The new Inman Real Estate Directory is the latest addition to the Inman Community Zone and is your place to tell us all about your company or service.

So, whether you're a Real Estate Agent, a Real Estate Broker, a Mortgage Broker or a Real Estate technology company - make sure that you're on the list.

Contributing to the InmanWiki  is FREE and it's easy to add your profile to any of these directories. Tell us who you are and what you do. Real estate bloggers, remember you can add your RSS Feed to the InmanWiki too.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The mood at this year's Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this week was busy, fun and even somewhat discreet. Several of the new Web services showcasing at the expo haven't even launched yet, which left attendees standing around a static computer screen asking questions about what it could be?
The company with the most entertainment value (not exhibiting, just attending) had to be Spoonjack and its Whooptones sound effects that people can program into their cell phones and access during calls. For instance, you're talking to your accountant who says you owe several thousand dollars in back taxes this year -- press 4 to make the crowd go "booooooo." Or you can create a mob scene to play when calling work to explain why you can't make it back to the office.
Either way -- it's a ridiculous service that's loads of fun -- a common theme here at Web 2.0.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A new non-profit service based in Berkeley, Calif., has launched a Web site, MAPlight.org, that pulls together information about California lawmakers and money contributions they have received. The site breaks down state bills by interest group and combines bill texts and legislative voting records, supporting and opposing interests for each bill, and campaign contribution data from the Institute on Money in State Politics and the Center for Responsive Politics.

Real estate is among the special interest groups analyzed at the site. Users can see a breakdown of the pass/kill rate of bills supported/opposed by subgroups, including real estate agents and managers, developers, title insurance, mortgage brokers and bankers, and others.

MAPlight.org (MAP = Money And Politics) next month will be expanding the service to include U.S. Congress data and other state legislatures. The site builds on OpenSecrets.org and makes the information easy to search and compare.

Better.tv is a new broadband network targeted at "the daughters of Baby Boomer women" that brings together all kinds of original video content from the editors of Better Homes and Gardens, Parents and Ladies' Home Journal. Viewers can get tips on remodeling, landscaping and DIY projects and much more on the site. Sadly though, there doesn't seem to be anyway to share the content off the site.

This initiative is one of the first of many I suspect we'll be seeing shortly as traditional publishers look to new ways to leverage their brands with consumers using the power of video over the Internet. MarthaStewart.com just relaunched its site around 700 video clips from its archives too.

Crossover products and platforms like the Apple TV and Joost are going to help IPTV ("TV over the Internet") bridge that gap to the living room as we see traditional broadcast models splinter even further. Time shifted, on-demand and ubiquitously available content will become the norm.

So who's going to be the first truly nationwide broadband real estate channel?

All of this is further reinforcement, in my mind anyway, that video is going to be a core component of the next phase of the Internet. The winner of Read/WriteWeb's Define Web 3.0 contest would seem to agree.

Google launched its new MyMaps service today that allows anyone to create a customized map and turns all of us into potential cartographers. Using the service you can quickly add placemarks and draw lines and shapes to show boundaries or routes on a Google Map, instantly creating your own mashup. You can even embed photos and YouTube videos.

This is bad news for companies like Platial (who appeared at the Inman Connect conference in New York in January) and Frappr who have been trying to promote the same idea, and who just got their business models stomped on by the Google monster (more monster sightings here).

Once you've made a map in MyMaps however, you can share your creation with the public over a public URL or you can publish it to display alongside Google Maps search results. You can even export a KML file so you can see it in 3D in Google Earth.

MyMaps' applications in real estate are endless in my mind; a buyers agent could create an map of all the properties they wanted to show a buyer and email them a link of the route they'll be taking. Or, a broker could create a map of all the open houses they might be showing on a particular weekend. Any other ideas you can think of?

The only thing missing from this release is the ability to embed your maps in your own web site or blog but I suspect that it won't be long before we can.

What has happened to TMS - transaction management services?  Several of the bigger players have either abandoned or given up on providing such services through the brokerage industry. Why? The question of who pays is why.

The place for all of these services has been in the closing industry, not the brokerage industry. Automated transaction management provides the greatest advantage to the consumer and not the agent. At the rate of less than 10 transactions per year per agent for this industry - why in the world would an agent need to automate anything related to so few transactions?

Wake-up closing and escrow industries - it's time for you to bite the technology bullet and bundle these services into your services offering > direct. The consumer is waiting, it's your business model and this time, the cost and the benefit are yours for the taking. Who will be first and who will win? The first closing or escrow company that actually does this and then most importantly - tells the consumer they will do it for them. That's who.

--Ken Jenny, TranCen.com

Pay-Per-Action is the latest beta to come from Google this week. The service allows advertisers to "pay only for the actions that you define." What this means is that in contrast to Google's Pay-Per-Click program that is popular among real estate companies, those companies advertising can now say they will pay Google only when they get a sale from the ad or some other action defined by the advertiser. From the Google Web site:

"First, you'll create an ad and define the action that you want a user to perform when they visit your site, such as signing up for your newsletter or purchasing a product. Then you'll set the amount that you're willing to pay when this action is completed. Finally, you'll install conversion tracking code on your website so that we can verify when an action has been completed."

Action away.

Outside.in on Tuesday officially launched its Web service for sharing and exploring information about neighborhoods (3,217 altogether) in 63 cities nationwide. John Geraci, president and co-creator of Outside.in, talked about the site during a panel discussion at Inman News' Real Estate Connect NY last month. The site aggregates information from the blogosphere, traditional media and individual users for a comprehensive look at real-world communities on the Web.

The company also announced its first significant round of financing from backers including Union Square Ventures, and Internet luminaries Marc Andreessen, John Seely Brown, and Esther Dyson. Additional financing came from Milestone Venture Partners, Village Ventures, and angel investors George Crowley, John Borthwick, and Richard Smith.

"We have learned that the best Web services are two way systems," said Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures. "They take content in, add something to it, and then send it back out. YouTube works this way. So do Delicious and Flickr. To date, we haven’t seen such a service for local information online. Outside.in will hopefully fill that void and we are excited to be involved."