smartphones » Technology Tools for Real Estate

These days a blog, a Facebook page, and an active Twitter stream are pretty much de rigueur for any brokerage that’s serious about connecting with prospects. But some brokerages are taking it a step farther by creating smartphones apps as well.

The Corcoran Group, the well-known New York-based real estate brokerage uses a free app to showcase listings, to make it easy for consumers to find open houses and neighborhood events, and to link consumers to additional information on the brokerage’s website.

The app’s interface is clean and easy to navigate. Consumers can see interior photos, floorplans, and maps. They can search by price and other property attributes or they can let the geolocater help them find properties that are near where they happen to be.

Consumers would no doubt complain that they can’t use Corcoran’s app to find properties listed by other brokers. But then again, those same consumers probably accept the fact that they can’t use the Starbucks app to find Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. Branded apps are, after all, marketing tools for the companies that create them.

To get feel for what’s possible, try using the Corcoran Group’s app.

Recently we wrote about the importance of making your real estate blog easy to read from a mobile browser. Today, we consider several tools that allow you to do this if you’re blogging with WordPress.

Mobify is a web service that provides a quick way to optimize your site for mobile access. The basic plan is free and offers great controls over how your site will be seen in mobile web browsers. But because it requires some knowledge of CSS style sheet language, it’s not a solution for everyone.

WpTouch Pro ($29 for a single-site license), is a WordPress plug-in that lets you create a separate mobile theme for your website. When a visitor comes to your site, WPtouch automatically determines whether the visitor is using a computer or a mobile browser and displays the appropriate version of your site. Images, captions, videos, and text are all scaled to make them easy to view on the smaller screen.

MobilePress is a free, open source WordPress plug-in that adapts your blog for mobile viewing. You can customize your site by creating your own mobile theme or use one of MobilePress’ pre-designed themes. And because it’s open source, you’ll enjoy plenty of support from its community of developers and users.

Along with these “outside” resources are several traditional WordPress plug-ins:

WPtouch iPhone Theme Plug-in. The free version of WPtouch Pro, above, WPTouch iPhone Theme Plug-in automatically transforms the mobile version of your blog into a cool iPhone-application style theme complete with iPhone-style icons and tap functionality. The iPhone-style theme works for iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, Opera Mini, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm users and gives them the option of easily switching to your regular blog theme if they need to.

WordPress Mobile Pack is a comprehensive set of tools that includes mobile themes, extra widgets, and a mobile admin panel that lets you configure your site or post content from your own mobile device. Images, text, and videos are scaled to fit the viewer’s mobile browser and viewers can from switch from the mobile theme to your regular website theme if they wish.

WordPress Mobile Edition transforms your blog into an easy-to-read version for mobile visitors. This is a great plug-in if you want something easy to use that you don’t have to fiddle around with. But beware: this plug-in has few setting to change since almost everything has been configured for you. As a result, there’s no easy way to alter the configuration or customize the viewing experience for your mobile readers.

How does your blog look when viewed on a smartphone browser?

Given the popularity of smartphones and the reality that prospects often need real estate information while they’re away from their computers, it’s important to be sure that your website is smartphone friendly.

The best way to find out how your blog or website works on a smartphone is to try it yourself. Navigate to your blog on your mobile phone and see how easy it is to read. Also ask yourself these questions:

Do I write with plenty of paragraph breaks, or is my blog one long unbroken block of text? (Paragraph breaks make blogs easier to read on a computer and are a must for reading on a smartphone.)
Do my pictures take forever to load? If you have pictures, their file sizes need to be reduced for quicker downloading from the Internet.
Is my blog written in a traditional journalistic style with the most important information (the who, what , when, where, and why) in the first few lines of the article? Readers often don’t follow long blog posts all the way to the end and that goes double for readers checking your blog post from their iPhones.
Is too much going on? If it’s a traditional website rather than a blog, be aware that flash intros and other “gimmicks” also take a long time to load and often don’t run at all on smartphones.

If your site doesn’t perform well on the small screen, it may be time for a redesign.

This article continues our series on how to keep your contacts and calendars in sync between your mobile device and your computer. In our first installment, we considered the challenges faced by real estate professionals and others who work away from their desks when it comes to keeping their data synchronized across multiple devices. We’ve considered how to work on the go with iPhones and a Mac. We’ve also looked at products and services offered by Google to keep mobile workers organized.

Today, we look at the BlackBerry and the options BlackBerry users have when it comes to getting synchronized.

The BlackBerry is the granddaddy of the synchronized smartphones, the first to use wireless technology to help busy people keep their handheld device in sync with their desktop computer. But being the first doesn’t necessarily make it the easiest to work with. In fact, depending on how you get your mail and what you’re trying to sync, you have quite a maze of possible solutions. I’ve attempted to summarize some of them below.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). If your brokerage gives you an e-mail account, they probably offer you Microsoft Outlook through what’s known as an exchange server. There’s probably an IT administrator and that person is responsible for setting up the software that lets you sync your BlackBerry and for making sure you have access to it. If you’re in this situation, you have automatic, over-the-air synchronization between your BlackBerry and Outlook. In many respects, this is the best of all possible worlds: you put out very little effort yet your e-mail, calendars and contacts all stay in sync.

BlackBerry Hosted E-mail. Because BES provides the easiest syncing solution, you may wish you could do it that way even though your organization doesn’t provide it. Enter the hosted e-mail solution. Purchase a personal, hosted e-mail account and you get many of the advantages of being connected to an enterprise server, including having your e-mail pushed out to your smartphone and automatic, over-the-air syncing. The cost is in the $10-$20 per month range. Thinkpost Communication and Exchange My Mail are two companies that offer individual e-mail hosting plans.

BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS). If your mail isn’t coming from a server at the office (or even if it is), BlackBerry can work with your mobile phone company to push your email to you through its BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS). BIS can accommodate up to ten e-mail addresses. These can be Internet e-mail accounts like Yahoo or Hotmail; or they can be POP and IMAP accounts that come from your Internet service provider; or they can be accounts that come from an exchange server. If your e-mail service allows it, BIS will automatically sync the e-mail between your phone and your desktop. Then use your USB cable to sync your calendar and other data between your phone and your desktop. Get more info here, or contact your Internet service provider.

Gmail. Google offers its own solutions to people who want to sync Google contacts, calendars or e-mail. If you use Gmail, get the Gmail Mobile App. Or better yet, download and install the Enchanced Gmail Plug-in on your BlackBerry. Then use Google Sync to synchronize your contacts and calendar wirelessly over the air.

This is the second piece in our series on mobile computing and synchronization. Today’s post focuses on strategies and applications that work for Mac and iPhones (and by extension iPads and the iPod Touch).

Here’s the issue. You work on the go. You’re often out of the office and away from your desk. As you meet new people, you enter their contact information into your iPhone. Later, when you’re sitting at your computer, you want to send email to people you met earlier today. Wouldn’t it be great if you could enter their info one time on your phone and later be able to find it among your e-mail contacts on your computer?

Ditto for appointments. You set up a client meeting by e-mail while sitting at your computer. Or someone puts a meeting for you on a shared calendar. How does that appointment get onto your phone so you’re reminded of it while you’re out?

Below are several solutions that work with Macs and iPhones (and by extension iPads and the iPod Touch). Each one seems to address a different aspect of the problem, so experiment to see what works best for you.

Sync with iTunes. The simplest solution is to sync with iTunes. If you use iCal to keep your calendar on your Mac and Address Book to keep your contacts, these can be synced whenever you connect your iPhone to your computer.

Simply connect your iPhone to your computer with the cable provided. Click the “Info” tab and check off what you want to sync. You can sync the Address Book on the Mac, your Yahoo address book, your Google contacts, the iCal calendar on the Mac, Safari bookmarks, notes, and email account settings.

It’s the simple and it’s free, but you’ve always got to use that cable to sync.

Subscribe to MobileMe. MobileMe is Apple’s subscription service that syncs your mail, contacts, and calendars across all devices over the air automatically. Sync your Mac, your PC, and your iPhone; keep your Mac Mail, your Mac Address Book, iCal on the Mac and Microsoft Outlook all synchronized without having to push a button or connect a cable. And all data is backed up in the cloud so it can be restored even if you lose your iPhone.

MobileMe’s biggest drawback used to be that you had to use me.com (or mac.com) e-mail address. But now it lets you use e-mail forwarding to manage an existing e-mail address. MobileMe has had its share of challenges over the years, so proceed with caution. Subscription for an individual account is $99 per year with a 60-day free trial.

Sync with Spanning Sync 3. Spanning Sync 3 lets you sync iCal on your Mac with your Google calendar, and Address Book on your Mac with your Google contacts. Then you can use iTunes to synchronize your iPhone with your Mac.

For example, let’s say you run into an old friend at the mall and enter his contact info on your iPhone. When you use the cable to sync your iPhone with iTunes, your friend’s contact info will be added to the Address Book on your Mac. Then, when you synchronize your Mac with your Google account using Spanning Sync 3, your friend’s info will be added to your Google contacts.

It’s a two-step process, but it solves the problem. Purchase Spanning Sync 3 for $25 for a year or outright for $65.

Use the SaiSuke Calendar. Keep your iPhone and your Google calendar in sync with SaiSuke, a calendar management app for the iPhone. The SaiSuke calendar is full-featured, letting you maintain and color-code as many calendars as you wish. View your appointments as a list, or in day, week, month and even year format. Use the memo field to add a note to any calendar item. Sync manually or set it up for automatic wireless syncing so the calendar in your hand matches nicely with the one on your desktop.

There’s a free version that syncs only one way and only one week out, but lets you test the app before buying the full version. The full-featured version of SaiSuke is available at the iTunes App store for $9.99.