What We’re Reading: Jan. 7 – Jan. 13
On January 13, 2012,
in What We're Reading,
by Dave
2012 Tech trends, preparing for taxes, CES duds
Social media guru Todd Carpenter asked several social-media-savvy real estate professionals, “What new tools or trends will have the biggest impact on the real estate industry in 2012?” Here’s what they had to say.
Maybe the economy is improving: shopping center leasing seems to be picking up as consumer confidence climbs, according to REIS.
Twitter has complained about changes made by Google to integrate its social network Google+ into search results.
The U.S. Mint circulated more quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies last year. And that’s a good thing.
A New Year, a New You! But the same old taxes. Yahoo! and Fox tell you what’s new, what’s changed, and what to watch out for as you prepare your taxes in the next few months.
Need another social network? Pinterest is visually pleasing site for collecting photos and links to stuff you like and sharing them with others. While there are tons of other options for social bookmarking (e.g., Digg and Reddit), Pinterest’s photo-rich interface has made it a great hit.
The annual giant Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is taking place this week in Las Vegas. While its stature is diminishing, it’s still the place to introduce new products and wares. Not all are a success. Fox takes a look at some of the CES duds to be introduced over the years.
8 Things You Shouldn’t Buy in the Winter: summer veggies, summer clothes, computers, snowblowers, etc.
Tagged with: commercial • consumer • economy • electronics • forecasts • Google • shopping • social media • taxes • tech • tradeshows • trends • twitter
What We’re Reading: Aug. 13 – Aug. 19
On August 22, 2011,
in What We're Reading,
by Dave
Commercial outperforms, private wi-fis, and Google buys Motorola
Washington is speculating that Obama administration will protect the 30-year mortgage – along with Freddie and Fannie in some form.
US commercial real estate will perform better than the country’s volatile sharemarket during the current economic downturn because investors value its intrinsic quality, according to a new CB Richard Ellis report.
Money Magazine is the latest to release a Best Places to Live list. Looking at the top picks it’s easy to see the editors like small towns or suburbia.
Who can resist the lure of free wi-fi? But using public wi-fi opens your computer or device to a slew of security risks. Never fear: Freelance Switch gives the scoop on private wifi.
People have been predicting the death of the PC computer for years. With the rise of cloud computing and new operating systems, it seems the PC is getting a second chance. Joshua Topolsky writes in the Washington Post that advances in both technology and the way people use the machines is dramatically changing:
Something very big is happening in computing right now. We’re moving away from closed, disconnected, windowed environments toward something dramatically different. This isn’t like going from a command line in DOS to the graphical environment of Windows. It’s more like going from driving a car to a shuttle launch. What will happen over the next few years in user interface design and decentralized cloud systems will make the previous 20 years seem tame by comparison. We’ve crossed over from a long, slow evolution to an explosive revolution in what a computer is and how you use it — and there’s no looking back.
Patent trolls are a problem, but no where more so than in Silicon Valley. Might that be one of the main reasons Google snapped up Motorola Mobility this week for $12.5 billion? As the new kid on the mobile phone playing field, Google doesn’t have the history or legal files that Motorola, one of the industry founders with 80 years of patents, does. While many of Motorola’s assets will be valuable to Google, its 17,000+ patents may be some of the most important.
According to the latest Pew Research Center survey, 13% of US cell phone owners pretended to be using their phone in order to avoid interacting with the people around them. Read the rest of the latest mobile phone survey results here.
Apple plans to sell a hell of a lot of iPhones in the second half of the year.
Tagged with: apple • cloud • commercial • GSE • investment • lists • MID • mobile phones • pc • smart phones • wifi • wireless
What We’re Reading: Aug. 6 – Aug. 12
On August 12, 2011,
in What We're Reading,
by Dave
Dubai office space woes, Twitter, and welcome to Spotify
With office vacancy standing at over 40 percent and on its way above 50 percent as new construction comes online, you would think Dubai would be a tenants’ market. However, according to a recent Bloomberg/BusinessWeek article, the floor-by-floor ownership structure of most Dubai developments makes finding larger blocks of space difficult. So difficult that some tenants find that building their own tower is the most cost- and time-efficient means of acquiring larger blocks space.
This week Twitter added photo-sharing—no longer do you have to use outside websites to share photos on Twitter. At least, on the computer. Twitter’s smartphone app does not yet have this feature.
Others are sure to follow, but Amazon is one of the first to push back against Apple’s app restrictions by launching a browser-based alternative to its popular Kindle app for iPad called the Kindle Cloud.
As the music industry continues to battle with ownership rights and piracy, a beacon of hope shines bright: Spotify.
What We’re Reading: Mar. 19 – Mar. 25
On March 25, 2011,
in What We're Reading,
by Dave
Baby carrots as junk food, the homebuyer tax credit, and spring cleaning your gadgets
Take a former Coke executive and make him CEO of a baby carrot giant. What happens? Marketing baby carrots as the new junk food, complete with crinkly packaging and a dinosaur mascot. ps. Now there’s even a game for your iPhone!
Google’s plan to digitize whole libraries has been shot down by a judge who felt the arrangement between Google and parties representing authors and publishers went too far. CNN Money has the details.
The Today show offers great tips and ideas for cleaning up the cord clutter in your home. Tangled and frayed cords lead to falls and even fires. Conceal wires along the baseboards with a plastic cover, label and color-code your cords, use velcro strips to hold looped cords in place and stop using extension cords.
You have a smartphone, and iPod, a digital camera and a video camera with lots of overlapping functions. What can you get rid of, what should you keep? The New York Times runs through the list of gadgets to keep and the list to recycle.
Miss Manners on 21st Century phone etiquette (a.k.a. email first to set up a phone appointment).
A new survey from PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests the fundamentals of commercial real estate are improving as it moves beyond the crater of the real estate bust.
Unhappy with some of the changes in the just-released Firefox 4? Gizmodo tells you how to undo some of them. And how to create an awesomebar like in Chrome.
Military members can still take advantage of the homebuyer tax credit that expired for the rest of us almost a year ago. Get your paperwork in by April 30 and close by June 30. Wisebread has the details on how to qualify.
“Steam” is the new black in the cleaning world. From mops to dryers to dishwashers, everyone is touting the benefits of steam cleaning. But is it really worth it? An article in the Kansas City Star says, it depends.
