Todd Clarke's Technology Corner v2.0

Digital camera technology has advanced so far in the last handful of years that any gains from the next new camera have been incremental.

Just a few years ago, we used to spend a considerable amount of time discussing the technology in the camera’s and how that equated to better prints, or better photography.

I believe that once digital cameras surpassed 8 megapixels, the added benefits of smile recognition, GPS, or steady cam technology is mostly an incremental gain.

A new lens and record technology may throw that mind set out the door.

Typically photograph has a fixed single lense (those the term SLR, or Single Lens Reflex) that can focus on one portion of the photo.

This new technology has multiple lenses that track each and every light beam in the photo, which allows for dynamic focusing of the photograph AFTER the photograph is recorded.

The Lytro.com website has a number of examples, and I’ve captured 2 here to show you a shifting field of focus:

Every other month, I report on the latest technology for the IREM associations Journal Of Property Management in their “gadgets” column.

This month’s issue provids coverage on the must have apps for your iPhone and/or your iPad.

Thanks again to the IREM staff for doing a phenomenal job on the layout!

OR, using Groups effectively on Facebook.

As someone who has covered, spoken and taught courses on social networking, I can tell you this the fastest evolving part of the internet today. Facebook membership is rumored to be over 750 million people, or 20% of all of the business people on the internet today.

During the last few years I have seen mildly ineffective to downright disastrous uses of social networking, and the successful uses are fewer and far between.

Today I would like to focus on one of that success by focusing on a local Facebook group page that grew its membership from 30 to 15,000 and experienced over 40,000 posts in one weeks time.

The group Remember when in Albuquerque… had a simple concept – encourage local Albuquerque’s to share their memories of by gone places, people, and events.

The original idea came from Laura Reynolds, a Realtor in Las Cruces, who came across a Facebook group that allowed people who grew up in Ft. Worth to share memories. Laura suggested to her husband that he start a group about Albuquerque.

Steve started the group, Remember when in Albuquerque and quickly had 30 members. As those members started to tell their friends, and started posting their Albuquerque, memories, growth started to accumulate exponentially, and Steve requested a handful of us help administer (myself included).

I kept track twice a day of the growth of the group:

While the occasional commercial does popup on the group and there has been some sniping about deleted posts, the group has continued to grow as more people share their memories about Albuquerque.

Although many people know that four generations of my family has lived and worked in Albuquerque, many don’t know that I am an Albuquerque history buff and have a large collection of old photos, postcards and books. What better venue to share these? As I shared, others chimed in, and my “friends” counter increased by another 15% or so. (No, I don’t know all of them, but if they love Albuquerque history as much as I do, why would I tell them no?)

The group has received recent coverage from the local to TV new on KRQE as

As well as a front page article in the Albuquerque Journal:

(c) Albuquerque Journal 2011

Is this a short term fad, or a long term trend?

For now, I would say long term trend. Although Facebook doesn’t share average time spent on any one group, a common expression from group members is how much fun they’ve had strolling down memory lane, and how much of their day has flown by.

Even after growth in the group stabilized at 15,000 (or so members), the media coverage has exposed the group to new people who are asking to join, creating that ever increasing spiral of increasing exposure, which is truly any marketers dream.

All in all, I’d label this a “sticky” success.

* This article is also posted on our sister blog “Confessions of a Commercial Real Estate Consultant”

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/21/itronix-gd2000-a-rugged-handheld-for-your-skydiving-bullet-dod/

I don’t know much about it except that a company called iTronix is manufacturing it.

As soon as they have a model that packs a terrabyte of storage so I can carry most of my data around, I’m a buyer!

was just released in the COmmercial Investment Real Estate Journal.

There were kind enough to quote me on how I use google voice (one of my favorite tools).
CIREJulAug11p20-TechSolutions

For the last three years, our family has taken a 21 to 30 day trip every summer across the nation. First year we did most of the states either side of the 35th parallel from NM to NC. Last year we hit most of the national parks west of the Mississippi. This year we headed north and east and saw the Cosmosphere in Kansas, President Truman’s house/library, President Hoover’s Library, the Ford factory (where we saw them build Ford F150 pickup trucks), President Ford’s library, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, the Erie Canal (road a bike through the locks), Susan B Anthony’s house, The Hudson river valley artists houses, Theodore Roosevelt inauguration house, Niagara Falls, FDR’s House/library, Gettysburg, a coal mine, the Walton’s house, and Thomas Jefferson’s house and many other places.

Part of the adventure for us is to camp along the way – our kids have become masters at setting up and taking down their tents, while we stay in the diminutive teardrop trailer. Since we both basically work for ourselves, working these trips is a bit more challenging than when I travel to teach (and have a hotel or classroom to office out of).

Clients and friends often ask – “where do you work on the road?”

This panoramic photo gives you a pretty good idea!

Yes that is my laptop on the small table on the side of the teardrop. Last summer, we rewired the little guy teardrop trailer to run off of a portable rechargeable battery and to plug into the “shore” power we might find at some campgrounds. The rechargeable battery provides 8 hours of uninterrupted iPhone charging, iPad charging, lights for the cabin, lights for the kitchen area and laptop plug in power.

If you need to have the Internet with you while you travel, there are a number of options from tethering your mobile phone, to portable Wi-Fi like devices to a tetherless iPhone that acts like a Wi-Fi Router.

IREM recently had me review some of the latest and greatest tools in their Journal of Property Management, a publication of the Institute of Real Estate and Management for publishing our article on mobile internet devices. The article compares hardware, speeds, and services offered by the major mobile phone operators.

I recently came across Microsoft’s PhotoSynth for the iPhone/iPad. This app “assembles” live photographs into a mosaic or collage of photos.

Here is a before and after shot of the auditorium at the Bank of America headquarters in Charlotte, NC.

Before my class started:

and during the class:

I’ve also used the tool to turn otherwise dull photos of properties into something that interests the viewer – like this one:

and really, anyone involved in comercial real estate.

MyAnalyst is a must have tool for every commercial Realtor. CCIM’s and investors will appreciate the mortgage calculator, the t-bar with IRR and NPV calculations as well as the investment and lease/own analysis tools, appraisers will love the ability to measure a property from aerial photos and owners will appreciate the environmental risk summary reports.

You can download the app here, or visit blyn.cc web page here.

I personally love having a quick and dirty analysis tool that is like a swiss army knife on my iPhone/Ipad.

* Note, the author of this blog is good friends with the authors of app and sits as an unpaid advisory board member to their corporation.