Intero Cool Apps

Intero Cool Apps: Camera Awesome Lends a Touch of Pro Photography to iPhones

By John Thompson | March 9th, 2012 0 Comments

It’s nothing utterly profound to realize that most prospective home buyers won’t take a second look at a listing that has no photos. And yet, these listings are still out there. Every day, you see listings with either no photos, really bad photos or just one or two photos.

This is a pretty huge missed opportunity – and one that can be addressed pretty easily and at a very low cost compared to the old days of paying big money for great-looking photography. In fact, great photos are right at most of our fingertips now with the amazing quality of the iPhone built-in camera.

This is precisely why I wanted to highlight a new iPhone photo app called Camera Awesome. The free app takes your iPhone photos up a notch and adds just a touch more professionalism.

Camera Awesome gives you more to work with when taking a photo with features such as visual guides to help with composition like a level to help ensure the horizon is straight and a grid that splits the screen into thirds. The app also has a multitouch feature that enables you to focus on one part of your image while adjusting exposure on another part.

In terms of editing, Camera Awesome also delivers. The app lets you adjust sharpness, temperature, vibrancy and contrast after you take a photo. It also includes basic photo filters like those you see in apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic. You can crop images and also use preset visual effects and frames.

The app includes a sufficient number of options that are free with the option to buy others if you want. I found the free ones to be more than sufficient, though.

Of course, you can also share photos right from the app if you’re looking to add something to Facebook or Twitter, for example.

All around, I think this one is well worth trying out. Photos are such a great tool in real estate and apps like Camera Awesome really make it easy to impress!

You can download Camera Awesome in the iTunes App Store.

Cool Apps: LocalMind Opens Up Info about Local Spots

By John Thompson | March 2nd, 2012 0 Comments

Help your clients get a pulse on the neighborhoods they’re interested in with LocalMind, a question-and-answer app for iPhone that lets you ask questions about a general area or a specific location.

LocalMind is like Yahoo Answers meets location-based services. It enables users to ask a question using the app on their phone and get answers from people in the area. Some examples of things people ask and answer/provide insight for:

How crowded is it at that restaurant?
What’s the best thing to order on the menu?
How late is that place open?
Where can I find the cheapest gas around here?
Where is the best nearby playground for toddlers?

These are all things prospective buyers would likely want to know while out sampling a neighborhood. LocalMind gives a forum to ask and answer these questions, and leave local tips about what to see and do.

Instead of trolling dozens and sometimes hundreds of reviews on Yelp, you just ask a question about your chosen location and get real answers from real people.

Questions generally get answered by users in the area within just a few minutes. The people answering questions get judged according to a bunch of different criteria, including their number of check-ins on Foursquare (which gives the LocalMind team an idea of whether their knowledge is just in passing or derived from a deeper experience of a place).

The app also looks for answers from people who share your interests. For example, if you’re looking for East Coast-style pizza, the app will look for people that like pizza, and then restaurants, then restaurants in the particular neighborhood, city and region you’re asking in. Once an answerer has passed these hurdles, they will be highlighted for an answer that best matches your inquiry.

Check out LocalMind and refer it on to your clients who may be new to the areas they’re looking to move to. It can help them discover insider tips that may even help them decide whether or not an area or neighborhood is a good fit for them.

LocalMind is available for free download in the iTunes App Store.

Cool Apps: CloudOn Transforms Your iPad Into a True Mobile Workspace

By John Thompson | February 24th, 2012 0 Comments

Have an iPad but still struggling a bit with how to turn it into a killer on-the-go, anywhere and everywhere work station? You know, the kind in which you can seriously do anything, and access anything you need to get your work done without ever picking up another device to make that happen?

There’s a new productivity app for iPad that just may be your kismet calling. It’s called CloudOn, and it launched in the U.S. iTunes store in January. The cloud-based service offers full Microsoft Office capabilities and Dropbox integration, turning your iPad into a mobile workspace for those of us who use Microsoft programs (um, nearly the entire business world!).

Until now, using Microsoft and accessing documents made in Microsoft programs has been a sort of “hacked together,” less-than-awesome experience. But CloudOn enables you to access, create, edit and save all your Office documents while on the go. You’ll have to set up a Dropbox account (which is free for basic storage) if you don’t already have one as this is where your documents will be stored. Dropbox is a cloud-based service that enables users to save their documents and back up work that they can then access anywhere with an Internet connection.

With CloudOn, you can do most basic editing and creation functions in all Microsoft Office programs, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. For example, you can edit and track changes in a Word doc, create pivot tables and formulas in an excel file, and view and edit presentations in PowerPoint. It’s not going to be as a robust experience as you’d get using the program directly on your laptop or desktop computer, but it’s pretty much all you’ll need for on-the-go work and productivity.

Imagine changing contracts and getting signatures on the fly – moving things along without being tethered to a full computer or hamstrung by location or circumstance. This business is about service and volume: master those and you’re golden. This is the type of app that can aid you tremendously in achieving that goal.

Microsoft is likely to come along and release an iPad app for Office at least by next year. In the meantime, you can check out CloudOn free in the iTunes app store. Embrace mobility!

Intero Cool Apps: Simplify Your To-Do Lists With Clear for iOS

By John Thompson | February 17th, 2012 0 Comments

Sometimes even to-do lists can get out of control. The one beacon of cut-to-the-chase action items we use to guide our productivity can and will creep into an overcomplicated, disorganized mess – if we let it. Even worse, sometimes those lists get scattered in different locations: post-it notes at your desk, notes here and there on your phone or computer.

That’s why I like Clear, one of the simplest, most stripped down apps I’ve ever seen for to-do lists. Clear works only on iOS for iPhone and can purchased from the iTunes App Store for 99 cents.

You may be thinking: but my iPhone already has a built-in Notes app and a Reminders app. Why would I need or want something different? Again, it’s all about the simplicity. This app was built with pure “getting things done” mantras in mind. Clear out the functionality. Clear out the fancy organization. It’s all about the action items.

And Clear even forces you to be more action-focused and no-frills about your to-dos, limiting your items to just 30 characters. I like this because it forces you to pare down the details and get to the heart of what needs to get done. It sort of forces you to edit out obstacles and also to break down more complex tasks to shorter, easier ones that you can easily conquer.

You can create just one list or break them up into multiple lists. The basic functions are: pull down to create a task, type it in (obeying the 30-character limit), swipe to deem it complete, and pinch to switch to a different list.

If you’ve been looking for a way to simplify your daily tasks, or bring your to-do lists all into one place that you’ll always have access to, give Clear a try. Your “getting things done” list couldn’t be simpler.

Cool Apps: Help Clients Organize Priorities and Property Detail Notes

By John Thompson | February 10th, 2012 1 Comment

Here in Silicon Valley, many agents have come to expect their real estate clients to be a bit high tech. Suggest they bring a pen and paper to take notes on all the houses you show them this Sunday and you may get puzzled looks. Pen and paper? That’s so old-school.

Wow them a bit more by suggesting an app for that: House Hunter.

House Hunter is an iOS app that works on iPhones. It makes it easy to take notes while house hunting and organize features and priorities so you can remember later and compare the homes you’ve seen.

It’s good practice anyway to have your buyer clients list out priorities for their home before you start looking at properties. House Hunter captures it all and uses the priorities to score homes your clients see against what they’ve deemed important. And after they’ve seen a handful of houses, most people naturally start to forget details about each one – or remember things a bit differently.

Another cool feature is that your clients can share their notes with you. Now you know where their heads are at: is it really the fireplace or the extra office space that will break their decision? Remove the guessing and give them details to compare.

House Hunter also has a mortgage calculator – always a good thing (if it works well, that is), and stores photos (nothing jars the memory quite like a good photo).

I can also see this app coming in handy for yourself when on broker tours. You can refer to your notes and images later and remember what you’ve seen – and easily share with clients. Then you have it for easy reference on your phone later too.

The app costs $3.99 in the iTunes store. Give it a test run and see whether this could be a solid decision-making aid when searching for the next perfect home.

Cool Apps: Your Email Needs a Personal Assistant

By John Thompson | February 3rd, 2012 0 Comments

Email. It’s hard to believe that at one point it was considered a real breakthrough in human productivity – a real advancement. Sure, it makes so much possible for so many people. But the reality is that it has become a major time suck for many of us. Ever let your inbox go for three days? It’s almost impossible to catch back up.

With all its utility, email can come back to bite you. Getting buried often means forgetting to follow up. Reading emails on your mobile while waiting in line for your morning latte often means reading and forgetting to reply when you have time later.

Don’t let this happen to you. Bring back the magic of email and check out a new app called Contactually.

Contactually is like a personal assistant who handles your email follow ups. It automatically prompts you to take action with the people in your network according to groups and time schedules that it and you set up. It even syncs with all the contact info in your CRM.

The service connects directly with your email program, and sends you daily messages saying that you need to follow up with these specific people today. When you first set up the service, it notes who you contact, how frequently you email them and how quickly you respond to people. Then Contactually puts them into buckets based on commonalities. (You can also organize the buckets yourself.)

Basically, you get a reminder email when Contactually sees that you haven’t reached out to an important contact in awhile. This can be tremendously useful in your prospecting efforts. Most people only buy and/or sell a house once every seven or so years, and regular check-ins can be easy to let slip. Contactually does the thinking for you and gives a nudge when the right amount of time has passed.

Contactually works with Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and Google Apps right now. The company expects to support POP3 and Microsoft Exchange in the future. You can get a free trial at https://www.contactually.com/.

Cool Apps: Get Real-Time Intelligence on Who’s Reading Your Tweets

By John Thompson | January 27th, 2012 0 Comments

One of the coolest aspects of social media marketing is the ability to test, measure and gain real insight into your efforts. There are a ton of free tools and apps available that can help with this. This week’s Cool App is a free Twitter analytics tool that lets you see which of your followers are online now so you know who’s likely to see your tweets.

SocialBro is a plugin that works with Google Chrome and Adobe Air. It gives you a nice overview of your Twitter community – enabling you to see who’s influential and who’s not, and sort them into lists accordingly.

The latest update to the app adds a real-time feature that enables you to see which of your followers are active (which clues you in to who will likely see your tweets), the number of active users each second, the apps they’re using to tweet from, and the languages they’re tweeting in. These are all interesting insights, but the most useful is the window into which of your followers are active, which enables you to segment, tailor and target the content of your tweets.

In addition, you can also focus on a particular Twitter list or search term – like “Silicon Valley real estate,” for example, and learn a bit about the people who are tweeting about that topic. This too can help you segment, tailor and target the content of your tweets for more effective social marketing.

SocialBro considers a user “active” if they’ve tweeted in the last 5 minutes.

Other notable features and uses of the tool include:

Easy follow-back tools that enable you to efficiently and strategically follow people back
Discover who has unfollowed you
Discover the best time to tweet
Discover who isn’t following you back
Discover influential people who follow you
Organize followers into lists
See your followers on a map

Check out SocialBro for the intelligence you need to effectively use Twitter for your real estate business. You can download the app from the website for free.

Cool Apps: ‘If This Then That’: Recipes for Success

By John Thompson | January 20th, 2012 0 Comments

If you’re doing a lot of online marketing for your business, you’re probably pushing out a lot of content to your followers. How to keep track of it all? Especially when it’s coming from apps, social networks or even directly from your phone.

Try ‘If This Then That’ (IFTTT), a simple tool that can help you keep your to-do lists, social networks, pictures, RSS feeds, and other tools you use in sync with each other.

How it works: Check out the IFTT website, sign up for an account and start creating your commands. You can either choose from the more than 500 different ones users have already created and shared, or you can create your own (and also share them).

Here are a few uses for your business:

Store photos. Using Instagram to take and share neighborhood and other cultural photos? You can set up an IF This Then That that automatically pulls your photos off Instagram and saves them to Dropbox or another file storage system you may be using.
Maintain web consistency. You can have your Twitter profile pic every time your Facebook profile pic changes.
Be prepared for the weather. You can have If This Then That text you when the weather calls for rain.
Track your online conversations. You can archive your Tweets to Google Calendar, keeping a record of what content you pushed out by day.

The best part about IFTTT is that you can create your own conditions, or “recipes” as long as they use one of the 35 different services and apps that are currently supported. Check out the existing recipes here.

If This Then That is still in beta, but it’s free to sign up. Give it a test drive and see how you can automate and streamline your online life a bit in 2012.

Cool Apps: Get it Done in 2012

By John Thompson | January 13th, 2012 0 Comments

With New Year’s Resolutions comes great accountability. Yeah, right. If that were true, we’d be the fittest, smartest, most motivated, wealthiest and generous people on the planet. We’d be nearly superhuman.

But really, why set goals or take aims into the future without intention to take the first and follow-through steps necessary to get there?

Try iDoneThis, a simple “accountability” app that simply asks you via email: “What’d you get done today?” then tracks your answers and tells you what you’ve accomplished. Seeing strides made yesterday can motivate you to forge ahead even stronger today and tomorrow.

What is this good for? iDoneThis can help you get things done. Simply.

A regular process of aim-do-reflect is the ultimate productivity weapon. By keeping track of what you’ve done, you can learn and build on it throughout the year. And let’s face it, New Year’s Resolutions are worthless clichés if not acted upon. That makes us human, but that also can separate the movers from the nonmovers.

To try this app, visit iDoneThis.com and create a login. You will see your calendar, which you can start filling up with things you accomplished today. Then at 6 p.m. Pacific time every day, you’ll receive an email asking you to respond by listing what you got done today. Both the accountability and the sense of accomplishment can go a long way in filling your list the following day.

Change your email settings if you want to set a different time of day and frequency for receiving your reminder emails. You can also set the time and frequency of your memory emails, which give you a roundup of the day/week/month’s accomplishments.

Another cool feature is that you can export your data as a Google Spreadsheet, Excel file or text file. This way you can access your data later (and if the website ever were to stop operating).

Olympic athletes train this way – tracking their workouts, drills and nutritional intake, then using the information to make informed improvements. This is a tactic that could be very useful in improving your business in 2012.

Check out iDoneThis for free online.

Cool Apps: Easily Find Out Where Your Twitter Followers Are Located

By John Thompson | January 6th, 2012 0 Comments

If you’re an agent who’s really putting a lot of thought and time into your social media presence and marketing, ask yourself one simple question: Do you know where your followers are?

It’s a valid question – especially considering your business, real estate, which after all is all about location.

That’s why I like this cool little app called Tweetsmap. It analyzes the data your followers have in their bios (many will include or allude to location) and plots the information on a Google Map so you can visualize where your network is located.

To use Tweetsmap, visit tweetsmap.com and give authorization for it to access your Twitter network data. The data will very quickly begin to display on a Google Map. You can zoom in to see the locations that follow you most based on Country, State or City. You’ll get percentages of where followers are most concentrated.

While this app won’t change the way you use Twitter to find or consume content, it can help you determine how effective your Twitter marketing efforts have been so far. For instance, if you sell real estate in Silicon Valley, yet 80% of your followers are in other locations, it could mean one of a few things: It could mean that many of your followers are potential relocaters looking for local real estate information in anticipation of a move. Or it could mean that your efforts are not really working as you’re not attracting the folks you should be – those who are in or near your area, prospects for future sales.

Twitter is constantly evolving. To use it without periodically stepping back to get a bird’s eye view on what you’re doing would be a vast waste of time. Tweetsmap is a free and simple way to get some simple, key data on who it is you’re talking to when you share content on the social network. Following up on that data with conclusions and a change of course if needed is the next step to making your efforts work.

Intero Cool Apps

Intero Cool Apps: Camera Awesome Lends a Touch of Pro Photography to iPhones

Cool Apps: LocalMind Opens Up Info about Local Spots

Cool Apps: CloudOn Transforms Your iPad Into a True Mobile Workspace

Intero Cool Apps: Simplify Your To-Do Lists With Clear for iOS

Cool Apps: Help Clients Organize Priorities and Property Detail Notes

Cool Apps: Your Email Needs a Personal Assistant

Cool Apps: ‘If This Then That’: Recipes for Success

Cool Apps: Get it Done in 2012

Cool Apps: Easily Find Out Where Your Twitter Followers Are Located

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