If we are friends on Facebook you can typically count on my writing on your wall at least once per year. Just about everyone will get a happy birthday greeting of some sort. Over the last several years that has not been the easiest of tasks. As recently as this morning the above screenshot did not look like what you see.

I knew I had a couple birthdays that I needed to send tonight so I went in and what do you know? Facebook changed the Events tab on me. This change, I already love.

Some of the key changes are:

Ability to change to calendar mode from list mode. The screenshot above is the list mode. You can see that on the list I had already written on certain people’s walls and others I still needed to wish birthday blessings to. I absolutely love that. You can also click on certain dates that are highlighted and it will change to other events.

You can click a particular date and now easily go to the next date. This is the picture, just below.

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You can respond to events, see all birthdays for the date and click the next day to do it all again without leaving the events page.

The new events calendar has just started rolling out – if you don’t have it yet it’s coming your way soon!

July was a big month – both Laurie and my Mom celebrate birthdays. And just in case you don’t have this key event on your calendar, circle August 1-3 and register for Real Estate Connect, San Francisco. The Geeky Girls will be there and we’d love to meet you.

Inman News founder and publisher Bradley Inman

At Real Estate Connect this year in San Francisco, I plan to give it my all to bring you an exceptional program, as the moderator for the three-day event.

To insure your investment in time and money pays off as a Connect attendee, I will be working the stage very diligently on your behalf. For those of you not attending, consider this series of articles on Connect as a way to engage on topics at the event.

I have four goals as a moderator.

1. I am on the stage representing you. I try to imagine the questions you would ask and then grill graciously (sometimes) my panelists or speakers. At times, I am on the mark, but not always. So I will be asking for your help further down in this article.

2. I try to interpret what our speakers and experts are saying, cutting through the acronyms, tech speak and blah, blah, blah. Then I try to project how this new information applies to you in some meaningful way.

3. My approach to moderating is to nudge, humor and push our speakers and panelists to apply and explain their insights and observations. It is important we have fun on the stage, to prevent anyone taking themselves too seriously. Sitting in the audience for hours at at time can be painful without a dose of entertainment.

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4. As we move through the agenda over three days, I will attempt to explain what I am hearing, what the trends are at a high level and what to make of the information.

I need your help. What would you like to hear about and what questions do you want me to ask from the stage? Email me anytime, I am listening. Brad@Inman.com

A few highlights of the program are below. Before the show, we will be writing about other panels and speakers. At the bottom of each of these stories, you will be asked to send me ideas and questions for the speakers. Do not hold back.

Is the Economic Upturn Real?

Here we will try to get a handle on the improving housing market. Is it sustainable? And if so, how? Is the good news an election-year anomaly? How will the election influence the market this year and next? What can we count on? What should we worry about? Panelists include Amy Brandt, CEO, Vantium Capital; Bill Emmons, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; Patrick Stone, Williston Financial Group; and Joel Singer, CEO, California Association of Realtors.

Pulling Your Listings from Aggregator Sites: Who Wins?

Why are brokerages pulling their listings from sites like Zillow, Realtor.com and Trulia?

(This one should be fun, controversial and full of noise on both sides. I cannot wait.)

Venture Investing: What’s Trending

I will interview Jed Katz, managing director, Javelin Venture Partners, who had the first successful Internet real estate exit when he sold his company RentNet in the late 1990s. A savvy San Francisco investor, Jed and I will discuss what is hot and what is not and how new developments in technology investment will bleed into the real estate world.

Personalized Advertising Analytics

Jason Sosa, CEO of Immersive Labs, will teach us how to get our advertising analytics right, so we are not wasting money and pouring dollars into the wrong sources of leads.

Connecting People, Places and Photos

I am excited about interviewing Caterina Fake who co-founded photo-sharing site Flickr, which was sold to Yahoo! in 2005. She then sold her next startup, Hunch, to eBay in 2011. Her latest venture is a startup named Pinwheel that is giving consumers the ability to share their impressions of the places they love by leaving digital “notes” throughout their neighborhoods.

We will have a series of Connect downloads including “The Power of Pinterest,” “Instagram’s Billion Dollar Photo App,” and “Getting the Mobile Opportunity Right.”

This is just a taste of the program.

I am really excited to be back and on stage with you.

The following is an excerpt from Compact Cabins by Gerald Rowan (Storey Publishing, 2010). Whether it’s a first or second home, at the lake, in the woods, on a mountaintop or at the ocean’s edge, a small-footprint cabin may be the perfect housing option for you, and Compact Cabins has 62 interpretations of the cabin getaway dream that are affordable and energy-efficient without skimping on comfort or style. This excerpt is from Chapter 2, “Design: Architecture, Logistics, Environment.”

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Though cabins may have a small footprint, with good design, they can offer a comfortable living space. The challenge is to create that feeling of space in a small cabin. I find that, in particular, high ceilings and strategically placed windows make even very small cabins feel comfortable.

High Ceilings

High ceilings give a sense of roominess and space in even a small footprint. They also let in more light and make ventilation easier, and increasing ceiling height yields space with less expense than adding floor space.

The additional ceiling height can be used for storage. (After all, small cabins, by definition, have small storage spaces.) For example, two rows of cabinets could be hung in the kitchen, one over the other, doubling the kitchen storage. A small, folding kitchen stool provides access to the higher set of cabinets. In the bedroom, additional shelving could be mounted on the walls. Using clear plastic storage tubs on this shelving would add visible, climate- and insect-proof storage. In the living room, a kayak or canoe could be stored by hanging it from the ceiling with a pulley system. That same pulley system could double as a wash line to dry wet clothing on rainy days.

One drawback with high ceilings is that warm air rises and collects near the peak of the roof during the heating season. Installing a simple auxiliary duct system can overcome this problem. Install a duct with an air intake near the high point of the cabin roof and extending down to near the floor. Equip that duct with a small circulation fan that is reversible. In the winter, the fan is set to draw warm air from near the ceiling and recirculate it to the floor. In the summer, the fan is set to reverse the airflow, drawing cool air from near the floor and circulating it near the roof. Install a thermostat near the top end of the duct, and airflow will change automatically.

U.S. home prices could drop another 7.8% before reaching bottom next year, Fitch Ratings said in a report released Thursday. 

A Fitch report from director Stefan Hilts forecasts steady economic growth and inflation levels that are close to 3% annually. The combination of the two could cause prices to reach bottom by next year, leading the market into a slow recovery, analysts with the firm said.

“The economy continues to grow with economic indicators on a positive trajectory and pointing to a recovery,” Fitch said. “But struggles remain. High unemployment, a declining labor force, stagnant wages, and a large delinquent inventory across many parts of the country are slowing the recovery’s momentum.”

States like Arizona and Michigan, which were hit with hefty price declines, are starting to see a turnaround, Fitch asserted.

Arizona saw small quarterly gains for the first time in two years in the most recent report and Michigan is beginning to stabilize, the study suggested.

While those markets stabilize, prices are falling in the Northeast as inventory backlog starts to move onto the market. Fitch says New Jersey and New York alone have watched prices drop 10% and 7%, respectively, over the past five quarters. The ratings giant expects further drops in those states in the coming months.

The state of Georgia also became an interesting case study for Fitch, with the ratings giant reporting that home prices in the state are now 32% lower than 2000 levels. However, Georgia is very much a divided state with the affluent northern suburbs of Atlanta and central city area holding onto their values and the overall economy collapsing to the city’s south.