Google launches mobile real estate game-changer
Perspective: From the Future of Real Estate Marketing blog
By Joel Burslem, Monday, October 27, 2008.
Google just announced you can now use Google Earth on your iPhone. Now, "with just a swipe of your finger you can fly from Peoria to Paris to Papua New Guinea, or anywhere in between. It may be small, but it brings all the power of Google Earth to the palm of your hand, including all of the same global imagery and 3D terrain."
This is a radical new way to interact with a virtual world, and it blew me away when I loaded it on my iPhone.
Google Earth has always been a fantastic environment, perfect for real estate search (see Navigating a Virtual World). But it was always hampered by the mouse and click mechanics necessary with the desktop version. Pairing it with the iPhone's amazing touchscreen and gesture recognition capabilities makes perfect sense.
While this initial release permits only certain data sources -- Wikipedia and Panaramio, to name a few -- imagine being able to import a property search via a KML file, or better yet, layer in live neighborhood information, real estate market data or listings from Google Base.
Do that and it's not too far of a leap to think that the iPhone or iPod touch, combined with the 3-D environment presented in Google Earth, could very well become the mobile real estate search mechanism of choice.
You can download Google Earth for your iPhone or iPod touch through the iTunes App Store.
Originally posted on the Future of Real Estate Marketing blog. Joel Burslem is vice president of content at Inman News.
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Submitted by Reggie Nicolay on October 27, 2008 - 1:46pm.
Hey Joel...wow, I'm very excited...going to download now. Thanks!
Submitted by Lenn Harley on October 28, 2008 - 1:39am.
I'm surprised that Google would include Wikipedia as a "data source". The proliferation of innacuracies in Wikipedia are astounding.
Wikipedia, in my opinion, encourages and facilitates copyright infringement by readers who believe that "anything they see on the Internet is public domain".
Lenn Harley
Broker
Homefinders.com
http://www.homefinders.com
Submitted by Greg Tracy on October 28, 2008 - 9:05am.
Home searches on a phone are a fun idea, but not practical with such small screens.
The process of using a map-based search could be more cumbersome with all the scrolling and trying to make sense of the maps.
It is a cool app, but most people do their searching during lunch hours at work or when they first get home from work, not while they're driving around.
I wouldn't call this a game-changer anymore than video has been.
It is a cool app though, and I agree the iPhone's screen makes it fun to use. Have you used that new HP desktop touch-screen? Looks pretty cool but I've not used it yet...