• Dell Streak – 5” display running Android 2.2 later this year.  Only on AT&T… ugh.
• Samsung Galaxy – 7” screen running Android 2.2 now; 2 cameras front and back; supports WiFi and 3G and Adobe FLASH.  AT&T; Verizon; T-Mobile; Sprint.  Yeahhhh.
• View Sonic ViewPad 7 – 7” screen; Android 2.2; similar to Samsung.  Wow.
• View Sonic ViewPad 100 – 10” screen and almost a real computer with WiFI; 16gb storage; Windows 7 if needed; Whoaaaaa!
• Toshiba  Folio 100 – similar to the View Sonic 100 above, but with nVidia graphics.  Lusting after nVidia… hmmmm.
• Toshiba Libretto W100 – with Dual 7” touch screens, a bit pricey.
• Archos 101 Tablets – probably will have the most choices in screen sizes and functionality including 10” multitouch; Windows 7; various competitive price levels ranging from cheap ($98) to $350.
• Cisco Cius (yes, even Cisco) – 7” screen with above features plus USB ports and built in video conferencing.  Maybe the best to come for business.
• RIM Blackberry Playbook – 7” screen but with proprietary OS.  A little late and not in the Android mainstream.
• Open Peak (Intel spin-off) – 7” screen with video, VOIP; HD camera.  Due in mid 2011.
• HP is coming out with its Slate 500 oriented to business which is more like a pc with Windows 7 OS able to run MS Office suite and other similar apps along with the standard 7” screen, Adobe and Java support, a clever docking station, and all for about $700.
• And of course there are even more Pad products coming soon from Dell; Palm; Lenovo; Acer; and many more.  Oh my.

Net result is that these are all going to be very competitive in price, performance, and functionality, most running Android OS with dual cameras (front and back); multi-touch virtual keyboards; and most with needed Adobe FLASH graphics and PDF documents as well as Java.

Expect to pay around $300 – $400 for an incredible device that can be used as a PC and even link to HDTV.  And expect to have many choices in every imaginable configuration.  Unless of course you just want to get that pretty Apple box.

Is that one of our brokers over there drooling on their pin stripe suit?

Should we give her a Prada nano-bib?

-Warren Bailey

Warren Bailey is Vice President of Corporate Technology at NAI Global.

A client engages a real estate broker to manage a portfolio of a few dozen properties.  The client wants to know the general condition of each property, surrounding market demographics and valuations, an opinion of value of each property including the general condition of structures and land including major assets and occupiable areas. Importantly, the owner needs specific information for each site, such as retail sales per property, to evaluate future site selections for possible disposition or even growth, and then ask the broker to determine a sales price for identified disposition prospects as well as developing a strategic plan for managing existing leases for both renewals and terminations. And the client wants this information available online for secure viewing both internally to key client users in various departments and to authorized vendors who may be needed for further advisory and consulting services, as well as brokers who may handle the transactions.

NAI Global will be able to do the following using advanced technology tools:

• Setup the group of projects in our REALTrac and CLAS™ web software systems.
• Identify each site by its key information of location, size, valuations, amenities, surrounding demographics and other key site information, ownership, contact information, etc.
• Show each site in our ESRI GIS mapping system seamlessly linked to REALTrac and embedded inside of CLAS™.  By selecting a site on a GIS map, CLAS™ would immediately show important property and lease information on a dashboard, in real time.
• Assign brokers to visit each site, using smart pda devices to capture digital images of each site while completing condition assessment and property/lease information for each property as they visit each site – right on the pda device – and wirelessly linked back to our servers.
• On the same pda device, the broker would immediately see the resulting property data, pictures, abstracts, opinions of value, aggregated summary financial information, and important condition assessments including smart scorecards of each site evaluated against other sites in the portfolio.
• Later (or at the same time by others simultaneously using the system), important graphics and other data such as floor plans, energy utilization from the local utility company, and other key documents would be uploaded into the system for immediate viewing over the web.  FLASH based drawings, charts, graphs, and other such key information would be seamlessly linked to each property and available to be viewed and managed over the web.
• For the more difficult sites, a car could even drive around the property with smart lasers producing 2D and 3D non-obtrusive survey models, plans, and elevations linked to the data.
• The broker might even have time to take their client to lunch, show them on their own smart pda an integrated analysis of the surveyed properties with included reports and graphics showing forecasts and scorecards to identify the best properties suitable for disposition, consolidation, or even new acquisitions, literally within minutes of a visit to a site. 
• Then, at their leisure, the client could log onto the NAI system with a secure password, and view all their data, in real time, 24/7, from anywhere in the world. All in a day’s work.

The key is having these technology tools in the hands of smart brokers worldwide!

-Warren Bailey

Warren Bailey is Vice President of Corporate Technology at NAI Global.

First, the iPhone continues to improve and be cool, now capturing about 28% of the market.  But storm clouds are a brewing for the control freaks at Apple as everyone else is taking aim (and make sure your thumb doesn’t cover the antenna).  And is it now true that you can actually make a phone call with the iPhone instead of it just looking cool?

Second, Android is storming onto the scene with more rapid updates than Apple can match and very cool applications open to thousands of other developers, not just those who wear the Apple jump suits.  And did I say how cool Android is across the board?

Third, there remains the Blackberry by Rim who still has 35% of the market and is now forced to compete even harder.  More power to them. Rumor has it that we will soon hear of new products to compete with the iPad?  Whoa.

Fourth, and there is the “dark” horse, Microsoft OS on the horizon with its gigantic suite of resources and developing applications in SharePoint, Office, Bing, et al.  I said dark horse, not Darth Vader.

So who ya gonna dance with?  The cute young thing with the iPhone?  The sexy new kid on the block with sporty Androids sprouting up everywhere?  The sleek experienced vixen who carries a Blackberry pad device in their briefcase?  Or just maybe the barracuda MS OS – or is it a cougar – who is ready to devour all newbies in their quest for dominance?

For real estate, the world is finally turning in our favor for technology!  Imagine our brokers equipped with iPhones (that work); Android devices that can actually read leases and search the world; Blackberries that are smart iPads that can read PDF documents; and being in a world connected through Microsoft?  All are possible in the coming brave new world of technology.

-Warren Bailey

Warren Bailey is NAI Global’s Vice President of Corporate Technology.

Green Technology… Smart Buildings… Networked Portfolios… Automated Systems… Connected Buildings… Wireless Controls… Real Time Energy Management… and believe it or not, the Government (GSA and others) leading the charge!

Kevin Kampschroer and Larry Melton from the GSA demonstrated breathtaking advances in the convergence of Energy, IT and Building Management Systems throughout their 350 million SF portfolio, establishing the standards and new business processes and building intelligence that the world is starting to follow.

IBM is taking this out to the world through their Smart Building and Smart City initiatives.

Tridium and Pacific Controls show how it is possible to manage energy utilization wirelessly across hundreds of networked buildings and deploy almost in the blink of an eye.

Boston Properties and many others demonstrated several active projects, sometimes with hundreds of buildings, now up and running and producing results, showing the ROI today.

Yet unfortunately, there was a consensus that many in the real estate and property management industry, especially in the U.S., are still lagging in their ability and willingness to understand and engage these emerging technologies – especially as others are now taking the lead in such real world deployments as we speak.  

But as technologists are now changing their DNA by adding business intelligence and management skills to their resumes, the DNA of the brokers and CRE’s must also now change to add technology intelligence to their skill set if they are to survive.

NAI Global is fortunate to have an advanced technology based infrastructure to provide our brokers and corporate service providers with the tools, training, and technology understanding for providing intelligent guidance to our clients across the world.

-Warren Bailey

Warren Bailey is Vice President of Corporate Technology at NAI Global.

Unfortunately for the old fashioned broker, these terms are becoming the lexicon of more and more companies and their real estate departments trying to cope with change and finding ways of saving money.  Add to that, companies today are using technology to do more with less (read: less staff) but also cope with critical data that comes from every part of a company requiring a “fully integrated, end to end, solution;” whether you are using crayons or PCs.

Even the U.S. Government, through the GSA, is becoming a leader in defining technology standards that affect every aspect of traditional real estate practices.  This is true throughout the world as well as in most states, local governments, and institutions that are quickly following suit as everyone struggles with reduced budgets and ways to extend their staff capabilities.  If you can’t at least talk the tech talk, you may be out the door as clients want to trust your understanding of modern technology that they themselves are already using.

This means using technology to manage client portfolios more closely for strategic planning and forecasting, and property valuations based on meaningful data.  This is not just establishing a “street price” for a particular property, but evaluating the occupancies, space utilization, operating expenses, design and construction costs, asset management inventory, building systems, and energy audits of a client portfolio for providing a client with meaningful options.  And today it is not a matter of whose technology is best, but which service company can best support standard modern technologies to provide these expanded services in a collaborative environment using the best service teams available over the web.

NAI Global is very fortunate to have trained IT staff long experienced in our proven business processes and already assisting our clients who are looking to real estate corporate services in helping them make the right real estate decisions in a fast moving competitive environment.  We do this by providing meaningful, accurate and up-to-date information in real time over the web, drawing upon data (and experience) from throughout our surrounding markets and industries.  This is “boots on the ground” experience by local NAI brokers in almost every part of the world, coupled with our award winning suite of technology tools, which gives us a competitive edge in our services and best practices.

No, techies are not taking over the world.  But they are contributing greatly to the decades of experience and sound business processes of proven real estate professionals now fully supported by advanced technology that really counts.

-Warren Bailey

Warren Bailey is NAI Global’s Vice President of Corporate Technology.

But what this means to commercial real estate professionals is that this is a noteworthy first shot in interesting remote computing to assist CRE professionals and service providers in a variety of tasks in the field, instead of being chained to their desks back at the office. Typical smart phones and PDA devices have just been too small to really see enough information on tiny screens. A tablet type PC would finally allow people in the field, sitting at an airport or train station, or walking around a new property doing a BOV and condition assessment, to do their work more quickly and efficiently on a device easily carried in a briefcase or handbag.

Imagine simply clicking on a floor plan and easily typing a brief comment on the condition of the space and adding a digital pic or video on the spot; or just filling in a form for a new lease or transaction opportunity and having this information wirelessly connect to a central database and be immediately useful to the whole office. The wireless technology is already in place where we can launch programs like NAI Global’s proprietary CLAS™ on a variety of remote PDA devices. But a tablet type PC would finally make viewing and using this information on-site much more practical.

But unfortunately the iPad does not support key features that modern computing today is using, particularly Adobe FLASH and Java, many Android and Microsoft apps, not to mention multi-tasking capabilities (although that is supposed to be coming in a later upgrade). But Steve Jobs seems adamant on controlling every aspect of the Apple product and software line so again and again, do people really want to lock themselves into a single, expensive, proprietary device without standard interoperability just because it’s pretty? Of course we can always save the Apple box in our living room as some kind of artifact.

This time around, the general PC industry is more prepared to respond to the typical Steve Jobs sales job, letting the initial wave of Apple fanatics go stand in line and spend their money and then come out with many new, competitive, full-featured and business oriented products beginning this summer after the hype has died down.

Actually there have been excellent tablet type PC’s around for many years, some with cool swivel and fold flat screens with touch screen capabilities. And there are many new competitive products on the horizon coming from Google, Samsung, Motorola, Dell, HP, IBM, Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, and others. Toshiba and Panasonic already were showing a similar sized tablet PC at the technology show in Las Vegas recently (not as pretty and a little thicker, but it was a full functioning PC already with 4G capabilities). Dell is also showing their new Mini 5” Android 1.5 GSM (mobile browser) and even nVidia has a tablet version called Tegra. These systems will all run standard Microsoft applications in addition to Java and FLASH, as well as leading CAD products which Apple products do not.

And we still wait to hear from Google, Microsoft, Sun-Oracle, and others.

-Warren Bailey

Warren Bailey is NAI Global’s Vice President of Corporate Technology.