Today’s office travels with you
By Marty Manion
Director, Information Technology
Pennsylvania Association of REALTORS®
Mobile professionals are making better use of their time on the road. The days of work having to wait until you were in the office or until you had access to files is a thing of the past.
The usage of the following technologies should expand in 2006 and real estate professionals will be relying on them more in their day-to-day business.
Broadband Wireless
Phone companies, such as Cingular and Verizon, are offering telecommunications high speed options for laptops and PDAs. These services do not require you to be near a commercial hub, such as an airport or a coffee shop. The high-speed travels with you as you conduct your business locally. You are able to quickly download complex files and view e-mail attachments with average download speeds of 400-700 kbps capable of reaching up to 2.0 Mbps. Access the MLS from a client’s home or take care of some work while you wait in your car for your next appointment. Pricing for these services is approximately $60 a month, but the benefit is huge. Currently this service is available in more than 150 metropolitan areas.
Better Mapping Software
Google has come out with a truly amazing mapping technology called Google Earth. It combines satellite imagery with maps and the Google search engine to give you unique functionality and views. You can type an address in and instantly fly across the city or cross country to get an aerial view of a location. It will also overlay the location of restaurants, schools, and banks making it a valuable tool for showing neighborhoods and their benefits. For a fee, it will work in conjunction with your GPS software. To download the free software simply go to www.earth.google.com.
Expanded Data Storage
As computers have gotten smaller and cheaper so have storage devices. Many computers today don’t even come with a floppy drive anymore. Compact Discs, while still popular, are nearly obsolete. The latest and greatest is a flash drive. These drives work on USB technology. They can plug into any device that has a USB port and work seamlessly. They are about the size of your thumb, hence their nickname, thumb drives. Yet for their tiny size they hold massive amounts of data. For approximately $60 you can buy a device that will hold 1 GB of memory. To put that in perspective, one GB is equivalent to roughly 711 of the old floppy disks. You can take your office with you, wherever you go, and hold it on a device that can fit on a keychain.