Let’s say you’re walking around your neighborhood, or a neighborhood you’d like to make yours, and you spy a house you find interesting. Even if it isn’t for sale, you can just whip out your iPhone, take a picture of the home and in less than a minute, you’ll have an estimate of its price, plus details on its square footage, number of rooms, similar homes for sale and other facts.

This feat of digital magic, which works all over the country, is performed by a new, free app called HomeSnap, from a Washington, D.C., online real-estate firm, Sawbuck Realty. Despite its parentage, the company says that using the app doesn’t send any data to a Realtor, or invite any calls or emails from one—unless you explicitly ask for such a connection. It’s just a cool way to investigate houses and if you like, to share your “Snaps”—photo profiles of houses—with HomeSnap users and friends via email, text or social networks.

Why would you want to use it? Maybe you’re interested in buying the house if it ever comes on the market, or helping a friend do so. Or, maybe you’re just curious, or nosy. Of course, you could be in real house-hunting mode, and HomeSnap gives you even more information if the house you took a picture of is for sale, including interior photos and bid history. There’s even the option of contacting a buyer’s agent, asking a question or requesting a tour—right from the phone.

You can use the app to flip through Snaps taken by others, either in nearby areas or around the nation. (HomeSnap allows you to keep your own Snaps out of this “stream,” if you’d rather your neighbors don’t know you’ve been investigating their homes or you’d rather not tip off potential competing buyers.)

There are many real-estate apps and websites, such as Zillow, that allow you to get similar information. Some real-estate firms have their own. But these typically require you to type in an address, or troll through a list, or study a map and tap on a marker that represents a house of interest. All HomeSnap requires is that you snap the shutter on your iPhone. (Android and iPad versions are in the works.)

I’ve been testing HomeSnap for a few weeks in two states: Maryland and Rhode Island. In my 17 attempts, the app almost always correctly identified the house I was shooting. In two cases, both in town-house complexes, it wasn’t sure and presented me with an aerial photo displaying a few guesses from which I could pick. In two other cases, it couldn’t identify the house at all for some reason.

The app doesn’t actually perform photo recognition on the house. Instead, it uses the iPhone’s GPS capability and its sensors to identify the house and then fetches the details from a server in the cloud.

HomeSnap includes a Stealth mode that lets you take a picture when you aren’t right in front of a house—even when you’re inside another nearby house—and get an aerial view of homes in the area from which you can choose a property as your Snap. This proved accurate for me. In one test, it worked perfectly when I was only able to shoot the rear of a house.

Sawbuck says it built the app partly because it hopes that if a user likes it, he or she will one day use one of its agents. But it says so far only about 10% of the 150,000 Snaps taken with the app have been of homes that are actually for sale.

If a home isn’t for sale, HomeSnap draws its information from public information like tax records, school boundaries, and census data. If a home is for sale, it provides much more detailed information drawn from local listing databases.

I found HomeSnap fun and impressive. It’s a good tool for investigating possible purchases, learning the estimated value of a house and getting other important information. For example, each Snap includes scores from third-party data vendors that rate the quality of nearby schools and rate the relative appreciation and investment value of a home, over 10 years, compared with the average. Some Snaps reveal previous sale dates and prices.

But its information wasn’t always complete or accurate. For instance, in the case of my own home, which isn’t on the market, it got the number of bathrooms wrong, and didn’t know the number of bedrooms—an omission the company blames on a quirk in the public records available for my area. (My tests elsewhere did include the number of bedrooms.) The app has a feature that allows you to report such errors.

In addition, the app currently doesn’t have extra information drawn from listings of homes for rent and can’t pinpoint units inside large buildings. The company says it’s working on both capabilities.

It marks photos of certain homes with a color-coded banner—green if the home is for sale; orange if it’s under contract; and purple if there’s an coming open house for the property. If there’s a major change in the information on a Snap in your history, the app updates it.

The app keeps a history of your Snaps and the company retains them on its servers, whether or not you choose to make them public. In its licensing terms, the company reserves the right to reuse, or modify, the photos you take, though it promises not to “materially” change them, or to distribute or reproduce photos taken by those who opt to keep them private.

If you’re looking for a house or just curious about one and you own an iPhone, HomeSnap is a clever, useful and entertaining tool. Get HomeSnap HERE on iTunes now!! Learn more about HomeSnap on the Sawbuck website.

This is Marc Andreessen. He’s not as rich as Bill Gates, not as inspirational as Steve Jobs, nor as well-known as Mark Zuckerberg—but that doesn’t make him any less important. Because, in his twenty year career, Andreessen has probably done more than any other person to change the way we communicate online.

Wired is running a series of interviews to mark its 20th anniversary, and its first centers around Andreessen—the man who invented the first graphical web browser, and went on to back companies like Twitter, Instagram and Skype. It makes for great reading.

It’s based around five of Andreessen’s key ideas: in 1992 that everyone would have the web; in 1995 that the browser would become the OS; in 1999 that businesses would live in the cloud; in 2004 that everything would become social; and in 2009 that software will eventually eat the world. Some of those points show amazing foresight. As a taster, take this example from 1995:

“Technology is like water; it wants to find its level. So if you hook up your computer to a billion other computers, it just makes sense that a tremendous share of the resources you want to use-not only text or media but processing power too-will be located remotely. People tend to think of the web as a way to get information or perhaps as a place to carry out ecommerce. But really, the web is about accessing applications. Think of each website as an application, and every single click, every single interaction with that site, is an opportunity to be on the very latest version of that application. Once you start thinking in terms of networks, it just doesn’t make much sense to prefer local apps, with downloadable, installable code that needs to be constantly updated.”

The man clearly knows a thing or two about predicting the future of the internet. You should read the full series of interviews HERE. (Gizmodo via Wired)

Facebook is looking at the May 17 date for its initial public offering, TechCrunch reports, citing several source familiar with the matter.

These sources also claim that Facebook will be valued at around $100 billion or $40 a share – close to the current valuation of the company based on secondary market trading.

The date, however, is not set in stone. Federal regulators might want more time to look at paperwork from Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, which could push the IPO date back.

A change of climate in the market — perhaps due to mounting problems in the Euro-zone — could also be a factor. Net income slid 12 percent to $205 million in the quarter, from $233 million a year earlier at the company, which is aggressively expanding and adding employees.

They are also paying Microsoft $550 million for access to 650 patents, All Things Digital’s Ina Fried reports. because they’re facing a patent lawsuit from Yahoo. It appears that a number of these patents come from the $1 billion in intellectual property that Microsoft purchased from AOL earlier this month. Sources close to the deal said that Microsoft and Facebook wanted to partner on the purchase of the AOL patents all along, but the rules of that auction wouldn’t allow it. As the patent wars heat up, these things are changing hands like hotcakes. Yahoo and AOL are desperate to turn their fortunes around, and patents are the most valuable ammunition they have. Meanwhile, rising titans like Facebook are flush with cash but short on IP.  For the nitty gritty on this, Microsoft has issued a press release; read it HERE.

Facebook said in an updated filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday that its advertising business, which accounts for the bulk of its revenue, typically slows down in the first three months of the year. The rapid growth in advertising may have “partially masked” such trends to date, and that seasonal impacts may be more pronounced in the future, it noted.

Revenue, which totaled $1.06 billion in the three months ended March 31, declined 6 percent from the fourth quarter.

Facebook said its total number of monthly active users surpassed 900 million in the first quarter.

Facebook added more than 1,000 employees in the year ended in March, taking its headcount to 3,539.

In the meantime, check out everything we know about the Facebook IPO so far in this handy guide.

1. PinReach (http://www.pinreach.com/)

PinReach measures your Pinterest influence. As well as giving you an overall score, it provides easy-to-read charts and tables that show your most popular pins and boards.

2. Snapito (http://snapito.com/)

Rather than just pin an image, Snapito lets you screengrab an entire website. In addition to the standard grab, the timestamped snapshot of a website option is a useful bookmark.

3. Pin A Quote (http://pinaquote.com/)

Pin A Quote offers a simple service. If you highlight a block of text, it will convert it into a good-looking “quote” to pin to a board.

4. Pinstamatic (http://pinstamatic.com/)

Pinstamatic lets you add Twitter profile links, “Sticky Notes” and websites to your boards. It’s one to watch as it promises more content types soon.

5. url2pin.it (http://url2pin.it/)

Similar to Snapito, url2pin.it lets you pin a screengrab of a website (rather than just one image from that site) to a board.

6. Pinpuff (http://pinpuff.com/index.php)

Another “pinfluence” measurement service, Pinpuff awards you a score based on your reach, activity and the “virality” of your pins. It also gives you an idea of the value of your pins and referral traffic.

7. Pinerly (http://www.pinerly.com/landing)

Finally, Pinerly is currently in beta, but add your email address to the waiting list. It promises to be a comprehensive Pinterest analytics dashboard. Pinerly will graphically measure clickthroughs, likes and repins for “campaigns” created through the service, which would make it a very interesting tool for brands and businesses.

A group of e-commerce start-ups, backed by some of the tech world’s most pedigreed financiers, are betting that Facebook Inc can become an e-commerce powerhouse to rival Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc.

“It’s a big imperative for them,” said Theresia Gouw Ranzetta of Accel Partners, an early backer of Facebook. “They understand it’s an important strategic benefit for them to make e-commerce players successful on the platform.”

BIG BRAND STORES FLOP

“We have seen this with Facebook Credits and games. So, once social commerce fully takes off, it will only be natural that Facebook tries to benefit one way or another from it.” (Reuter’s)

Microsoft wants in on the drive to speed up the web. The company plans to submit its proposal for a faster internet protocol to the standards body charged with creating HTTP 2.0.

Not coincidentally, that standards body, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), is meeting this week to discuss the future of the venerable Hypertext Transfer Protocol, better known as HTTP. On the agenda is creating HTTP 2.0, a faster, modern approach to internet communication.

One candidate for HTTP 2.0 is Google’s SPDY protocol. Pronounced “speedy,” Google’s proposal would replace the HTTP protocol – the language currently used when your browser talks to a web server. When you request a webpage or a file from a server, chances are your browser sends that request using HTTP. The server answers using HTTP, too. This is why “http” appears at the beginning of most web addresses.

The SPDY protocol handles all the same tasks as HTTP, but SPDY can do it all about 50 percent faster. Chrome and Firefox both support SPDY and several large sites, including Google and Twitter, are already serving pages over SPDY where possible.

Part of the IETF’s agenda this week is to discuss the SPDY proposal, and the possibility of turning it into a standard.

But now Microsoft is submitting another proposal for the IETF to consider.

Microsoft’s new HTTP Speed+Mobility lacks a catchy name, but otherwise appears to cover much of the same territory SPDY has staked out. Though details on exactly what HTTP Speed+Mobility entails are thin, judging by the blog post announcing it, HTTP Speed+Mobility builds on SPDY but also includes improvements drawn from work on the HTML5 WebSockets API. The emphasis is on not just the web and web browsers, but mobile apps.

“We think that apps – not just browsers – should get faster,” writes Microsoft’s Jean Paoli, General Manager of Interoperability Strategy.

To do that, Microsoft’s HTTP Speed+Mobility “starts from both the Google SPDY protocol and the work the industry has done around WebSockets.” What’s unclear from the initial post is exactly where HTTP Speed+Mobility goes from that hybrid starting point.

But clearly Microsoft isn’t opposed to SPDY. “SPDY has done a great job raising awareness of web performance and taking a ‘clean slate’ approach to improving HTTP,” writes Paoli. “The main departures from SPDY are to address the needs of mobile devices and applications.”

SPDY co-inventor Mike Belshe writes on Google+ that he welcomes Microsoft’s efforts and looks forward to “real-world performance metrics and open source implementations so that we can all evaluate them.”

Belshe also notes that Microsoft’s implication that SPDY is not optimized for mobile “is not true.” Belshe says that the available evidence suggests that developers are generally happy using SPDY in mobile apps, “but it could always be better, of course.”

The process of creating a faster HTTP replacement will not mean simply picking any one vendor’s protocol and standardizing it. Hopefully the IETF will take the best ideas from all sides and combine them into a single protocol that can speed up the web. The exact details – and any potential speed gains – from Microsoft’s HTTP Speed+Mobility contribution remain to be seen, but the more input the IETF gets the better HTTP 2.0 will likely be. (Gizmodo)

CLICK IMAGE TO RSVP

SUMMARY: A decade after his heroic defeat of the monstrous Kraken, Perseus—the demigod son of Zeus—is attempting to live a quieter life as a village fisherman and the sole parent to his 10-year old son, Helius. Meanwhile, a struggle for supremacy rages between the gods and the Titans. Dangerously weakened by humanity’s lack of devotion, the gods are losing control of the imprisoned Titans and their ferocious leader, Kronos, father of the long-ruling brothers Zeus, Hades and Poseidon. The triumvirate had overthrown their powerful father long ago, leaving him to rot in the gloomy abyss of Tartarus, a dungeon that lies deep within the cavernous underworld. Perseus cannot ignore his true calling when Hades, along with Zeus’ godly son, Ares (Edgar Ramírez), switch loyalty and make a deal with Kronos to capture Zeus. The Titans’ strength grows stronger as Zeus’ remaining godly powers are siphoned, and hell is unleashed on earth. Enlisting the help of the warrior Queen Andromeda (Rosamund Pike), Poseidon’s demigod son, Argenor (Toby Kebbell), and fallen god Hephaestus (Bill Nighy), Perseus bravely embarks on a treacherous quest into the underworld to rescue Zeus, overthrow the Titans and save mankind.

]]> http://hitekconsulting.com/free-wrath-titans-3d-dc-advance-screening-32712.html/feed 0 http://hitekconsulting.com/tools-finding-perfect-job.html http://hitekconsulting.com/tools-finding-perfect-job.html#comments Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:30:15 +0000 hitekllc http://hitekconsulting.com/?p=2419

When you’re on the job hunt, it’s easy to take an “anything will work” approach to the scope of your search. Everyone remembers the grade-school saying “beggars can’t be choosers,” but it’s not enjoyable to be saddled with a job that’s not a good fit.

Have you used these services to get your dream job? Or do you have a foolproof tool for a custom job search experience? Let us know in the comments.

This is Resunate from Resunate on Vimeo.

It’s easy to think of a potential employer as the venerable “man behind the curtain.” I mean, what do recruiters actually do when they’re looking over resumes? Resunate attempts to get rid of the curtain altogether by showing users just how their resumes look to a recruiter or potential employer. This tool parses your entire uploaded resume and compares it to the description of the job you’re after, acting the way an employer’s applicant tracking system (ATS) would work. Then, you get a score from 1 to 10 that determines how well your application would stack up in the ATS. Armed with that feedback, you can tweak your CV to boost your score or allow Resunate to “Auto Focus” your resume for the job, truncating any unnecessary skills and boosting ATS visibility. You can keep as many resumes as you want on the site, letting you can tailor all of your resumes to each position for which you’re applying. It isn’t totally free, though — Resunate’s freemium model means that you’ll have to pay up (starting at $14.95 per month) if you want to take advantage of everything the website has to offer.

Oftentimes, securing the job that’s perfect for you isn’t about what you know, but who you know. LunchMeet is a spanking-new mobile app that gives you the opportunity to put yourself in front of business recruiters, upper-level execs, and others in your industry without pressure. Simply sign up with your LinkedIn account and search to see what professionals are available for networking over lunch or coffee. Meeting with these professionals is also a great way to get an inside look at a company if you’re looking to break in or change industries. The app is still new, so the level of reliable peer networks is difficult to tell. It has serious promise for those who are networkers at heart, and it can help you put a personal face onto your job search.

If you’re interested in learning about the HR culture and work environment at a company, GlassDoor is a must-use. With everything from interview recaps to blind salary reports, GlassDoor gives the skinny on all aspects of a company from anonymous voices on the inside. It’s best to use GlassDoor to get the full idea of a company before you fill out the application — you could even see what your offer could look like if you get that far. Another useful feature of the website is the “CEO Approval Rating,” letting you know how employees feel about their leader and upper management. GlassDoor is one of the easiest ways to find out whether you’re going to be happy at a company and what your future there could look like. The one downside is, to have a fleshed-out profile a company must have plenty of employees to give the inside scoop. If you’re looking at lean and hungry startups, you’re not going to find much information — if any at all. But if you’re looking at bigger companies with higher profiles, it’s worth a peek.

One of the most difficult things about a job search is, well, searching. Sifting through dozens of job sites, both aggregate and company-specific, can be a total energy and morale drain. It’s a necessary evil: If your dream job wasn’t posted today, it could be there tomorrow or the day after. There’s no magic formula that dictates the perfect time to snag a dream job, so escaping the search is impossible. However, Indeed‘s search engine makes the pain of search a little simpler. Thanks to its minimalist and straightforward design, it just takes a couple of seconds to set up a recurring search protocol and a profile that displays your resume to potential recruiters. With no upfront cost and little hassle, it’s also easy to set up an alert system that will email you whenever a potentially relevant job — based on strictly specified keywords — comes up. It’s not a full replacement for daily search, but indeed is a good base of operations for the smart job hunter. (Mashable)

One World Trade Center is soaring into the stratosphere at such breathtaking speed that it will rise above the roof of the Empire State Building in four to six weeks — and claim its crown as New York’s tallest building.

The cloud-buster known to most New Yorkers as the Freedom Tower, its original name, hit the 93rd floor just six days ago — and at a dizzying 1,208 feet above street level, it’s now the city’s second tallest skyscraper. On a sun-splashed day last week, here’s an exclusive tour of the tower’s summit and the kingdom of the ironworkers, the “cowboys of the sky” who perch fearlessly on I-beams to raise the steel skyward.

These 150 hard hats are the unsung heroes of America’s post-9/11 recovery, and they take immense pride in their mission to rebuild what the terrorists knocked down — and guide their steel once again to the top of the world.

“When we first got here, it was The Pit — nasty, sad and dreary — a hole in the ground filled with ashes, a place where everybody looked down,” said Michael O’Reilly, 37, a second-generation ironworker from Amityville, N.J.

“Now, instead of looking down into the rubble, people are looking up into the sky … high into the sky. And instead of mourning, instead of crying, they are now smiling.”

The return of the Trade Center to dominance of the city’s skyline honors the 3,000 innocents massacred on 9/11 and fulfills a city, state, regional and national commitment to reclaim what Al Qaeda tried to erase, says Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye.

“The iconic Twin Towers we lost can never be replaced,” he said as two dozen workers clambered across the girders to ring the building with a massive blue protective cocoon.

“But here we are standing 1,200 feet above the streets of Manhattan, watching the steel installed for the 93rd floor, and we’re seeing a new iconic World Trade Center that will light up the skyline for decades to come.”

Majestic and shimmering, the tower commands spectacular views encompassing the shorefront homes of Bay Ridge, the runways of Kennedy Airport, the necklace of the George Washington Bridge, the much shorter spires of downtown and midtown.

It’s a view the world will enjoy from 1,269 feet in early 2014 when the tower’s three-level observation deck on the 100th, 101st and 102nd floor opens to the public. Pointing northwest, over the swamplands and suburbs of New Jersey, Foye jokes, “Don’t strain your neck, but if you look very hard, you can see Alaska.”

It’s been a tough 10 years: The 104-story, 1,776-feet tower was originally projected to cost $2.1 billion and its first completion date was set for 2006. But budget-busting delays pushed the ribbon-cutting back eight years and its pricetag skyrocketed to $3.9 billion.

Despite reversals, and a tab borne by bridge-and-tunnel tollpayers, the 2.6 million-square-foot colossus has become exactly what architect Daniel Libeskind envisioned in his 2003 master plan — America’s defiant answer to terrorism.

“It’s the eighth wonder of the world,” says Steve Plate, the PA’s director of World Trade Center Construction. “It’s a statement of fortitude and determination and the absolute best of mankind.”

Rising an average of 9.5 feet a week, 1 WTC now stands eight feet taller than the 1,200-foot Bank of America Tower and 162 feet taller than the 1,046-foot Chrysler Building.

It’s also quickly closing in on the Empire State Building, which held the tallest title from its completion in 1931 to the opening of the Twin Towers in 1973 — and again after their horrific collapse on Sept. 11, 2011.

Foye says that in four to six weeks, when 1 WTC hits the 101st floor, it will have reached 1,254 feet, surpassing by four feet the 1,250-foot roof of the Empire State.

“Nothing better displays our resolve,” he says.

The icon will keep scaling new heights, and when it gets to 1,368 feet at the 104th floor, it will equal the top of the destroyed North Tower. After that, the 408-foot mast will bring it to its signature 1,776 feet.

Along the way, the tower will surge past the 1,454-foot tip of the Empire State’s antenna spire, probably in the last three months of this year.

Then it will overtake the old North Tower’s 1,727-foot antenna tip, and finally Chicago’s 1,729-foot Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, to become the tallest building in America.

But to O’Reilly and his fellow ironworkers, they’ve already reached the top of the world.

“We’re now so high up in the sky,” he says, “that we can literally wave into the windows of passing airplanes.” (Daily News)

The iPad 3 will soon be rolled out for all to experience and scrutinize, but somehow a guy named Simon Pierro got his hands on a unit earlier than anyone else. I gotta say, the “iPad 3″ has some pretty amazing features. Watch the video below! (TechEater)