Friday Flash: The office/museum, ironic innovation and Inman's big week

Flash is going to be flashy this week. No long exposures. Time is short.

I will write about the MLS policy decisions at this week’s midyear on my Sunday flight when I have more time, a canned Heineken and some peanuts.

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Google announced the Chromebook this week. They’re notebook computers (the first two are manufactured by Samsung and Acer) that shed the bulky OS and expensive software suites (read MS Office) in favor of a cloud/web based computing experience. Public and private institutions will be able to rent them for $20 – $28 per month.

If I opened a real estate brokerage today, I’d ditch the cubicles, the printer lease, the Exchange server and all the other claws on the profit eating beast that is the office and set up my team with Chromebooks + Google Apps.

The Chromebook video is worth watching:

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The move to handheld computing keeps accelerating at nearly unbelievable rates: Google also announced this week that 400,000 Android devices are now activated each day.

If you’re in an office full of desktops…well, you’re in a museum.

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Redfin fired fifty agents. Sadly, I find this to be innovative.

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It was a big week for Inman News. They unleashed a killer keynote lineup for Real Estate Connect SF, cut a smart content/advertising deal with LPS Real Estate Group and hired Chris Smith – one of the truly good and talented guys out there in the RE tech world – as Chief Evangelist.

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Google opened up its Places API to all. 50 million places altogether. It continues to get easier to add context to real estate listings.

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A new iphone app called Gigwalk launched with the notion that the millions of people walking around with Internet connected cameras can be leveraged for media aggregation.

You pay people to go take pictures or videos of places, basically.

I don’t know if enough people will jump on this app to make for a truly viable market. But it is nonetheless indicative of something I think is going to be big, even in our industry: The mass collection and aggregation of local media to help consumers make decisions.

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Have a great weekend!

[Disclosure: LPS Real Estate Group is a 1000WATT Consulting Client; I was formerly President of Inman News and 1000WATT Consulting has performed work for the company.]