The eKEY Basic iPhone app from Supra was approved yesterday and is available for free in the iTunes app store.  The iPhone app does not allow users to open real estate keyboxes but does have a demo mode so users can view all of the functionality of the application without having to sign up for the eKEY service.

eKEY Basic provides the following features:
- Wireless Updates and Alerts
- Obtain Listing Keys
- Keep track of all your key boxes right from your phone!
- Manage and Program your keyboxes
- Easily place and remove keyboxes from listings using your phone. You can also change your own shackle codes.

To open keyboxes, users will need a Supra eKEY iPhone adapter.  The adapter is a small device that plugs into the bottom of the iPhone and allows the iPhone to communicate with the keybox with a low powered infrared light.  The adapter does not need batteries.

According to the iPhone app, the adapters will begin shipping the third week in August.

You can not activate the eKEY app until the adapters are available but can enter the demo mode to view how the app will work.

The app will allow users to open keyboxes, open the keybox shackle, and view inventory.

The demo mode does send sample notifications of showings so you can get a good idea of how the apps functions.

The iPhone app looks good.  It will be interesting to see how well the app works once the adapters start to ship.

The app already has several 5 star reviews in iTunes including this one that made me laugh:

It looks really slick!

by SL Xpress

According to the demo, you can even give feedback directly after the showing. I’m so excited about this, I may pee.

How much does the Supra iPhone Adapter cost?
The iPhone adapter costs a one time fee of $55.  There will be a monthly fee to use the eKEY software and this fee varies by each Board or MLS.

You can download the iPhone right now for free in the iTunes app store.  The eKEY for iPhone requires iPhone OS 3.1.3 or above and will work with all of the iPhone models, 2G, 3G, 3GS, and 4.

To learn more about the Supra eKEY adapter, visit Supra.com.

Will you order the eKEY adapter for the iPhone?

Most real estate appraisers probably carry a flashlight with them.  You might need a flashlight when doing a head and shoulders inspection of an attic or crawl space and definitely need a flashlight when appraising a bank owned property that does not have the power turned on.

You might not need your flashlight anymore if you have an iPhone 4.  The iPhone 4 has a LED flash on the back of the phone and there are several free iPhone apps that turn the iPhone’s LED flash on and keep it on so you can use it as a flashlight.

Click HERE if you can not see the embedded video above.

There are several free iPhone apps that turn the iPhone’s LED flash into a flashlight

1) LED Light for iPhone 4 Free

This app enables you to use the iPhone 4’s LED flash as a flashlight and strobe light.

2) LED-Flashlight

LED FlashLight for the iPhone 4 is the ultimate free flashlight for your iPhone 4. Forget digging for your keys with those dull screen lights!
Features:
- Instant-on flashlight on startup
- Simple one-button on/off flashlight
- Auto-Off while switching to other apps
- White-background for additional light

3) Free LED Light

The first Flashlight-App that uses the iPhone4 LED-Flash!

4) FlashLight4G

FlashLight4G is a very simple flashlight application,but very useful!
Flash LED for iPhone4 can be turned ON/OFF quickly.
Features:
・Blinking mode equipped
・Simple on/off button
・You can light while hearing the tune of iPod on the back ground.
・Cool real flashlight picture

5) CameraLight – See in the dark

NOW FREE! – because like 500 other people made this app!
CameraLight turns your new iPhone 4 into the brightest flashlight yet using the new LED flash!
Simply open the app, and the LED turns on.
You can switch it on or off, or even take low light pictures with the camera.

6) Flashlight 4: LED Light for iPhone 4

The absolute fastest, simplest LED flashlight app for iPhone 4.
It does one thing, and does it ridiculously well.
It quickly and easily turns on the LED flash next to the rear camera, and keeps it continuously lit.

7) LED Flashlight HD

– INSTANT ON -
Our flashlight is one of the FASTEST starting flashlights on the market. Don’t sit around waiting for your light in the dark.
- BRIGHTEST LIGHT -
The iPhone 4’s LED light on the back is incredibly BRIGHT. In a completely dark room you can see clear to the other side.

8) LED Flashlight – Brightest Flashlight for iPhone 4

Ever wanted to use your iPhone 4’s camera flash as a flashlight? Well, now you can with our LED Flashlight app!
This is the brightest iPhone flashlight you’ve ever seen!
You can even play music while the light is on. (Some others don’t do this.)

A LED Flashlight app for the iPhone 4 is a must have iPhone app for real estate appraisers.  The LED on the back of the iPhone 4 is very bright and is a great backup for your flashlight.

Do you carry a flashlight with you during real estate appraisal?

Real estate appraisers commonly walk long distances, whether it is appraising a large tract of land or measuring a big house.  Have you ever wondered how many calories you burned during a real estate appraisal?  You can easily find out by using the free iPhone app by Jillian Michaels.

Click HERE if you can not see the embedded video above.

The Jillian Michaels Fitness Motivation is a free iPhone app.

You’ve seen Jillian Michaels help people shed hundreds of pounds on NBC’s The Biggest Loser and Losing It with Jillian. Now you can get that same hard-driving encouragement for your own workouts – when you download the only fitness app from America’s toughest trainer – FREE!

Just for fun I used Jillian Michael’s iPhone app while measuring a house for a real estate appraisal.  It took me about 25 minutes to measure the house, workshop, sunroom, and porches, and patios.  I burned a total of 35 calories in 25 minutes.  It is important to note that measuring a house for a real estate appraisal is not an intense workout, but it was fun to use the app and I would recommend using it during a real workout.

The iPhone app has several great features:

The app has motion tracking to calculate your workout’s intensity and then tells you how many calories you burned.

GPS feature that tracks the distance you ran.

The app tracks your goals and progress.

The app also gives tips to maximize your workouts and videos of Jillian demonstrating some of her exercises.

You can follow Jillian Michaels on Twitter and Facebook.

Do you ever feel like you have had a good workout after measuring a large house for a real estate appraisals?  Do you use any iPhone apps to track your workouts?

Boxcar is a free iPhone / iPad app that sends free push notification to your iPhone or iPad for services like Twitter, Facebook, email and RSS feeds.

Boxcar is a great way to be notified when someone sends you a tweet, retweets you, or sends you a direct message on Twitter.  You are on Twitter right?

Here is a demo of the app.  Click Here if you can not see the video below.

Setting up Boxcar with Twitter and Facebook is pretty straight forward.  You can even add more than one Twitter account.

To set up push notifications for your email, you will need to forward the email messages you want pushed to your phone to a unique Boxcar email address.  For Gmail, you will probably need to set up filters so you are only notified of the most important emails.  Rebliss covered how to setup filters in Gmail in a previous post.

Boxcar lets you receive notifications for mentions, retweets, and direct messages on Twitter.

Boxcar integrates with most twitter clients so you can pick which client will open when you view a new message.

One of best features about Boxcar is the Quite Time feature that lets you specify when you don’t want to be alerted to new messages.

Once you have the services setup, you will receive a push notification for each new message.

Boxcar is free but does have some advertisements.  You can get rid of the ads with a one time fee of $4.95.  Boxcar also has an API so you can integrate your website or service with Boxcar.

What service or app do you use to notify you of new Twitter messages?

MapQuest released a FREE iPhone app that includes voice navigation.  Not only does the app work extremely well, but it also includes features such as auto reroute and the ability to map multiple addresses.

MapQuest® 4 Mobile brings over a decade of digital mapping experience to your iPhone® with unique features to help you get where you’re going. Try Voice-Guidance, our latest addition to Driving Directions, for a more hands-free experience!

Watch the video below for a hands on demonstration.

Click HERE if you can not see the embedded video above.

Here are some of the great features:

Voice Guidance

Voice guidance tells you when to turn and informs you of upcoming turns.

Map Multiple Addresses

Not only can you map multiple addresses, you can easily rearrange the addresses to optimize your route.  The picture below shows me rearranging the destinations by dragging the 3rd address to the 2nd position.

I previously wrote how to map multiple addresses on your iPhone with Google Maps.  Mapping multiple addresses with MapQuest is much easier.

Reroute Assistance

The app will ask you if you want the to be rerouted if you go of course.

Access Saved Maps From MapQuest.com

Maps created and saved on your desktop at MapQuest.com can be accessed on your iPhone.  All of you saved maps are located under “My Maps” on the iPhone app.

Clear Exit Photos

The map displays an exit photo when you need to exit the interstate.

Business Search

You can search for local business and have them mapped.

Search for addresses and businesses separately

This is a nice feature that lets the application knows you are searching for an address versus searching for a business name.

Pick Your Icon

Pick what icon to use to represent you on the map.  This might not be a useful feature but it is fun.

MapQuest raised the bar when creating this free app.  The app is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.  It requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.  The app is free and available in the app store.

What GPS device do you use?

Do you play FourSquare or Gowalla?  As a real estate appraiser you might not think playing location based games could help your business.  These games might not directly affect your bottom line, but you can use Facebook, Twitter, and even FourSquare or Gowalla to connect and build relationships with not only others in your industry, but local individuals you might not have met otherwise.

Foursquare can be an integral part of establishing, building and strengthening your presence and participation in your local community. via AgentGenius.  Check out their entire list of Top 10 Ways to Build Your Business in 2010 with Foursquare.

Click HERE if you can not see the embedded video above.

Check.in is a mobile web app (m.check.in) but eventually the company plans on releasing a native app for different mobile platforms.

When you open the webpage, it will determine your location and list all of the nearby places:

After selecting a location, Check.in matches that location on Brightkite, Foursquare, and Gowalla:

With one click, you can check-in to all three services!

Check.in takes some of the hassle out of broadcasting your location.  The convenience comes with a small price, once you check-in, that is it, no badges or mayorship, just a check-in.

The website is still in private beta.  You can sign up for a beta invite code at Check.in.

Right now the app only supports three social networks.  I would guess there would be an explosive growth in their market share when they add just a few more services like Facebook, Loopt, Yelp, MyTown, Whrrl, or Rally.

Check.in is not the only web app that allows you to check-in to multiple services at one time.

LocationFu.com supports Brightkite, Fire Eagle, Foursquare, and Twitter and promises to add more soon.

LocationFu is an easy way to broadcast your location to your favorite location-based social networks. Now, it doesn’t matter what network your friends are on – you can check-in from one place and have your location sent everywhere.

What do you think?  Does Check.in or LocationFu take some of the fun out of location based games and just add to all of the noise?  Will you use FourSquare in your social media strategy?

Yahoo released the Sketch-a-Search iPhone app that lets you search with your finger.  Say you are searching for a restaurant within 5 blocks of your current location but want to avoid a certain area, just draw a shape on the map and that area becomes your search area.

No keywords, or typing—just draw on your screen with your finger to identify where you want to search. You’ll get a bird’s eye view of your restaurant results, all conveniently located near your destination.

Click HERE if you can not see the embedded video above.

How to use Sketch-a-Search:

When you launch the Yahoo app, Google Maps (yes Google Maps) loads and finds your current location.

You can zoom the map in and out if you need to.  Then press the green button in the middle of the screen and use your finger to draw a search area.

The app will list restaurants within your search area along with reviews and their star rating.

You can also filter the results by restaurant cuisine, ambiance, and/or rating.

“What do you do when you’re looking for a restaurant in a certain area or section of town, and you don’t know the name of the neighborhood, or even its ZIP code?” Ariel Seidman, Yahoo’s director of Mobile Search products, said in a blog post. “Now with the Sketch-a-Search app, you can draw a circle around the general area on the map—around the San Francisco waterfront, let’s say—and voilà, restaurants appear.” via eWeek.com

As of right now, you can only search for restaurants, coffee shops, and some hotels.  However, Yahoo plans to expand to other categories like real estate.

Searching for real estate with the app would be very convenient.  Right now most real estate search engines allow you to search an area but that is usually fairly large.  What if you wanted to find a house or apartment on one side of a Highway or Interstate and close to a park?  You would be able to draw your search area on the map to narrow your search results.

I used the app today and interacting with the map to narrow my search results was fun.  Right now the app is a little buggy, like not being able to find several cities I searched for.  However, the app has the potential to be extremely useful and shows how searching for local businesses or real estate could change.

The iPhone app is free.  You can find the app in the app store.

I used RingCentral for several years to manage the stream of business calls I receive.  Now I use Google Voice as my main business line, it is cheaper (free) and has all of the features my small real estate appraisal company needs.

With Google Voice, you can easily mange your calls and voicemail, people can reach you no matter where you are , and the voicemail transcripts, while not perfect, can save you a lot of time.

Here are the 3 things I love about Google Voice and why it will be the independent contractor’s Best Friend Forever!

Click here if you can not see the embedded video above.

Think about all of the small businesses, independent contractors, and individuals in the service industry that use their cell phone as their business line.  It is a huge number and Google Voice could be a great solution for managing their phone calls.

Google voice allows you to to use certain features with your existing phone number, or you can set up your own Google Voice number for free and have access to even more great features!

Google Voice offers the ability to route any incoming call to any phone or straight to voicemail.  You can even create custom voicemail greetings based on the caller.  Other features that Google Voice includes are: the ability to set up office hours, searchable voicemail, ability to send SMS messages, free automated voicemail transcription, email and SMS notifications of voicemails, call screening, listen in, call recording, conference calling, and call blocking.

Google Voice has a Gmail-like interface that can be used to search for past messages, keep a backup of all of your text messages, and otherwise helps to organize the stream of information you receive over your phone.

Apple rejected the Google Voice iPhone app.  That doesn’t really matter now because Google released a webapp for the iPhone.

According to TechCruch:

It is built on HTML5 with most of the functionality of the original iPhone app, except that it cannot access the local contact list in your iPhone’s address book. It lets you manage a separate Google Voice contact list which is kept in the cloud instead. Google Voice voice routes your calls through its servers and acts as a new hub through which you can manage calls and forward them to various phones. You can also manage your settings and various phone numbers. The HTML5 makes it very fast, allows for local caching of data, and supports the voice tags necessary to play the audio voicemails through the browser.

You can request a Google Voice invite from Google by visiting their Request an Invite page.

LoopNet, Inc released an iPhone app on Jan 8th for anyone looking to buy or lease commercial real estate.  The app is free and does not require you to register to use it.

I downloaded the app and was searching for commercial real estate within seconds.  You can search for properties for sale or lease and there is a custom search option where you can narrow your search by property type, price, building size, lot size, and units/rooms/beds.

A map is shown with each available commercial property when you search for properties nearby.  You can touch each marker to learn a little about the property.

A detailed listing is also available that includes more photos and details about the property.  The property details include a description, the listing agent’s name and phone number, and an option to get directions via Google Maps.

The iPhone app seemed to replicate the functionality of the LoopNet website and is extrmemely easy to use.  I would recommend it to anyone searching for Commercial Real Estate.

LoopNet Commercial Real Estate Search

Published by: LoopNet.com

Pirce: Free

Posted by Bryan McDonald (Follow him on Twitter)

JotNot is an iPhone app that converts a photo into a document.  You simply take a picture of a document, receipt, etc, tell JotNot where the corners are, and it will process the image.  The document does not have to be straight and the picture can be taken from an angle.

JotNot is more than just a camera app. It uses proprietary image processing (similar to the imaging technology used in flatbed scanners) to automatically remove shadows, correct contrast and adjust white balance, so that your scanned documents come out looking as crisp and clear as possible every time.

JotNot seems to work best on black and white documents and finds the document’s edges easier when the white paper is on a darker colored surface.  Don’t worry about the document being straight or flat.  JotNot will correct the image when it is processed.

How easy is JotNot to use?

Step 1) Take a picture of a document

Step 2) Highlight the document

Step 3) Process the image.

Here is a short demo of the iPhone app.

Click Here if you can not see the video above.

How does JotNot compare to just taking a photo with the iPhone camera?

Below is a picture of a receipt I took with the iPhone camera, and the photo to the right is the picture processed by JotNot.

JotNot works well with small documents but I bet you are wondering how well it works with 8×10 documents.  It depends on the size of the text.  Below is a picture of a page out of an old appraisal book that I processed with JotNot.  The smaller text at the top of the document is hard to read while the larger text at the bottom is very easy to read.

One of the nice feature of JotNot is what you can do with the document after it is processed.  JotNot can email your document, save it to your JotNot library, send your document to Evernote, Upload to Box.net, upload to WedDav, or upload to Google Docs.  Evernote integration actually includes tags and notebooks, so you can specify exactly where you’d like to put your note.

JotNot does not upload the image to a server and instead all processing of the image is done right in the app. This allows users to be comfortable with the fact that the picture of say a receipt is not stored somewhere on the internet.

JotNot is $4.99 in the iPhone App Store

Posted by Bryan McDonald (Follow him on Twitter)