2011 - Day Thirteen; Thursday...

Went this morning to a Housing Forecast presented by the Board of REALTORS. This is not my hand, this is Leonard's hand, and to his left is John, Susan and Cathy. I actually think it is a fun photo, and I was ill-prepared for Leonard's act of spontaneity. Woo-Hoo...

So, as with forecasts for the past several years, all things the colors of pink and rose are forecast for the Greater Austin Area. HOWEVER, this time it feels 'for real' and if our office and the offices of our colleagues are any indication, it is indeed 'turning around'. There really really is no better place to be in the real estate business right now than Austin, Texas. This is a photo of my dear friend Sytha and me at the meeting this morning. I like it very much!


One interesting thing from the forecast was from IBM and quoted by one of the speakers. Since my notes from the meeting are in the office, and I don't have that good of a memory any more, I went online to see if I could find the information, and by golly there is was. It seems it was in the December 29, 2010 edition of the Austin Business Journal...

Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM, which has a significant Austin presence, predicts that technology will evolve in the following ways:

You'll beam up your friends in 3-D
In the next five years, 3-D interfaces — like those in the movies — will let people interact with 3-D holograms of your friends in real time, IBM predicts.

Scientists at IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose are working on new ways to visualize 3-D data and on technology that would allow engineers to step inside designs of everything from buildings to software programs, running simulations of how diseases spread across an interactive 3-D globe.

Batteries will breathe air to power our devices
In the next five years, IBM said, scientific advances in transistors and battery technology will allow devices to last about 10 times longer than they do today. And better yet, in some cases, batteries may disappear altogether in smaller devices.

Instead of the heavy lithium-ion batteries used today, scientists are working on batteries that use air to react with energy-dense metal, eliminating a key inhibitor to longer lasting batteries.

You won't need to be a scientist to save the planet
In five years, IBM said, sensors in your phone, your car, your wallet and even your tweets will collect data that will give scientists a real-time picture of your environment. You'll be able to contribute this data to fight global warming, save endangered species or track invasive plants or animals that threaten ecosystems around the world. In the next five years, a whole class of "citizen scientists" will emerge, using simple sensors that already exist to create massive data sets for research.

Your commute will be personalized
IBM said that in the next five years, advanced analytics technologies will provide personalized recommendations that get commuters where they need to go in the fastest time. Adaptive traffic systems will intuitively learn traveler patterns and behavior to provide more dynamic travel safety and route information to travelers than is available today.

Computers will help energize your city
Up to 50 percent of the energy consumed by a modern data center goes toward air cooling. Most of the heat is then wasted because it is just dumped into the atmosphere. With new technologies such as on-chip water-cooling systems developed by IBM, the thermal energy from a cluster of computer processors could be recycled to provide hot water for an office or house.

Okay, well, I will wait and see, but I am still waiting for my flying car to arrive.

We only got one egg from the girls today, so it must be the cold weather. It is not supposed to warm up THAT much in the next several days, but it is supposed to be warmer AND we are supposed to get some rain. Cold and rain, a great combination, but I am not (yet) complaining. I will be needing to feed the cattle tomorrow or the next day, and I hope I can get it done before it rains (or at least not WHILE it is raining.

Deeds, Actions, Changes, PREDICTIONS, Kindnesses, Whirled Peas, FUN!