RDC Tdx Hits on Teledex

Hits On Teledex

For help with understanding Hits, or simply to find out more about how Teledex works, click a link in the index below or simply scroll through this page. All of the links in the index point to topics on on this page. Printing this page will print all the index topics. Click here for Hit Pricing

Index

What are Teledex Hits?
Available Hits
Sessions
Inactivity Timeout
Expiration Date
Security Issues
What it Means to be Logged on to Teledex
Hit Accounting - What does and does not count as a hit.
Getting The Most Out of Your Hits
Bookmarking of Teledex Pages: What to bookmark and what not to.
Sessions and Your Browser
More Information: Including hit pricing and purchase

What Are Teledex Hits?

Teledex hits are pretty much regular old hits in the Internet sense. Each time you ask the Teledex server to give you some (generally new) information, you are using one of your hits. You use a hit each time you submit a query, request another index page or ask for details on a sale. Hits are what really control the amount of information (and therefore the value) you get. See Ticket time and hit accounting below for more details.

You must purchase one or more hits before you can log-on to Teledex. When you buy hits, our server keeps them safely available for you under your User Name and Password. You can use your hits whenever you want as long as you do so by the expiration date. To log on to Teledex and use your hits, connect to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and point your browser to this Web site. If you use Teledex frequently, you might want to bookmark the Teledex log-in page.

There are no time-based charges if you use the Internet to access Teledex and no limits to the length of a session as long as you remain active. You can take as long as you like, use the help pages and move along at whatever speed is comfortable for you without increasing your costs. We have avoided time-based charges for Teledex because we don't think that the time you spend searching Teledex is closely related to the value you get out of it and we don't want you looking over your shoulder at the clock.

Available Hits

Available hits are hits you have bought but not yet used. You can log-on to Teledex if you have one or more available hits. See "What it means to be logged-on to Teledex" below.

Sessions

A Teledex Session begins when you log on and ends when you log off or when the system logs you off through the inactivity timeout. See "What it means to be logged-on to Teledex" below

Inactivity Timeout

There is no limit to the amount of time you can spend using Teledex in any one session as long as you keep using at least one hit within every 60 minutes. If Teledex does not detect a hit from you at least every 60 minutes it will automatically close your session and you will have to log-on again if you want to continue using Teledex. See Security Issues

Expiration Date

You can buy hits for current or future use and use them only as you need them. All hits that you buy remain valid for one-year from last time you use a hit. Each time you use a hit, Teledex extends the expiration date of any and all of your remaining hits to a date one-year in the future. As long as you use at least one hit a year, any hits you have purchased but not used will remain valid indefinitely. If you go for a whole year without using at least one of the hits you have available, all your unused hits will expire.

Why should hits expire at all? In practice, unused access rights, no matter how they are measured, can't be allowed to last forever. Since there has to be some expiration policy, this is the one we have chosen and priced into Teledex. We have tried to be as liberal as practical accounting permits. Please take this policy into consideration when you are deciding how many hits to buy at any one time.

Security Issues

Log off whenever you are not actively using Teledex!

This is particularly important if you are accessing Teledex over the Internet. Whether or not you are using the Internet, remember that your session will remain open until it times out on inactivity unless you actively log off. Anyone who can use the same computer you used to access Teledex will be able to continue your session and use your hits unless you log-off and/or close your browser. Our computer can't tell if all of a sudden, there are new fingers on your keyboard. If other people use the same computer you do to access Teledex, you are certain to lose hits unless you yourself close your session when you are done.

Remember also that your browser will likely retain the last few pages that you saw before your session ended. If you consider this information to be sensitive, we recommend that you also close your browser after you have logged off.

If you use Teledex for long periods of time over the internet, we also recommend that you take advantage of any natural breaks in your work to log-off and open a new session. In general, the shorter a session is the more secure that session is.

What it Means to be "Logged on" to Teledex

Being logged on to Teledex is different in important ways from what might be familiar to you. Logging on to Teledex doesn't create an exclusive connection between your computer and ours. Because of the way the Web works you can't really be logged on to Teledex in the same sense as you logged on to your ISP to get here. The only thing that happens when you log on to Teledex is that the system first checks to see if you already have an open session. If you do, the system simply lets you continue that session. If not, it opens a new session. Teledex has to create a session for you so that it can make your hits available to you and only you.

Being logged on to Teledex really only means that you have an open session and that you can use your hits!

Once you open a session, that session remains open until you log off or until Teledex logs you off because your session became inactive. This is the case no matter what else you do. You can point your browser to other web sites, take phone calls, stop and have a cup of coffee or otherwise interrupt your work. You can even reboot or shut off your computer! Your session will still be there when you come back as long as you come back and use one or more hits before the inactivity timer runs out!

If you go to other Web sites while you have a Teledex session open you can often get back to where you were on Teledex by using the Back button on your browser. If not, simply return to the log on page and log on again. You can log on to your session as many times as you want as long as it is still open. The system will not open a new session until the first time you try to log on after your old session has been closed.

Teledex has a very nice " express open" feature that will help save you time and hits. We understand that you frequently get interrupted and that it might take you quite a while to get back to your Teledex query. If you leave your session inactive for 60 minutes, Teledex will close your session automatically but it will still preserve your query for a while longer. If you have simply been interrupted and left the Teledex session inactive, the last pages you saw will still be visible on your screen where you left them. If this is case you can easily start a new session without losing your place in your search. When you come back to the (now closed) session and try to do anything, Teledex will give you a message saying that your session has been closed and ask if you want to open a new one. If you do, simply type your password in the space provided, then click submit. Teledex will open a new session and continue where you left off under your prior session.

The express open feature will only preserve your search for a few hours. After that Teledex assumes that you really have gone away and it cleans up its files. Express open only works if the screens where you stopped working are still visible on your computer. If these screens are not still visible you will have to open a new session using the normal log on page. In this event, Teledex will not have been able to preserve your earlier query and you will have to start over.

If you run out of hits, Teledex will close your session, display a message to that effect and give you a link to the ticket purchase page. In this case Teledex cannot preserve your query and you will need to start over after you buy more hits. This is a good reason to make sure you always have enough hits available.

Hit Accounting

When you open a Teledex session you get access to all the hits you have purchased but not used (your so called "available hits"). As you use Teledex, the system deducts the hits you use from the total you have available. The number of hits you have remaining (available hits) is displayed on both the Search Criteria Page and any index pages that result from your queries.

The following count as hits:

1. Clicking the Submit button on the Search Criteria Page to initiate a query.
2. Clicking the Next or Previous buttons on an Index or Detail screen page.
3. Clicking any underlined link on any Index page to see the Detail page for that record.

The following do not count as hits:

1. Logging on or off or going elsewhere on the Internet during an open session.
2. Anything you do while setting up your query.
3. Using the Help pages or buying more hits.
4. Returning to an Index page from a Detail page.
5. Clicking Refine Query or New Query to return to the Search Criteria Page.
6. Clicking Back or Forward with your browser (but see important cautions).

See the Hit FAQ for answers to several questions that are likely to come up after you have used Teledex for a while.

Getting The Most Out of Your Hits

Take a Test Drive. Experiment with the "Guest Account" before you buy your first hits. This account gives you access to everything Teledex can do except that queries are limited to one fixed year in the past. Limber up your fingers, exercise the buttons, try some searches and have the experience before you actually spend any money. This account is for new users only, please use it with discretion!

Read the help pages. We have tried to make Teledex as intuitive as possible and you really can just plunge in and use it, learning as you go. Just make use of the help pages as you need them. Even so, the help pages have many tips, tricks and warnings about potential gotchas. You really will get more out of your hits if you take time to read these pages. We have made them all accessible (by links if not directly) from the Teledex Gateway so you can get to them before you buy any hits.

Buy enough hits to do what you need to do. If you run out of hits your session closes automatically. You will have to stop and buy more tickets. When this happens, Teledex can't carry over the setup for your current query. You will have to start over and enter your query from the beginning when you log on again after purchasing hits. This wastes both your time and the hits it took you to get to where you were in the first place. Watch the low hit warning and buy more hits before you run out.

Don't spend time and waste hits looking for sales that can't possibly be posted yet. Remember that Teledex provides data on sales which have already been closed and recorded. Teledex does not carry data about properties which are still for sale, are simply under agreement or for which a deed has not yet been recorded. In addition, it usually takes about two weeks from the date a sale has been recorded at the county registry of deeds and the time when information about that sale will be posted on Teledex. If you are interested in very recent sales data (the last two months), check the table of dates to which research is current in each county before you set up or submit your search. Then make your best guess about whether the information you are seeking is likely to be available.

Use your browser Back button - but carefully! See Using Your Browser with Teledex and Sessions and Your Browser below.

Bookmarking Teledex Pages

If you will be using Teledex frequently, you might want to create an easy way to get here. The fastest possible way to get to Teledex is to bookmark the Teledex log-on page. But ...

Please! Don't try to bookmark the Search Criteria Page or any query results.

You can't successfully bookmark any Teledex page "inside" the log-on page. Any bookmark that you make of the Search Criteria page or any page you see as a result of a query will no longer work after the session under which you created the bookmark is closed.

Bookmarking internal Teledex pages will seem like the natural thing to do. It will work right after you do it and you will forget that you did it. When you try to use the bookmark for your next session you won't get in and you'll call us in frustration trying to figure out why. Please don't do it! Really!

Sessions and Your Browser

There are several important things you need to know about using you browser to interact with Teledex before, during and after a session. See "Using Your Browser With Teledex" for background information on these points.

When you use the back button on your browser to return to pages you have already seen, you will likely be looking at pages your browser has cached on your computer. The hits available count on any such pages will be obsolete. It is easy to be fooled by these pages into believing that you have more hits remaining than is really the case. The only time that the "hits available" count is updated is when the page that contains it is returned to you from the Teledex server. Review your hits available count only after you have just used one of the Teledex navigational buttons to refresh a page or move around.

Also. Don't use your browser's back button to back up past the Log-in page or any other page that opened your current session. You will likely get locked out of your current session and the system will stop responding to your requests. If you do get locked out (as might or might not be evident from the resulting error messages), you will probably lose any query you have set up and you will have to start over by logging on again. Note that if you get locked out of one of the guest accounts in this fashion, you will not be able to get back in to that account until the inactivity timeout opens it up again.