If there’s one thing real estate agents don’t have a lot of, it’s time. Productivity is key to a successful career, and there’s a few new tech gadgets that might help in that department. Take a look.
Halo Rise
Often the most productive work days start the night before – with sound, regenerative sleep.
But, as we all know, getting 40 winks can be a bit hit and miss sometimes, especially if you’ve got a long to-do list running through your mind.
That’s where Amazon’s new Halo Rise might help, with its no-contact sleep tracking, environmental sensing, smart alarm and wake-up light.
Using sensor technology and machine learning, Halo Rise accurately senses respiration and movement patterns to work out your sleep stages and provides you with a detailed sleep summary when you wake up.
It includes things like a graph showing you the time spent in each sleep phase – REM, light and deep sleep – along with a sleep score and sleep environment information.
Built-in environmental sensors measure your room’s temperature, humidity, and light levels throughout the night, and then it integrates with the Amazon Halo app to provide you science-backed recommendations on how to optimise the room’s sleep environment.
In the morning, a wake-up light simulates the colours and gradual brightening of a sunrise, creating a natural and gentle wake experience that triggers in conjunction with the smart alarm that has monitored your sleep cycle and woken you at the ideal time so you start the day feeling rested and alert.
“Quality sleep is an incredibly important factor in our overall health and well-being,” Amazon Smart Home and Health Vice President Melissa Cha said.
“In today’s busy world, getting more and better sleep is one of the areas that customers ask us about the most, which is why we’re tackling sleep head on.
“Halo Rise is designed to work intelligently in the background and give you an entirely new and effortless way to manage your sleep and achieve sleep-life harmony.”
Freewrite Alpha
Sticking with the productivity theme, the Freewrite Alpha is a smart typewriter that is exactly for what it says on the label – writing.
If you need to draft a new listing presentation, event speech or even just some ad copy without all of the ‘dings’ from apps and other notifications then this is the way to go.
There’s also no social media to distract you and the folks from Astrohaus say users often end up being able to write twice as much in a lot less time.
But the best part is, it does sync to the Cloud, so once you’ve got your draft done, your work is saved and can be picked up in Google Drive, Evernote and Dropbox for future editing or to send it wherever it needs to go.
Astro the guard dog
Amazon released Astro the home robot last year, with the ability to bring you a drink, check if you’ve left the stove on or detect if a stranger is in your home.
But now, Astro has gotten even smarter and can be used as a ‘guard dog’ in small and medium businesses – including in real estate agencies.
And while this tech gadget isn’t exactly a productivity pleaser, we’re sure you’ll agree office security is also important.
Amazon has linked Astro up to the Ring video doorbell as well as Ring’s Virtual Security Guard (VSG), so if the Ring alarm at your agency goes off while you’re not there, Astro will proactively and autonomously go and check out what’s going on.
You can also use Astro’s cameras to see what’s happening in real time.
“If something is wrong, (VSG) agents can take appropriate action, like calling dispatch to send the right authorities, or warning off an intruder through two-way talk,” Amazon says.
Astro’s guard dog services are currently being tested with a small group of businesses in the US before a wider rollout.
