Technology is helpful if you use it.

Would you agree? Is that true for you?


We recently spent two days in South Georgia reviewing a market and taking photographs of land sales all over a county. In the interest of getting the 'best' pictures, we used a nice digital camera.


Arriving back at the office in Chattanooga, we began the task of matching the photos to the sale information. I opened iPhoto and got to work, but alas, there was no map showing the picture's location. I mentally reviewed my potential errors and found to my surprise, I had been using my iPhone or iPad to take photos at the end of the previous project for clean up because it was easier (the camera you have is the one you use) and those devices (iPhone/iPad) both take great pictures. They also have 'geolocational' feature which means they 'tag' every photograph with its location within about 10 meters.
Alas, the "better" photos were NOT better because they were missing what for me has become a key ingredient in my picture taking, geolocational tagging.


Guess I will be giving my 'camera' to my daughter Katherine. For me from now on, I plan to exclusively use my iPhone and iPad for work photographs.


(and plan for my next trip to Italy so I'll have a map on iPhoto that looks like this one . . .)

tools are cool

Reinvestigation and renewal is most always good.  I have been much more focused on real estate brokerage over the past nine years and had drifted away from using the Institute and the IR/WA tools and resources.

The good news . . . while I was away, they were BUSY!

Remember the world before GIS, iPhones, and iPads?  Applications were what we filled out for lenders from whom we wanted assignments.  We looked through Deed Books page by page for data.  All that has changed.  Did you know that the Appraisal Institute even has a podcast - with some great topics and speakers?

The IR/WA is leveraging social media to connect with all right of way professional disciplines - a changing industry for certain.  If you worked for Georgia DOT back then, you will remember the brief push for metric plans and calculating awards in hectares.

Like slipping into a pair of the most current version of your favorite old Cole Hahn driving mocs, it is exciting and comfortably familiar at the same time.