It can also send your video tour off to a number of real estate listing services and video sharing sites of your choosing, including Trulia, Zillow, and YouTube. Agents can place videos on their own websites if so desired.
Though PropertyPreviews general manager Jeff Harris touts the service as offering a sort of 24-hour open house, suffice it to say that you won’t be awed by its powers. Magic is minimal, but for a good number of users, it’s likely to do what it needs to regardless. It cost nil to the user, after all, so if anything, it provides just a bit of extra window dressing if desired.

A word of warning. While PropertyPreviews proudly displays generic samples on its front page, it does so with an unfortunate selection of music. What’s more, it appears that the service itself mandates the addition of an audio track. Silent playback isn’t an option. So choose wisely!

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Google (NSDQ: GOOG) thinks that mobile Web advertising has gotten to the point where it should be part of AdSense, the company’s lucrative engine for third-party Web sites to make some money from Google ads. Starting Thursday Web publishers will be able to choose mobile ad formats through their regular AdSense account.

Before the change, publishers had to choose AdSense for Mobile as a completely separate option and many of those ads were designed for older mobile browsers. The new code will automatically adjust to different smartphone browsers and publishers will see the option for mobile ad units appear alongside other standard ad unit options in their AdSense consoles.

More information is available on Google’s site. While in-app advertising through AdMob is certainly one of Google’s main mobile ad opportunities, a shift toward mobile Web usage and the tendency for those in developed markets to focus less on apps and more on local Web sites means there are significant opportunities for mobile Web ads, according toresearch from MobiThinking.

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We need someone who is at heart a business reporter, and who wants to figure out what’s working and what isn’t as the rules of the media and advertising get rewritten in the digital era. If you don’t have much interest in paywalls and unique visitors, or pre-roll advertising and real-time bidding ad exchanges– this probably isn’t the job for you. The best candidates will be fast on their feet and creative — able to blast out a piece of news quickly but equally capable of conceiving of and reporting out an original analysis piece. See the job description here, and send us a note if you’d like to apply. The job will be based in New York.

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The Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles — it delivers smart mobility services. Visit bmw-i.com or follow@BMWi on Twitter.

Worldwide revenues from zero-energy buildings are predicted to increase to just under $1.3 trillion by 2035, according to arecent report published by Pike Research. The report also noted that the market for such buildings, including both commercial and residential real estate, currently sits at $225 million.

A zero-energy building is one that produces as much energy as it consumes, making it a net-zero energy property and eliminating energy bills for its owners. Although zero-energy homes and buildings are quite rare today, increasing concerns about energy waste have set the stage for a growing market.

Home buyers are beginning to take interest in proactively saving money on energy, and developers are taking note of the trend, too. It appears that most developers building zero-energy homes have only built a few custom properties, Other developers, though — such as KB Home and New Town Builders — have begun rolling out production-scale zero-energy model homes at prices only marginally higher than their non-zero-energy counterparts, making such the construction process more scalable and less expensive than custom plans.

Zero-energy initiatives are so popular that even the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is getting in on the action, with plans to build its first renewable energy project, to be called Fort Irwin Solar. This should be the start to massive savings for the DoD, as it spends $4 billion per year on energy for its 300,000 buildings.

Intrigued by this environmentally conscious and wallet-friendly trend, we gathered research on some of the most recent zero-energy home initiatives. The following eight housing initiatives piqued our interest — take a look and let us know about any zero-energy home projects that you’ve heard about as of late.

1. E-Cube

The E-Cube, developed at Ghent University in Belgium, aims to create an affordable zero-energy housing option.

The home is a “do-it-yourself building kit for a solar-powered house that is pre-engineered, factory-built and easily assembled without special skills,” according to the E-Cube team.

The house can be customized from its initial starter kit to suit an individual’s time, budget and taste. If you’re the type that enjoys assembling IKEA furniture, this cubical home may be a great — and fun — investment.

2. Yannell Residence

Designed by Farr Associates and built by Goldberg General Contracting, the Yannell residence is a single-family, 2,675-square-foot home located in Chicago, Illinois, and owned by Michael Yannell.

The home was completed in 2009 and cost about $1.6 million to build. It produces 40% more energy than it consumes, scoring higher than any other LEED-certified project in history.

3. UC Davis West Village

The University of California at Davis opened the largest planned zero-energy community in the United Stateslast fall with its UC Davis West Village project.

Developed by West Village Community Partnership, LLC (a joint venture of Carmel Partners of San Francisco and Urban Villages of Denver), the $300 million first phase of the project opened up 315 apartments, a recreation center, a village square and 42,500 square feet of commercial space. The completed project will span 130 acres and house about 3,000 people in 662 apartments and 343 single-family houses.

4. The Loop Isla Vista

Located adjacent to the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Loop Isla Vista is a a 48-unit, 44,994-square-foot student housing development being privately developed by Mesa Lane Partners.

Scheduled to be completed in August, the Loop is designed to use 50% less energy and water and boasts a number of eco-friendly features, including a rooftop solar array, EnergyStar appliances, dual-flush toilets, a vegetated green roof, water-efficient fixtures and LED lighting.

For the project, the development firm was awarded the Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award, California’s most prestigious environmental honor.

5. zHome

Located in Issaquah Highlands, Washington, zHome is a 10-unit housing development with the mission to “prove that homes that use zero net energy and 60% less water, emit net zero carbon emissions, have clean indoor air and use only low-toxicity materials are possible and scalable to mainstream home production.”

The development offers 800 to 1,700 square-foot townhouses, priced between $365,000 and $599,000. The homes include highly insulated walls, double-paned windows, a ground-source heat pump, efficient lighting and appliances and an energy feedback monitor, among other things.

Most interestingly, the development features a rainwater collection and pumping system, working in tandem with water-conserving toilets and efficient shower heads to save water.

6. Wyne Residence

British Columbia, Canada, recently welcomed its first zero-energy home with the completion of ski patrollerRichard Wyne’s Whistler home.

The 2,200-square-foot, $1.2-million, three-story home features a 600-square-foot solar array, spray foam insulation made from recycled plastics and vegetable oil, fiberglass windows and fiber-cement siding to boost energy efficiency.

7. Harmony House

Harmony House is British Columbia’s second zero-energy home, but it edges out the Wyne residence as the most energy-efficient home in the province.

The 4,700-square-foot home was built with a number of recycled materials — including logging bridges, countertops and beer bottles — and features high-efficiency water tanks, solar panels and heavy insulation.

Harmony House is owned by Les and Linda Moncrieff and built by their friend, architect Chris Mattock. It was chosen as one of the winning entries in the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s “Equilibrium Sustainable Housing Demonstration Initiative,” a plan to design, build and showcase the next generation of green housing.

8. Technion Cornell Campus

Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology won a bid late last year to build a graduate science and engineering campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City.

In December, architecture firm SOM, working in conjunction with landscaping and urban design firm Field Operations, introduced its proposal for the campus, including a net-zero energy academic campus.

The campus will benefit from passive heating and cooling strategies and feature a 150,000-square-foot photovoltaic array — the largest in New York City, according to the architects.

While the campus does include housing units, the net-zero part of the plan will not include this area, as the current plan isn’t efficient enough to create enough energy for the proposed housing units and hotel.

Nevertheless, we couldn’t leave this high-profile project off the list — it’s just too shiny.

Your Thoughts

The Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles; it delivers smart mobility services within and beyond the car. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter.

Are you an innovative entrepreneur? Submit your pitch to BMW i Ventures, a mobility and tech venture capital company.

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The blog, launched by economic justice group Rebuild the Dream, highlights individual stories of the housing crisis while reminding those affected they are part of a significant trend.

“The idea is to show how common and how big of a problem underwater mortgages are, while also putting a human face on the situation,” says Jim Pugh, chief technical officer of Rebuild the Dream.

Tumblr was the natural choice, Pugh says, because of its emphasis on visuals and its accessibility. The popular Occupy Wall Street Tumblr We Are the 99 Percent inspired America Underwater.

The idea for the blog spun from the case of southern California homeowner Arturo de los Santos, who Rebuild the Dream says is being unjustly evicted. Santos, a former marine, tried to rework his mortgage with his bank to get the interest rate adjusted. His bank told him to stop paying for several months — which he did — but he was later evicted by J.P. Morgan Chase.

“The system they have now is not working,” Pugh says. “We’re trying to blow this up so there’s more national attention.”

SEE ALSO: HOW TO: Create a Group Tumblr Blog

In addition to sharing stories, America Underwater hopes to have the Obama administration replace Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) director Ed DeMarco with someone who will prioritize $300 billion of principal reduction.

America Underwater also hosts a data-driven website, which serves as an educational resource about the mortgage crisis and maps underwater mortgages by state. It estimates that some 11 million homeowners are drowning in their mortgage debt — which is roughly 25% of all American mortgages.

What do you think of America Underwater? Do you think Tumblr can be a powerful storytelling tool? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Image via America-Underwater.tumblr.com

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Here you’ll find resources for everything from finding the right real estate agent to appraising your home and tracking the market in your community.

Agent Tools

AgentBoost.com – You post a listing for a property you plan to sell and agents have five days to bid for your listing.

AgentScoreboard.com – Read about agents in your local area and the experiences other property owners have had with them.

Homethinking.com – A site allowing people to rate realtors that gives you an average of how much they get for homes and the most common types of properties they sell.

IncredibleAgents.com – Look up real estate agents all over the United States and either leave a review about them or research one you are looking into.

RealtyBaron.com – Enter information about your property and allow the agents to bid for your listing by lowering their sales commission.

Appraisal Tools

Eppraisal.com – Eppraisal pulls public records for 120 million homes and combines it with other data to find an approximate value for your home.

HomePredict.com – Track how the market in your area is performing and try to predict where it is going so you can set the value of your house when you attempt to sell it.

HouseValues.com – You’ll receive a valuation from experts in your area based on the data you enter about your home.

For Sale By Owner Tools

Banzza.com – Offers listing abilities for professionals as well as owners trying to sell their own homes in Canada.

BidSell.com – This site will let you list your own property for free and also provides you with a free Web page to build about your listing.

ChoiceA.com – List your property for free and have it syndicated to multiple sites. Also provides you with documents and advice needed for selling your home.

eBay Real Estate Listings – Since you can sell just about anything on eBay, why not go ahead and sell your house, or any other piece of property you happen to own.

FindMyRoof.com – Free listings for properties you have for rent or sale, giving you full management over your listings.

Fizber.com – Fizber offers free listings for home owners and lets you submit your classified ad to 80 listings sites.

ForSaleByOwner.com – Does charge listing fees between $89 and $899, but offers legal forms and phone support for owners listing their homes for sale.

Fuzzbo.com – Assisting those in the United Kingdom wishing to sell their home without an agent, saving themselves the agent fees.

GlobalHouseMarket.com – Sellers from all over the world can list their homes for sale, but primarily directed to buyers in the UK as all prices are listed in Pounds.

HomeMaxima.com – You can list properties for free, have your agents list, or post the property you want to sell and let agents bid for your business.

HouseSpin.com – Create a free listing for your house and then advertise it wherever you choose.

Pycasa.com – A Google maps mashup that helps you search for homes that for sale by owner, and gives you an idea of the area they are located in.

Webdigs.com – Webdigs charges a flat fee of $3000 on homes sold through their service, which can save a seller thousands of dollars over going through the usual agents.

Zillow.com – Find the value of your home as well as list it for sale through their site.

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See also: PropertyQube Launches Disconnected Real Estate Community

Home Buying & Selling Listings

BidSell.com – An online auction site for home and commercial properties around the United States.

Blockhunter.com – Buyers register the geographic area they are interested in, sellers see if there are interested buyers or renters looking. If they match up, the seller contacts the buyer, and you could possible skip the estate agent all together.

DomuSwap.com – Ever felt like just trying to trade houses with someone? This site will help you do just that.

FindMyRoof.com – A free listing site for rental and properties for sale.

FizBer.com – A site for those brave souls that want to go the whole nine-yards and sell their homes on their own. List your home and open it up to a much larger market.

ForSaleByOwner.com – Sell what ever piece of property you may have a need to get on the market.

HomeGain.com – Search for homes for sale, locate a realtor, value your home, get a mortgage and more.

HomePages.com – Search for an area, get an aerial view of what it looks like, and see if there are any home listings in that area.

iNest.com – Search for brand new homes and receive a rebate if you use iNest to assist in the purchase.

Movoto.com – A home selling & buying site focusing only on the California market.

PropertyMaps.com – Search for homes for sale from the web or a wide selection of mobile devices.

Propsmart.com – Indexes homes for sale from all over the Internet and then displays them for you on Google Maps or Earth.

RealEstate.com – Allows you to refine your search for a home not just by location but also price, number of baths, bedrooms and so on.

RealtyBid.com – Bid on homes from all over the country.

Redfin.com – Uses Microsoft Virtual Earth to help you locate home for sales, you can then use Redfin as your agent for a considerable savings.

Streeteasy.com – Property search for all five Burroughs of New York City.

Trulia.com – Search for homes, get local real estate data and more.

Vivirama.com – A Google maps mashup showing you homes for sale all over the world.

Zillow.com – Post your home for sale, let buyers see it and ask you questions about it.

ZipRealty.com – A constantly updated database of homes for sale.

Home Buying & Selling Tools

agentBOOST.com – Tell the site about a property you are planning to buy or sell and agents have five days to bid for your business.

AgentMatch.com – Search for a home, an agent, value your house and more.

CityCribs.com – Search major urban areas for houses for sale and apartments for rent.

Domania.com – See what real estate values are in your area, use calculators to see how you could increase your properties value.

Eppraisal.com – Get values on your house, or the one you’re looking at. Also able to do it from mobile phones.

Estately.com – A home appraisal site specifically for Seattle, WA and it’s surrounding areas.

Home Predict – No clue what real property values are in your area before you list? Enter your home in the system and see what people are listing their similar dwellings for.

RealEstateABC.com – Find the value of your home and do sales comparisons for similar homes in your area.

WalkScore.com – Calculate the “walk score” of any potential new living accommodation’s and see how far you are from what you want to walk to

Non-United States Home Listings

Banzza.com – Canadian real estate search with free property listings.

Brightsale.co.uk – An online estate agent for home sales in the United Kingdom.

Extate.co.uk – Site to aid you in searchin thousands of UK estate agency sites at once.

FusedWorld.com – Homes for sale all over the world at your fingertips.

Fuzzbo.com – A homes for sale search site for the United Kingdom.

GlobalHouseMarket.com – Brings you homes for sale from all over the world.

HotProperty.co.uk – Search through over 150,000 properties for rent or sale in the UK.

Nestoria.co.uk – Search for both rental and for sale properties all over the United Kingdom.

OnOneMap.com – A UK based site to show you what is around your potential new home such as cell phone towers, school, stores and more.

Properazzi.com – Allows you to search all of Europe for a property in your own language and currency.

PropertyGuru.com.au – Homes for sale all over the land down under.

RealEstatePlus.ca – Allows you to search for homes in Canada, and to also see demographics for your potential new neighbors.

Realmap.com.au – Bringing buyers and realtors together in the Australian housing market.

Spyk.com – Apartment and home search in Australia.

SuburbView.com – Pick the Australian suburb you want and let this site do all the leg work for you searching all the realty sites.

Surf4aProperty.com – A real estate search site for the UK homes, apartments, and student housing.

Viewr.com – An international listings site for properties for sale from everywhere.

Zoomf.com – A property search focusing on the UK’s capital, London.

Renting

ApartmentRatings.com – With over half-a-million reviews, it is a comprehensive site for reading and writing reviews about landlords and their units. Learn what people think before you sign that lease.

Apartments.com – Search the country for available rentals, landlords can also list what they have open.

BidRent.com – Bid for rental units in desirable locations.

Craigslist.org – The well known classifieds website with tons of rental listings.

Gradspot.com – A Facebook integrated roommate finding service for college and grad school students.

Hotpads.com – Click on the area you want to live in, select a city from the sidebar, and go from there. Landloards can also list properties they have available.

MyApartmentMap.com – A maship of Craigslist apartment listings shown on a Google Map so you can see exactly where the potential apartment is.

MyNewPlace.com – An apartment search site that provides detailed photos and floor plan drawings.

RentMineOnline.com – A source for renting all sorts of items including apartments, vacation homes and more.

Rentometer.com – Allows tenants and landlords see what the going rate is for a rental in your area for a similar unit.

Roommates.com – Set up a photo profile and search for potential roommates from the other users.

Roomster.net – A site to help you find a roommate and attempts to match you on personalities as well as needs.

TenantMarket.com – A service for landlords to find renters that meet their criteria.

Reviews

AgentScoreboard.com – Multiple ways to search on your real estate agent and see if they have any bad reviews posted about them.

Homethinking.com – Look up real estate agents in the area you’re interested in, see what they’ve done in the past and read reviews on them.

IncredibleAgents.com – Search for, read reviews, and hire the agent that best matches you.

Pick-A-Lanlord.com – A community for reviewing landloards.

Propertyqube.com – A real estate community where you can discuss your property, home improvement projects and talk about experiences with your agent.

RottenNeighbor.com – It’s not just the realtors and landlords you have to worry about! Are any of your potential neighbors a problem?

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In the hopes that users will be drawn in by the video on how to make a bed perfectly, then stick around for the deals on Scandia pillows, home decor flash sale site One Kings Lane is beefing up its editorial content with a new blog calledLive.Love.Home.

Live.Love.Home aims to appeal to readers of shelter magazines like Lonny and the now-defunct Domino, and according to WWD its staffers include former editors of marthastewart.com, Elle Decor and T: The New York Times (NYSE: NYT) Style Magazine. Some content draws heavily on products for sale on the site; the “Editor’s Pick” feature highlights “fabulous finds from our daily sales,” for example. Other posts are purely editorial, like a framed-shopping bag craft project.

One Kings Lane, founded by Alison Pincus and Susan Feldman in 2009, has 2 million registered users and has raised $63 million in funding.

Other flash sale sites have launched editorial sections, with mixed success. Gilt Groupelaunched Park & Bond, a full-price men’s site with a lot of editorial content and a partnership with GQ, in August. That site’s president, John Auerbach, left the company was among those the company laid off in January and Park & Bond was a “huge, huge bomb,” a former employee told BetaBeat.

One Kings Lane is still focused on the discounts, though, and executive editor Kerstin Czarra told WWD Live.Love.Home is “not a profit center, we’re more of a gateway for people outside the firewall, for people looking around the Web for content.”

My Farm Experiment (not affiliated with the Zynga game) in the UK lets players run an actual farm on the Wimpole Estate, which is owned by the National Trust, a British charity. Some 10,000 people will help farm manager Richard Morris run things. Here’s the catch, though: It’s not free. It costs £30 (about $49) to become a virtual farmer. That payment goes to the National Trust.

Project manager John Alexander told The Guardian that FarmVille was an inspiration for the effort. Coincidentally, Zynga introduced an English Countyside extension of the game in March.

The first vote in the real-life effort will go live May 26. After that, virtual farmers will vote “at least once a month” on issues related to running the farm, like the type of crops, livestock and wider impact on the environment, according to the website. In the meantime, members are expected to converse with each other on the site about those issues and others.

To keep apprised of the action, there’s also an Explore the Farm map of the 280 hectares of the farm.

The video below features Morris outlining the program.

Name: Naked Apartments

Quick Pitch: The Match.com for NYC real estate. Naked Apartments pairs ideal brokers with the right renters to simplify the apartment search.

Genius Idea: If you live in New York, you know that there are two things that are almost impossible to find: a stable, healthy relationship… and an apartment. Well, Naked Apartments ain’t gonna find you a husband (unless you end up with your broker), but it will match you up — online dating-style — with the broker for you.

Naked Apartments soft launched back in September, and there are already 15,000 apartments available on the site — 5,000 with no fee, which is a major score in NYC, where broker’s fees can cost more than rent.

The site is pretty easy to use. Just sign up by creating a profile (just like you would on OKCupid or Nerve), but instead of entering in your hobbies and preference for 5-7 children, fill in all the usual apartment-hunting info: preferred neighborhood, rent range, etc. You can also indicate how dire it is that you move in by your preferred move-in date. Round it all out with a credit check and you’re good to go (this is a cool feature, too, as often the credit check comes after you’ve found a place and signed a ton of paperwork — seriously, scoring an apartment in NYC is like obtaining the Lost Ark).

The cool part of the site comes next. While you can still search for apartments (check out the brand new condo I found below whilst scanning the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg) all by your lonesome, brokers can also contact you based on your profile and show off their listings. Your interaction will be completely anonymous until you choose to exchange information.

We at the New York Mashable offices are completely down with any tool that makes finding new digs in the big city easier, and we like the anonymity and security that the site provides and we hope that Naked Apartments expands to other cities as well.

Naked Apartments also made a video tour for those less into reading. Check it out below:

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