in the empty picture area for an inspection item on the Windows software and select "Insert Place Holder" from the pop-up menu. This can work well for users who prefer using a Tablet PC or Laptop.
 Radon Testing Integration
HomeGauge now offers radon test integration with Air Chek (www.radon.com). Be sure and buy the kits from us so you can take advantage of the integration in HG software. The results will post automatically and a link will be sent to your agent and buyer when the report is ready. Give your customers and agents better service by automatic notification that the radon report is ready. No more agents hunting you down!!!!
Environmental Testing (requires sign in)
HomeGauge Welcomes Sean Lowery
HomeGauge welcomes another team member Sean Lowery to the HG team. Since he has the same first name as our beloved programmer and chief guru (Sean Moore) we have been calling Sean Lowery “Sean L”. Sean L says don’t call him Channel as in CoCo Channel #5. Sean L brings tech experience and has become proficient in HomeGauge very quickly. Welcome Channel (I mean Sean L) to the team!
Until next time,
Russell Buchanan
HomeGauge, President
russell@HomeGauge.com
877-274-4299
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