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Technology has literally changed the face of the real estate world in recent years.

Real estate has transitioned from an industrial society to a digital information society, and is in a state known as the “Perfect Storm.” There are several factors that contribute to this concept.

Consumers today have access to almost anything they need online. And as more and more information permanently transitions to the Web, so have real estate consumer expectations.

Technology has influenced this major shift in consumers’ overall expectations.

Think about it: When a prospective homebuyer began the house-hunting search more than five years ago, he or she would begin this often lengthy process by placing a call to an agent, sharing all of the relevant information about the desired place to live (i.e., how many bedrooms, home style, etc.). The agent would then utilize his or her tools at hand, the MLS primarily, and put together an in-person presentation highlighting various listings.

However, with today’s technologically savvy consumer, this is now the exception and no longer the rule. Thanks to the Internet, prospective homebuyers can Google or search a variety of real estate websites to find photo galleries, virtual tours and specific details about potential places. Consumers can estimate a property value or pull property comparison in minutes as opposed to days.

This digital approach not only streamlines the house-hunting process, but it also gives homebuyers a sense of empowerment. It can arm homebuyers with the confidence that they are able to do everything in the search process themselves, controlled, and at their own convenience.

In response to this new digital real estate experience, agents and brokers are forced to become more mobile and virtual. As a result, clients are reporting a better transaction experience consistent with their expectations.

Another contributing factor to the ‘Perfect Storm’ is apparent when looking at the current economic state of the real estate industry, and how it has placed more pressure on real estate business. Because of downward pressure in recent years, agents have been forced to evolve their business models to accommodate these changes, including scaling down staff sizes and eliminating large office spaces, posting ads on every street corner, large billboards and/or city benches, and other more ‘traditional’ ways of marketing realty services.

The result is an entirely new host of business models that are leaner, more cost-effective and much more streamlined. Agents are now selecting brokerages that align with the resources that meet and succeed consumer expectations. In addition, most everything in the agent-customer process is happening online or on mobile devices. In fact, the majority of interactions in today’s real estate transactions are not through physical meetings anymore, but through digital communications.

Another contributor to my idea of the ‘Perfect Storm’ is the overall changing demographics of both buyers and sellers in today’s marketplace. Real estate consumers today are much younger than they were in the past. This can be attributed to the downward force of home values, combined with lack of ability to sell. In addition, incentives, such as low interest rates to attract first-time homebuyers to the marketplace, as well as a rise in rental activity, support this idea.

Along with a willingness to adapt to the new digital world of opportunity, there are a variety of cutting-edge technological tools available that can help today’s real estate professionals adjust to this ‘Perfect Storm.’

Through the Internet and easy-to-use software solutions, agents and brokers can create a virtual transaction hub—connecting customers and documents in real-time. This streamlined approach eliminates a number of traditional barriers in the process (known as chokepoints), especially when people live in different locations.

These cost-effective, ‘add water and stir’ office solutions allow real estate professionals to do even more with less. Technology opportunities in today’s real estate world can help deliver a level of service to buyers and sellers that parallels everything we do online in today’s digital world— like buying books on Amazon, online banking, purchasing stocks, making appointments and more.

Without embracing today’s valuable digital solutions, agents and brokers would still be faxing documents back and forth to buyers, or even driving to clients’ homes delivering an experience that is not consistent with consumers’ expectations. This approach is incredibly antiquated, not to mention unnecessary.

With a simple, quick click of today’s user-friendly technology, real estate professionals can securely and efficiently send customers links to access important documents that need to be reviewed, negotiated or signed, day or night, from across town or across the nation, and from any device. We refer to it as negotiating online as if you were sitting at a round conference table with all parties.

Agents and brokers today can’t afford not to take advantage of the many comprehensive solutions available to help create a seamless, online working environment. Not only can digital tools help offer a comprehensive solution to the challenges of security, efficiency and overhead costs in today’s real estate world, but they can help create a 21st century solution for 21st century challenges.

Austin Allison is the CEO of DotLoop.
For more information visit http://dotloop.com.

Copyright© 2011 RISMedia, The Leader in Real Estate Information Systems and Real Estate News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be republished without permission from RISMedia.

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Digital Real Estate: What is The Perfect Storm?

NEW YORK and STUTTGART, Germany, Feb. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Finam, the largest Russian brokerage and investment holding, that previously invested in Badoo and a bunch of other web companies, invests $10 Million in IM+, popular mobile messenger with 17,5 million users and 800 million mobile ad impressions/month.

As a part of the deal Finam and Shape Services, the company behind IM+, launch FinamShape joint venture that will release a special version of plus.im web messenger for the fast growing Russian market.

"This deal is squarely in line with our fund's new strategy which is geared towards investing in global players in the TMT sector worldwide.  We have a deep understanding of the mobile applications market, and IM+ is one of the best and most popular universal communications platforms for young people.  It's particularly important that IM+ is well connected with all leading social communication networks, and our mission is to solidify IM+'s positions in the universal Internet messenger sector," said Dmitry Smirnov, FINAM Private Equity Fund CEO.

"With the new release of Beep in-app push messenger IM+ allows people to save on SMS and MMS while simultaneously chat on Facebook, Skype, Google Talk and tweet. In the first weeks after release Beep got a half of million users and we see endless opportunities for growth", said Igor Berezovsky, IM+ founder.

"To have such a strong partner as Finam means we will be able to bring the product we love to more users. As a side note, Shape Services' name will be shortened to Shape and URL to http://www.shape.ag. We understand the .ag domain as Apps&Games, that fits to Shape's strategy very well."

About FINAM:

Finam is one of the largest investment groups in Russia with a proven track record of private equity investments. Since 2003 Finam invested in more than 20 projects in sphere of Internet, Telecommunications and Media, among them are Begun, the largest independent context advertising service in Russia, Mamba,  #1 online dating service in the Russian-language internet with 11.5 mln registered users,  Badoo, a second-generation social network, with over 137 mln. subscribers, and some others.

More: http://www.finamcapital.com

About SHAPE:

Started in 2002 from ground, SHAPE has grown to a profitable multimillion company with 55 shapers working in Europa and USA. SHAPE's flagship is IM+ communication platform with 17.5 mln registered users, fast growing Beep in-app free push messenger and Neighbors local chat. IM+ is available on all mobile platforms, web and TV.

More: http://www.shape.ag

Read more here:
FINAM Invests $10 Million in IM+

View NC tolls for I-95 in a larger map

NCDOT wants to collect tolls on I-95 to pay for a $4.4 billion widening and overhaul project, border to border (see today's story with map, photos and lots of reader comments).

The proposed electronic tolling network is designed to allow lots of North Carolina travelers to continue making short local trips on I-95 without paying tolls. It would make it difficult, but not impossible, for truckers and vacationers who travel longer distances to use I-95 without paying the toll.

As a result, truckers (25 percent of all I-95 traffic) and out-of-state cars and trucks (55 percent) could actually end up paying more than their share of the tolls.

Check the attached Google map to see how this would affect you and your trips on I-95. Blue icons mark locations for 9 sets of electronic toll sensors on I-95. Pink icons mark the nearest exits, before and after the sensors, where drivers going on or off I-95 also would pay tolls.

All other exits? And that's most of them. Toll-free.

When tolling starts in 2019, a car driving all the way between South Carolina and Virginia probably would be tolled $19.20, DOT says. Tolls for heavy trucks will be higher. (Some truckers have commented that today's story does not mention the fees they pay to use North Carolina roads, even when they buy fuel in other states. I'll be reporting more on the trucker perspective in coming weeks.)

Note: I produced this Google map, based on my interpretation of DOT's report explaining the plan (available at http://www.driving95.com). Any errors are mine, not DOT's -- so let me know if something looks wrong here.

See the original post here:
See how DOT toll plan would affect your drive on I-95

I’ve written repeatedly about experiments in climate and energy communication and education that mesh the arts and science.

Examples include student-created “explainers” on geo-engineering and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Here’s some background on a new, and much discussed, effort (below), which compares the impact of steroid use on home run production to the impact of accumulating greenhouse gases on the frequency of weather extremes:

The steroid analogy has been percolating for awhile, but its roots go back quite a few years, as you’ll see below. The cartoon was commissioned by the folks who run the National Center for Atmospheric Research. I reached out by e-mail to Noah Besser, the artist who created the animation, and Gerald Meehl, the climate scientist who provides the background and main narrative voice, along with another climate scientist, Anthony Broccoli of Rutgers University, whose earlier use of the steroids metaphor caught Meehl’s attention. It’d be great to see more such collaborative experimentation involving the arts and science. Here’s how the project came about:

Here’s a short exchange in which Meehl explains how the animation came to be:

Q.

How did you first settle on the steroids analogy?

A.

I had read on a couple of blogs last summer where versions of the steroids analogy were used to illustrate climate change. Apparently this can be traced to a lecture done by Tony Broccoli from Rutgers back in 2006 where he used a somewhat different application of the analogy. I used those sources to come up with my own version. I tried it out at an NCAR science communication interest group that Matt Hirschland organized last summer (he’s the head of communications at NCAR), and with a group of student interns at an Aspen Global Change Institute session last summer. People seemed to like it. It works…for virtually any sport (for a European audience I substituted cyclist for baseball player and it worked just as well).

Q.

So how did this particular team approach to visually explaining the greenhouse
contribution to temperature records come about?

A.

I had contributed to a piece on NBC Nightly News last fall (with Anne Thompson doing a great job) with the steroids analogy. It went over pretty well, and Bob Henson et al. here at NCAR had been looking for a project to do with an animator he knew.

The idea was that they wanted to create the animation as a new kind of way to communicate climate change, and they thought the steroids and baseball analogy would make for a good visual animation. They asked me to do the commentary. So one day he sat down in my office and we did a tape of me talking about the steroids analogy. They took it from there, apparently using my words as a starting point to create the script and animation.

I contacted Anthony Broccoli of Rutgers to get to the root of this analogy. Here’s his recollection:

The story (a slightly long one) begins some years ago. I was trying to explain the pitfalls involved in answering the question “Was this weather event a result of climate change?” I developed the following analogy.

There is a veteran baseball player who has a high batting average but no power. He starts weight training during the off-season. In his first at-bat of the new season, he hits a long home run. Was this home run a result of his off-season training? I discussed two possible answers, each flawed: (1) “Yes, no doubt. He always could make contact, but now he’s stronger. I bet he’ll lead the league in home runs.”

This answer is obviously flawed because the sample is too small to draw a conclusion.

(2) “No way. That was a fat pitch that anyone could hit. His weight training had nothing to do with it.” The less obvious flaw here is that weight training might increase the probability of hitting a home run, even if it was a fat pitch. When I used this analogy in a talk (might have been mid-2000s), I noticed some muffled laughter and realized that the audience was thinking about performance enhancing drugs, which were much in the baseball news at the time. So when I gave the talk subsequently, I jokingly included a third possible answer that alluded to some current story about performance enhancing drugs. Although I was using the steroid allusion for humor, it must have morphed as it traveled along the grapevine into the analogy that Jerry has used so successfully.

I also asked the artist, Noah Besser, to describe how he works with scientists and their institutions to create his amusing, simple animations. He first pointed me to the string of videos he created to explain the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, a crowd-sourced meteorology data base gathering precipitation information from individuals and, particularly, schools around the country. It was that work that caught the attention of Bob Henson and others in the communications office of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Here’s how Besser describes the process of interpreting basic science through moving images and an ample dose of humor:

There is a preliminary concept meeting at the start.  Many times people will give me the ideas they want to convey and then I will write a script.  In this case, the concept was so clear that [the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which runs the National Center for Atmospheric Research] had a foundation for a script that they wrote.  The interludes with my sped up voice were added later to help the story along.  Once a script is agreed on, I make a rough video storyboard with any of the imagery requested, while I try to add my own twist to it.  For example, UCAR knew they wanted to show a baseball player on steroids.  I made an old timey baseball player for fun and to not draw any comparisons with Major League Baseball’s recent history or specific players.  I also try to add different elements of humor that I can.

From that point, I receive notes on changes to be made and I start on the actual animation.  Once I’ve done that (which takes a week or so) a back and forth process starts of notes and changes until we get it where we want it.  It’s much like a fun game of ping-pong.  The whole process can take anywhere from 2-8 weeks depending on the number of revisions, the length of the animation and the quality of the animation.

I love this work because I can combine the things I love (drawing, humor and animation) while helping communicate messages that I am passionate about to a wider audience.  The goal is to get these messages out there to inform, but also hopefully inspire people to learn more.

I’d love to see more such collaboration, and particularly efforts in which students in graphics, arts, film and related areas work with science departments at their universities to develop this kind of content.

This is one reason I’m trying, as part of my “Knowosphere” push, to help build a clearinghouse for people with science communication needs (e.g., harried science teachers) and people — from scientists to animators — who can fil
l the gap, on a budget. This excerpt from a 2011 post conveys the notion:

Another ripe field is the use of graphics and animation to convey complicated information to broad audiences. NASA, once again because of its mandate, has an entire Scientific Visualization Studio devoted to this kind of work. I could see agencies and universities creating a kind of Match.comfor scientific information in search of fresh experiments in visual, and even auditory, communication. I mention sound because I recently came across some experiments using sound to convey the scale and character of the 11 March great earthquake (in one iteration, lower pitch equals deeper depth, louder volume equals more power). [Read the rest.]

Please get in touch, or comment below, if you are working along similar lines or know of such efforts.

See the rest here:
Dot Earth Blog: On Home Runs and Steroids, Heat and CO2

13-02-2012 14:55 Taken from Bashy's Forthcoming EP The Great Escape, Bashy takes it back to his essence. Heart of Stone draws on the London MC's ability to mesh hard hitting lyrics and punchlines with a strong message. He has joined forces with three of the hottest rappers the UK has to offer; the multi talented Dot Rotten, the hugely anticipated Lady Leshurr and the underground's favourite Black The Ripper. Produced by Komi. @Bashy @ItsDotRotten @LadyLeshurr @BlackTheRipper @KomiSays http://WWW.BASHY.COM ***DOWNLOAD NOW FOR FREE*** http://www.mediafire.com

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Bashy featuring Dot Rotten, Lady Leshurr