Technology has known massive development in the last few decades. The newer technologies surpass the older ones when they’re created as their upgrades. The surround sound replaced stereo, the word processor superseded the typewriter, and high-definition television replaced standard-definition TV. But there is one technology that ejected another although it’s far worse than it: cellphone voice calls. A recent survey conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Prospect reflects that 72% of cell owners in America experienced dropped calls, and 32% face this problem a few times a week or more. Much to everyone’s displease, failed calls, incomprehensible speech and poor voice quality exist and are a major problem for a large number of people; this problem won’t disappear anytime soon, despite the efforts of the carriers. Convenience and ability trumped quality, the mobile phone and especially the smartphone replaced the traditional landlines, changing the nature of communication altogether. With every American that drops the landline for a cellphone, the importance of strong connection at home grows exponentially. The quality of a call that started on the street decreases significantly when entering the house, barely adequate signals turn worse when they have concrete, metal, and multiple walls to penetrate. Two main factors cause the poor signal: the distance from the closest cell tower and the obstructions that cause interference. Cell coverage comes from strategically placed cell towers provided by the carriers. Whenever within the network, the mobile device automatically connects with the closest one and as you move it jumps to the next closest tower. As you further from the nearest tower and get close to the edge of your carrier’s coverage area you’ll experience degraded signal; when you’re too far to maintain a consistent connection, your call will drop. Furthermore, every object standing...

Canonical’s Ubuntu Edge won’t happen after the company’s effort to raise $32 million via crowdsourced funding fell short with nearly $13 million raised in 31 days. However, the experiment proved that mass market phone companies can’t rest too easy – there are still ways to tackle the status quo, and room for innovation that many customers would be excited to pay a premium for. The Ubuntu Edge has been highly praised – the mammoth with a 128GB SSD and a minimum 4GB of RAM, equipped with a multi-core CPU. Its announced ability to turn into a desktop when docked gave a clear idea about the direction for the mobile era. But the 24,000 supporters were not enough for this project to become reality. Is it that the world is not yet ready for convergence, unwilling to use a single device that acts as both phone and PC? Or is it too high of a price? Perhaps both.  Rumors have it that despite the ambitious funding target of $32 million, the device would have coasted backers $830 to get a phone. Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Canonical, thinks the core lesson here is first to secure substantially more industrial commitment to the concept as that will take care of covering the base development costs. The domino effect will be to set a lower target of $10 or $20 million and to signal the backers that they’ll get the device at cost before it actually goes onto the market. Words of wisdom? Despite the failure to raise the full amount that would have made possible the manufacture of the Ubuntu Edge phone, the plans for it are shelved, not abandoned. In the meantime, a Linux-based smartphone is expected to be launched next year, followed by a...

Some memories are so powerful that you’d want to mark them somehow more than just in your mind. Memories that you want to be able to access from miles away, simply displayed on a map, memories that describe themselves through photos, notes, and even videos. It can be a new place that you’ve visited, it can be a recurring place you go to for family reunions, it can be a restaurant that marks anniversaries with your loved one, your amazing work place, or even your home. Under this concept Findery landed on Google Maps. Serial entrepreneur Caterina Fake, known as the co-founder of Flickr, sensed the need for a tool that allows internet lovers to gather their memories in a soulful and sincere manner, without that “social peacocking” some of the apps today offer. She describes it as an attempt to bring humanity back on the internet, and the intention behind this new network is to tell the story of your life, connecting it with places. You are the one to decide of it’s for the general public or for your eyes only. Aside from the personal side of Findery, business owners can sign up for accounts. Real estate company Corcoran has already done so and is providing information about its properties and other local knowledge on the network, in an attempt to attract future clients. This tells a lot about the potential of this idea: out-of-towners, tourists or people who need to relocate due to their work or school, can easily learn about the new city from the people who placed notes with their experiences. Prospective renters could easily pull up Google Maps and search for apartment communities in the area they are interested in moving to. Everything is laid out on a...

Take a minute to think about your email inbox. Visualize it. Did your heart rate go up? A recent study conducted by the University of California, Irvine attached heart rate monitors to two test groups of workers – one with access to email and the other without – and found that those with email access had steady “high alert” heart rates. The group without email access reported feeling less stressed and better able to focus on the tasks at hand. Yikes! But we need our email, right? If you’re in real estate or property management, the answer is yes. From clients wanting to set up appointments to property notifications to contract updates, a ton of useful information lands in your inbox each and every day. So how can you shrink both your inbox and your stress levels? We’ve got three tips and three tools that will help you manage the constant influx of emails generated by today’s 24/7 real estate industry. 3 Steps to Optimize Your Inbox 1.    Priorities, schmiorities Having a strategy that allows you to sort your email quickly is key. Start by deleting the obviously unnecessary emails in your inbox. Are there emails you’d like to read later that don’t require a response, like newsletters or special offers? Create a folder with a title like “Read Later” and move these emails out of your inbox. Next, go down the list and tackle any email you can reply to in two minutes or less, no matter the level of urgency. Better to deal with minor concerns and get emails out of the way than to leave them lurking in your inbox until later. Finally, use your sorting filter to flip your inbox so the oldest emails appear at the top. Working backwards...

Moments of our life materialize into memories; photos, movies, music, their number increases from one year to the next.  In a world where the electronic format has gained supremacy, our devices need a secure, offsite replication spot where these electronic records of days gone by are backed up and secured. These days information has moved to the cloud, in theory. Practically we still feel the need to possess the information in a material form, one that we can actually touch and take with us to the highest mountain where internet is not yet present. And for that we have portable hard disk drives. There are many choices in such drives these days, and it’s difficult as ever to choose the best. Depending on your needs, you might find the following helpful. Western Digital My Passport This is a small drive (0.82 x 4.4 x 3.2 inches) that can store up to 2TB of data. The newest versions of it feature the new USB 3.0 cable, which is still compatible with USB 2.0. The new port gives the hard drive a significant performance boost, speed-wise. It has multiple back-up options including making automated duplicates of any file you save and upload what you save to a Dropbox account. The WD Drive Utilities can run quick or complete drive tests to look for bad sectors, it can also set the sleep timer to limit power consumption, use “drive erase” to reformat the drive, or register you for customer support. WD Security is an application that locks the drive with a password; however, “WD cannot retrieve your password. If you forget your password, you will permanently lose access to your data.” The price ranges from $80-$150. Seagate Backup Plus The successor of GoFlex is also a success...

I’m always curious to discover what innovations manufacturers have brought to the market when they announce new smartphone devices. Fortunately for my budget, I can’t purchase all those that make my eyebrows rise. Like most, I am on a standard payment plan that limits me to upgrade every two years. However, smartphones have hit a level where innovation has slowed down. At this point, they all flaunt beautiful screens and high-quality cameras. The new models don’t differ drastically from their previous versions, and this decreases the urge to purchase newer ones more frequently. Fewer and fewer consumers are upgrading year after year. Obviously, this is not so good for the business and the big players in the US know it, so they decided it was time they took action. First it was T-Mobile USA who announced their new plan called T-Mobile Jump. It entails an upfront payment for a smartphone followed by a period of monthly payments. This action can be done twice a year and the down payment amount is quite decent – $146 for an iPhone 5. AT&T followed with their AT&T Next, a plan that encourages customers to upgrade their phone once a year instead of every two years. They’re proposal is more of a phone rental than a phone purchase – there will be no upfront payment, just monthly installments for a year that vary based on the device. In the case of “renting” an iPhone 5, the customer would pay zero upfront, followed by $32.50 every month for a year. Once the period is over, the customer can upgrade to a new smartphone. Verizon is said to be coming out with the VZ Edge, a plan that supposedly allows the users to upgrade their phone once they’ve paid off...

You might not have realized it, but there are robots among us. Thanks to dramatic advances in technology, the real estate industry has evolved rapidly over the past few decades, and those changes have not been limited to the smartphone/tablet revolution. The field of robotics has progressed rapidly, too, making it possible for property owners and managers to enjoy the benefits of robots that can mow lawns, take listings photos and even sell sundries to residents in need. Want to learn more about today’s crop of real estate robots? Keep reading to discover our four favorites. The Robot Shop Q: When can a robot be a profit-generating resident amenity for multifamily housing? A: When it takes the form of a robotic convenience store! Imagine supplying residents with a convenient, nearby shop that never closes and never has staffing problems. A place tired parents can visit when they run out of milk, without having to bundle the kids into the car or find a sitter. A place students can grab a snack without taking time away from their studies. A place that generates revenue by providing a useful, fully-automated service. Enter the robot shop. Robotic convenience stores starting popping up at apartment complexes in Texas last year, packed to the gills with everything from salty snacks to cleaning supplies to motor oil. These self-contained shops can be placed indoors or outdoors, stock up to 200 products and are open 24/7 – ideal for high-traffic complexes. Each module is able to accept cash, credit and debit cards. The stores come equipped with video surveillance and can be managed online, in real time. Shop24 Global LLC, the company that produces these robot shops, takes care of all the stocking and maintenance issues, so housing staff can stay...

In a world where people are always on the road to somewhere, portability is key to ensure that technology doesn’t slow them down. The power of notebooks has been on the rise for quite some time now, and the leading product developers continue to improve their best-in-class work each year. Two notable new models caught our eye with power, light weight, and gorgeous looks: the 13-inch MacBook Air and the 13-inch Sony Vaio Pro. The major difference is in the OS – OS X Mountain Lion for the Air and Windows 8 for the Vaio. We’ve briefly presented the new air of the new MacBook Air 13, but it deserves a bit of additional attention. Strong features make it the leading slim and light laptop in the US.  According to NPD, it outsold all Windows Ultrabooks combined in the US retail market during the first trimester of 2013. Ageless in appearance, Apple hasn’t changed the Air’s physical design in years, but it still transports you to the future. The fact that it’s so slim – only 0.11-0.68 inches thick and 2.96 lbs. light, makes some think it is not solid enough, but it is not fragile either. The aluminum case is much more resistant than it feels. If the design needs no alteration (actually, competitors seem to find inspiration in the Air’s lines), the technical specs show continuous focus. The new features make the device even more fabulous than the previous models: the fourth generation processor Intel Haswell, made available the new i7 of 2.0GHz that drives 12 hours of battery life. The battery life should improve even further under the OS X Mavericks, which will add even more battery life-preserving features to Apple’s OS. The 802.11 ac Wi-Fi networking card complemented by the...

According to Gartner, the worldwide PC shipments are expected to drop from 341 million units in 2012 to 305 million this year (-10.6 percent), and reduce to 289 million in 2014. Sales are on a downslide partly because of the competition from tablets, and even smartphones to some extent. At a first glance, this decrease may seem worthy of one of those frequently used online headlines like “The end of the PC era.” Up close, it appears like PCs have arrived at an equilibrium. Those currently in use have enough power to satisfy the needs of most users, while the incremental improvements in the newer models are not enough to warrant investment in another PC. For the business environment, the stable, reliable, unexciting PC remains an important device. The Gartner report divides the devices and provides shipment numbers for other ones, also, such as “ultramobiles,” tablets and mobile phones. Each research firm has developed its own measurement system, and the categories are not always cohesive. For Gartner, ultramobiles include “Chromebooks, thin and light clamshell designs, and slate and hybrid devices running Windows 8.” All these sectors are thriving, the report shows that the overall shipments are up 5.9 percent this year, and predicts further growth for next year. An increase of over 60 percent year over year is forecasted for tablets as consumers and professionals have discovered that portable devices can meet many of their needs, freeing them from their desktops and allowing them to move freely. The lower priced basic tablets seem to be taking up a higher share and at a faster pace than previously anticipated. Case in point: sales of the iPad Mini represented already 60 percent of overall iOS tablet sales for the first quarter of 2013. “The increased availability...

Realcomm recently announced the winners of the 2013 Commercial Real Estate Digital Innovation Awards (AKA the “Digies”), including an award for Best Real Estate Technology Innovation, which was won by Yardi’s Commercial Leasing Pad. Additionally, numerous Yardi clients using the company’s products to automate and improve their companies’ digital efficiency were honored. This year, one of the main Digie categories was Best Use of Automation, described by Realcomm as “for companies that have significantly automated traditional business processes or impacted their industry segments.” Yardi Commercial Leasing Pad is a trendsetter when it comes to use of mobile solutions for the property management industry. Realcomm singled out the application as an “intuitive mobile tool for managing the lead to lease process,” noting that it “takes advantage of full integration with Orion and the Voyager platform.” Leasing professionals are able to use Commercial Leasing Pad to aid them in the leasing process anywhere, whether touring a building with a prospect or meeting with them over lunch down the street. Real-time data is provided from Yardi Voyager, meaning agents are never without the information they need to answer a question or make a sale. The entire leasing workflow is accessible and the product is intuitive and easy to use. Simply sign in with your Voyager login and get started. This is Yardi’s fifth Digie in eight years, following citations in 2005, 2008, 2009 and 2012. In addition to Leasing Pad’s Digie Award, numerous other Yardi clients, and one consultant were recognized by Realcomm for their automation efforts, digital impact and intelligent building development. Among the projects honored for Best Use of Automation, Commercial Real Estate was Prologis’ consolidation of its entire portfolio of 4,000 properties into single technology platform, using Yardi. The effort was deemed “a real...

With increasing attention and concern about online real estate data distribution practices and policies, many Multiple-Listing Services are seeking better control of their members’ listing information and looking for opportunities to direct qualified lead traffic straight to brokers and agents. After extensive engagement with high-level MLS officials and National Association of REALTORS® executives, as well as input from thousands of Realtors®, Point2 has come up with an exciting alternative to third party real estate aggregation. Among the organizations taking advantage of this exciting new offering so far is The Greater El Paso Association of REALTORS® (GEPAR), which has partnered with Point2, to develop a public-facing real estate listings portal focused on the greater El Paso area. The new website, ElPasoTX.com, provides consumers with information about local properties for sale and rent using timely and accurate data that originates from the GEPAR Multiple Listings Service (MLS). In a move to benefit their 1,900 members, GEPAR created this competitive public portal to send qualified leads directly to the listing brokers and agents. “Leveraging the same platform already in use for high-traffic international real estate portals like Point2 Homes and PropertyShark, the technology behind our El Paso portal is proven and ready to provide results to GEPAR’s members,” commented Saul Klein, Industry Principal for Point2. “GEPAR has always been on the forefront of technology. We’re very happy to have this opportunity to work with them to bring El Paso a world-class real estate search portal that provides the accurate and up-to-date listing data that today’s consumers demand.” Point2’s Public Facing MLS Portal Initiative is a way for MLS’ to directly monetize their listing data on a public-facing website that looks great and is easy to navigate and maintain. This white label real estate sales solution, featuring user-friendly, customized...

As a Peace Corps volunteer serving in rural Paraguay, I encountered moments when a quick internet search would have been a blessing. The resource could help with verb conjunction as I fumbled through Spanish or event planning during the rainy season. I shrugged off the inconvenience as part of the job. Away from the city, internet connectivity simply wasn’t an option. Now, an exciting new project delivers life-altering internet connectivity for isolated communities. Google’s recent launch of super pressure balloons, dubbed Project Loon, has drawn attention to the emergence of balloon-based internet connectivity. Space Data and World Surveillance Group have launched similar projects, mainly for military purposes. Google is the first to use the technology to bring 3G speeds to remote areas for civilian use. The company is also the first to attempt long-term operations using the balloons, currently up to 100 days. If it works out, here are the kinds of problems that Project Loon could solve: Back in 2010, my Paraguayan students were in a frenzy over the FIFA World Cup. I jumped on the opportunity to turn their fanaticism into a learning experience. We began a geography series highlighting dominant teams like Spain, Brazil, Uruguay, and the Netherlands. As I began the class session on Japan, I remembered a college friend who was teaching in Tokyo at the time. I thought: How awesome would it be to have our students interact with each other in real time. They could see one another’s faces and take a little tour of each other’s worlds. In my rural station, access to basic necessities was scarce. Forget smartphones and data plans. The infrastructure simply was not available. Google’s balloon-based connectivity could change that. On a larger scale, balloon-based connections permit nonprofits, hospitals, and businesses in developing regions...

“If everyone is busy making everything, how can anyone perfect anything?” That was the opening line of the 24th Apple World Wide Developers Conference that wrapped up last week. Tickets to this year’s event sold out in only 71 seconds. Over 1,000 engineers from more than 60 countries gathered for the first-look reveals of software, hardware, and service updates. While technology perfection may be an impossible utopian dream, the continuing quest for improvement and exuberant excitement around Apple innovation makes WWDC a high-energy event every year. Although speculation on the unveilings was rampant in online software forums, Apple CEO Tim Cook and his team managed to present a few surprises. OS X Mavericks The reign of big cats (OS X Mountain Lion) is now ended, and cool California places are the new nomenclature theme for OS X), starting with the famous Northern California big wave beach, Mavericks. Craig Federighi, Senior VP of Software Engineering, introduced over 200 features of the new OS. Some of those are relevant to all Mac users, and others are geared towards professionals in different fields. New core technologies are the most impressive updates, with great impact on power efficiency and performance. Timer Coalescing groups low-level operations, reducing CPU utilization by 72 percent (it spends more time in a low-power state) without affecting performance and responsiveness. App Nap reduces the power consumed by unused apps and Compressed Memory increases speed and responsiveness by compressing inactive data when not used, uncompressing it instantly when needed. The sync between devices is deepened, Finder Tabs and Tags are introduced with applicability anywhere on the Mac and in iCloud, making Finder-browsing and document search easier, Tags acting as search filters. Safari’s new sidebar eases access to bookmarks and reading lists, while the Shared Links...

Asus is at it again. Imagination and innovation are once more on display with the newly revealed Transformer Book Trio. A mind-blowing gadget, it’s a slick notebook, a dockable tablet and a veritable desktop PC, all in one.  The world’s first three-in-one mobile device is designed to offer extreme flexibility, encompassing work, play, and social interaction. The Asus design shows the desire of technology developers to simplify today’s digital lifestyle and the multi-device headaches that come with it. When traveling for business, we’ve all looked into our bag and probably wondered whether it was really necessary to bring along the laptop, the tablet, the smartphone, and maybe even a standalone camera, on a four-day business trip. In Asus’ case, the streamlining effort started with transforming expectations for an average notebook. The result of the effort is a triple-faced gadget with dual operating systems, running off a pair of processors and double battery power. When the Trio tablet is docked, it becomes a notebook and can switch between Windows 8 and Android Jelly Bean through a physical hotkey, a similar feature found on the Transformer AiO.. This gives the user the ability to access any of the over 700,000 apps in Google Play and over 50,000 apps in Windows Store. The transition between the two modes occurs smoothly allowing users to sync data and even to continue surfing the same webpage they were on before moving from notebook to tablet mode. The hotkey will not work if the tablet is unlatched from the keyboard dock, in that case it will only run the Android OS. A 4th generation Core i7-4500U, a bigger 750GB of hard drive space, and a 33Wh cell battery are placed under its hood. The PC station serves as a charger for...

We’ve blogged before on the shift from PCs and laptops to tablets, a trend that still has momentum at its back. Intel, the world’s leading chip manufacturer for personal computers, has announced the release of a new product that may reasonably swing the balance—or at least level the playing field. Intel’s Haswell chip has been outfitted with several new components that permit faster, more energy efficient operations. As a result, the computers that use the chip can also become faster, greener, and lighter. As a bonus, Haswell machines will also offer improved graphics, less heat generation, and the gift of silence. Haswell at a Glance Microsleeps to save power: “If someone is typing on their PC, we can literally shut everything down when it’s not being used and then immediately bring it back up again in between the keystrokes,” says Navin Shenoy, vice president of the Intel Architecture Group, in an interview with the BBC. “The system is smart enough to know it’s not being used for those nanoseconds. That’s the kind of granular power management at the chip level that we’ve never had before.” This feature promotes longer battery life and less energy drain. Active-use battery life has been reduced by 50%, with inactive battery use improved by 75 percent compared to the previous generation. Quieter and cooler: Certain versions of Haswell contain a CPU core that uses six watts of power, which is low enough to ditch a noisy, cumbersome fan. The unit stays cool with less noise. Notable leap in GPU: The average user will have no need for an additional graphics card, which previously added to the cost and bulk of PCs. Notebooks and two-in-one devices can now compete with tablets on weight and bulk. Increased capability: Haswell’s CPU performance...

Here at Point2, we help real estate agents market themselves and their properties. That means we spend a lot of time looking at listing photos. We’ve seen them all – the good, the bad and the truly incomprehensible. While we all know that evocative listing photos can promote a property by encouraging viewers to picture themselves living in the space, we can’t help but wonder: what if these millions of images that are being traded across the Internet by agents, owners and real estate portals could do even more? Don’t worry, this is not an article about the future of smell-o-vision. Instead we take a look at today’s smart photos to show you how a curbside snapshot can be so much more than just a pretty picture. Here are three new real estate marketing applications brought to you by advances in imaging technology. Share Locations What’s the first rule in real estate? Location, location, location. This is reason enough to geotag your listing photos. Geotagging is the practice of associating your images with a geographical location. Geotags tell your audience, and search engines, where a photo was taken. Geo-data makes it easy to add another layer of ‘searchability’ to your photos so consumers can find you based on a desirable location rather just than a desirable set of search criteria. With so many people using their mobile devices to find properties, geotags help them search for nearby homes more easily. Although most of today’s smartphones and digital cameras can add geotags to your photos automatically, real estate agents and brokers might want to check out RealtorCam, an iOS app that adds location and date information to your photos, plus easy custom captions. Viewers can see how great a house looks, where it’s located and...

Increase your property’s visibility to perspective clients while promoting tenant engagement through advances in near-field communication. You may recall advertisements for various smartphones where file and photo sharing occur by simply bringing the devices within a few centimeters of each other. You may have also seen SmartPass devices in stores and vending machines that allow customers to pay for products and services by passing their credit card over a tag. Such technologies are examples of near-field communication (NFC), a rapidly growing series of standards that allow mobile devices to communicate with other devices within close proximity. NFC has taken hold in various pockets of commerce and entertainment, making transactions faster and more convenient. Ticketing for transportation and entertainment venues around the globe utilize cards and key fobs to permit access goods and services. Box offices allow patrons to present digital tickets in place of their paper counterparts. Loyalty programs for various stores rely on stickers and cards to connect customers to rewards and discounts. Perhaps most importantly, many of us have offered silent expressions of gratitude as our children quietly enjoy multi-player gaming on separate devices while sitting in the back seat of the car. It sure beats arguing over the radio station. The versatility of NFC has proven to be its greatest asset. NFC standards permit a nearly effortless exchange of images, videos, data and text. It can replace paper while still leaving a trail suitable for verification and authenticity. As the market continues to grow, the potential of NFC will continue to expand. Near-field communication lends itself to practical and fun uses within the multifamily housing industry: – Leasing agents can create and instantly share marketing cards that include contact information, property details, property photos, video and more. (Yardi PopCard is a...

The annual Google conference ended a few days ago. This year the event was more developer-centric. Many were disappointed by the lack of new gadgets, but this year’s conference focused on behind-the-scenes action. News about Android, Google Chrome, Google Maps, Google Search, and Google Play took center stage. Android By now, 900 million activations of Android devices have occurred, and more than 48 billion apps installed from the Google Play store. Developers read these numbers as serious interest from the customer side. To aid development efforts, Google introduced a new tool – Android Studio – which allows them to work in multiple languages and for different sizes much easier than ever. Google Chrome Google named it “the most popular browser used in the world” and the 750 million active users worldwide agree. Last year, there were 450 million active users, much of the growth having happened on tablets and phones. And because it is a platform itself, developers use it to build apps, using all open tools offered by Chrome. More news on the operating system will be announced later this year. Google Maps for Mobile For the past ten years, the Google Maps product has been unmatched. Now, changes are making it more user-friendly and will help us discover new places, instead of just taking you from point A to point B. Maps users now have Places Recommendations, meaning that they see what places have been rated and recommended by Google+ friends. The integration with Zagat has been improved to include badges and editorial reviews right in the app. Exclusive offers from different locations can now be displayed directly in the information cards, redeemable on the spot or saved within the app for later use. Google Explore is the new feature that enables...