Auto Show New York 2009 Review Part 1

Went to my first auto show in 4 years and i forgot how critical comfortable shoes are! This auto show had the spectre of a bankrupt auto industry hanging on life support. The tension was thick as thousands of spectators looked at cars they mostly would not be able to afford anytime soon.

The theme of the show was "hey look at me, I'm fuel efficient now!" It seems every major car company was calling out some kind of fuel efficient hybrid of some kind. Perhaps the biggest surprise for me was how Hyundai was making a big push to be the Samsung of the auto industry to GM's Sony. It is making major improvements in styling while remaining value orientated. However, it does seem to be trying to reposition itself into more than a competant import car comparable but cheaper than a Japanese car. Even their concept car was one of the better ones out there with its gull wing doors.

I was surprised with the Hyundai Genesis and Genesis Coupe. I had never seen it before and it is definitely making a run to take market share from Toyota Camry and Honda Accord. The second big surprise was how determined Ford was to have a significant presence at the show. They had their "booth" very close to the entrance as to guarantee that they would not be skipped over by the many attendees. One of the Ford cars at the show was in my opinion poorly thought out though it did photograph nicely.



NY Auto Show 2009 Slideshow

How To Rent Out A Room In Your Apartment

I'm not sure I should be the one writing this because I am having trouble doing this right now myself but I am following some basic good practices. I blame the economy and rising unemployment for my difficulties and not my own marketing skills. But like one of the motto's I like to live by "always be testing," I will share with you some of my experiments in my adventures in renting out a room in my apartment.

The first thing I did was take measurements and pictures of the room once it was cleared out and cleaned. Then I took pictures of the room with my digital camera and resized and optimized the images for the web with some touch ups in Photoshop here and there where appropriate. All the pros use Photoshop so you should too. Getting your hands on Photoshop is easy enough (contact me if you need it) it is learning how to use it that is harder but not that much harder.

Next I went around the neighborhood and took photos of some very convenient places in the neighborhood and uploaded them to my Picasa Web Album and geo tagged them. Geo tagging is a very nice feature that will help me position the apartment as a very convenient place to live. Then finally I did a crude listing on Craigslist and edited it continuously with an HTML editor. I used Dreamweaver. Take a look at Craigslist listing 3.0 for my room for rent in Woodside, Queens.

If any of you have any good ideas for listings you have seen let me know. In version 4.0 I will have a short video of the actual time it takes to get to the train (about 3 minutes).