Tel:
+27 (0)11 955 9100 |
Newsletter - 3 March 2006
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| Word from the editor |
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Dear CyberAgent users, In his Budget speech, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel announced that transfer duties would no longer apply to mortgages of up to 500,000 rand as from March 1. How will this be to the benefit of the Estate Agency and even Estate Agent? According to ABSA Mortgage advances growth is likely to benefit from the Budget announcement on transfer duty on property. They projected an average nominal house price growth of at least 12% for 2006 (21,9% in 2005). As far as the mortgage advances a projected growth of between 22% and 24% is expected compared with 27.6% recorded in 2005. I suppose only time will tell. This month we have a bumper newsletter! Make sure you do not miss reading about the maintenance at Internet Solutions and how it can affect your website and Internet service. It is not so much about what you are doing, but rather how much you enjoy what you are doing. Greetings! |
| Do you enjoy what you are doing? |
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Consider the following; it is not so much about what you are doing, but rather how much you enjoy what you are doing. If we base this bold statement on one particular case study, it serves to prove that the people at CyberAgent are infatuated with what they are doing.
Back in 1999, the founding member of USP Designs, Willie van Schalkwyk made the following statement; which has become their work philosophy: “I believe that continued growth will be the indicator of our innovation. This will be validated by customers who add our solutions to meet their needs.” Usp Designs immediately started with the creation of the software package, that has become known as CyberAgent.
To some extent; we are the facilitators of our own evolution. In retrospect; it seems that the evolution of the CyberAgent package, into CyberAgent Mobile, was a perfectly natural development. Since its introduction to the property community last year, the application has literally revolutionised the way in which day-to-day business is conducted. Already the user’s businesses are benefiting from increased productivity which ultimately translates into massive profit gains.
True to their beliefs in continued growth and innovation, CyberAgent is based on cutting edge technology, with free programme updates being provided on a regular basis. As an all-inclusive office management tool consisting of 10 modules, CyberAgent effectively eliminates the need for multiple programs, and time consuming double capturing. Currently over 1000 Real Estate Agents make use of CyberAgent software, which also operates as an off-line system, resulting in further savings of time and money.
Still to this day, the philosophy has stayed the same at USP Designs, you can rest assured that this is indeed a company with a vision; a vision to never stop pushing the barriers in technological advances within the property industry.
“CyberAgent Mobile is the proverbial right hand to the CyberAgent package and ensures a real, tangible advantage to estate agencies of all sizes to benefit from the highest levels of Internet marketing and exposure.” Says Pat Jewell, operations director of USP Designs.
The CyberAgent management tool provides real estate agencies with
a complete end to end solutions, that allows individual agents to administer,
catalogue and publish properties online without being anywhere near the
office. Combined with a CyberAgent real estate business management
system on your desktop computer, as well as some amazingly cost efficient
web site development and hosting facilities, CyberAgent Mobile
is delivering effective technology that simplifies the property business
for the better. |
| CyberAgent Mobile |
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Have you read about CyberAgent Mobile? If not, do not miss out! CyberAgent Mobile is a winner! Not only for the Estate Agent but also in the IT world.
Congratulations on being nominated by Sybase for a Computerworld Honors 21st Century Achievement Award.
The awards ceremony is on June 5 in Washington, D.C. On that day, all Laureates will be presented with a prestigious medal as recognition for their contribution to the field of Information Technology. Later that day, five finalists will be announced in each of the 10 award categories (Business, Education, Environment/Energy/Agriculture, Finance/Insurance/Real Estate, Government/Non-Profit, Manufacturing, Media/Arts/Entertainment, Medicine, Science, and Transportation). At the awards gala that evening, a 21st Century Achievement Award winner will be named for each category, along with the presentation of some special leadership awards.
If you do not know what CyberAgent Mobile offers, go and have
a look NOW! Click here to read more about CyberAgent Mobile |
CyberAgent Mobile Will CyberAgent Mobile work for you? You can now test drive the new CyberAgent Mobile program free for 7 days. Download the program(free), Once loaded on the device you have 7 days in which you can run the program in demo mode. Click here to for more details |
| What's New ??? |
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The development efforts are focussed on the integration with CyberAgent Mobile. A lot of improvement has been made in the speed of the website update for CyberAgent Mobile users. The good news is that the advances made on the CAM front also benefits the regular CyberAgent subscriber... so look out for the next version of CyberAgent 3.100.925 is the current build available. |
| CyberAgent Training |
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Our next info/training session for Cape Town, West Coast and Overberg is on it's way!
Please take note that there are limited seats available! Johannesburg – We are busy renovating our offices and will be offering weekly training sessions for FREE to all our CyberAgent users in the near future. For more information on training please email Nolan@cyberprop.com |
| CyberAgent & Ananzi |
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If you are not yet advertising on on South Africa's biggest and most popular search engine with over 10 million page impressions monthly it is time to register now! To read more simply click on the following link: |
| News |
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A warm welcome to all new Agencies: We trust that by now you are well aware of what CyberAgent can do for you. If you need any assistance, please do not hesitate to contact Fanie at support@cyberprop.com or phone us at: +27 (0)11 955-9100 or 086 112- 9237 Most Internet enquiries: Cyberprop
Sunday times
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| No more waiting for statements |
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No more waiting for statements and invoices. By logging on with your username and password you can now get it online at: http://www.cyberagent.co.za/uspacct/
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| New representation in the Western Cape |
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We have a new representative in the Western Cape; Ernst Linde. Welcome to the CyberAgent family Ernst! Ernst Linde
Should you wish to know more about CyberAgent give Ernst a call right now!
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| CyberAgent and your (WiFi) network |
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These two things may sound like they don't really have much in common - but things are allways more complex than what they seem like... Let me try to explain: CyberAgent has a very unique database format. (Database - a collection of records/pieces of information - ie: listings. The format varies from one solution provider to the next. One would use DBF, others SQL, others ORACLE etc. etc. Each flavour has it's own advantages and disadvantages). One of the beautiful advantages of the database format of CyberAgent, is it's "changeability" - just imagine what it would have been like if we had to come into your office and reload CyberAgent every time there is a change to the program/data structure. NO! Instead of this pain - CyberAgent can be updated at the push of a button - so there's a great advantage of the data structure we've chosen for CyberAgent. Let's look at one disadvantage and specifically how it can be accentuated in a specific network environment - we're highlighting it in this months' newsletter, since it recently came up in a clients' office environment and we believe it could happen more frequently in future... The DBF database format used in CyberAgent is very reliant on a stable network. What do I mean with stable? Allways available. Some networks are made up of hardware from various suppliers and at the end of the day, the network runs with a bit of luck and a lot of hiccups... this is NOT the kind of network where you want to run CyberAgent on. Why not? Data corruptions! When a DBF database is suddenly closed or dropped - even just for a brief period - the data can become corrupt. The worse part: THERE'S NO WAY TO FIX IT!!! The only solution is to restore a prior backup! A new technology that's seen more often in the modern office is the wireless network or WiFi. This is a great network strategy, since it's much less a headache to connect the various components together. It works beautifully with handheld devices that need network and internet connectivity. There is however one key feature of a wireless network adapter (network card) - that has the ability to play havoc with CyberAgent... Power Save mode or "CAM" or "Card Power Management" - there are different flavours, but it all means the same : In an attempt to make portable computer's batteries last longer, the option to let the network card "sleep" at times when it's not truly in use was introduced. This may work well for your laptops' battery - but it is a sure killer for CyberAgent - since the instant the network card goes to sleep - it's no longer available... technically it is, it will just take a couple milliseconds to wake up - but that's not good enough for a DBF database file. To the DBF file, and thus to CyberAgent - the connection has been broken and your data stands a good chance to be corrupted. At the very least - a host of error messages wil pop up when trying to work on CyberAgent after the network has gone to sleep. So - what do you do? Ask your network administrator to ensure that the power save option of the wireless network cards have been disabled - that way the network will allways be available. The CyberAgent developers have tested CyberAgent in a WiFi environment and are completely satisfied with the results. Safe computing! |
| CyberAgent - what does it offer? |
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Technology has become an integral part of Real Estate over the past few years. Tools like CyberAgent have played and will play even a more important role in the future of Real Estate. Real estate agencies using a tool like CyberAgent, gain the advantages of using the latest technology to benefit their businesses. The real challenge is to find a software application (programme) that supports all facets of the industry, cutting out the need to duplicate day-to-day work. CyberAgent answers to all the estate agencies needs.
CyberAgent:
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| Important! Planned maintenance by Internet Solutions |
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Dear IS Customer
Due to IS planned maintenance two core switches in each of the following two Internet Data Centres (IDC) will be affected:
1. Tuesday morning, 7th March 2006 @ 00h00 - 03h00 (SAST), Rosebank
IDC
IS engineers will upgrade the core switches, and move devices connected to them, one cable at a time, with a sub 1-minute outage expected per device.
The following services will be impacted: a. Hosting services
Customers may experience a very brief, minor degradation of services.
Please do not hesitate to contact either your IS account manager or the relevant service representative should you require further information or the IS GSC on +27(0)11 - 575 0055.
Regards Internet Solutions |
| Real Estate news |
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INDUSTRIAL property remains the top-performing property sector in SA, with 65% rental growth over the past two years, the latest eProp rental barometer shows. Retail growth was at 55%. Office growth came in last at 20%. “It’s once again a clear case of supply and demand,” says eProp research director Marc Schneider. “There is a dearth of industrial space across the country and this is placing huge upward pressure on both land prices and rentals. “But it’s a positive picture for investors, with average gross asking rentals still growing. This will have a positive impact on achieved rentals in all sectors.” As far as industrial rental growth in the provinces is concerned, Schneider says the strongest growth over the past two years has been KwaZulu- Natal, with 100% growth, followed by Gauteng with 65% and Western Cape with 59%. Retail property in Western Cape has been the best performer in terms of retail rentals, with growth of nearly 150% over the past two years, compared with Gauteng’s 62% growth and 12% for KwaZulu-Natal. Article from: www.businessday.co.za |
| Quotation of the month |
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"Action is eloquence. " William Shakespeare |
Nearly
15 000 properties listed and growing!