The mobile phone is already considered indispensable in the modern world. As the device becomes increasingly powerful and complex, techno-evangelists are hailing it as the next frontier in digital communications

The humble mobile has become the focus of huge amounts of attention over the last four years, as companies ponder ways to turn it into both a hi-tech pocketbook and a universal communications device. The advent of mobile broadband and, increasingly, inexpensive mobile tariffs is now accelerating that process. Four years ago, researchers found that people leaving their houses always checked for three items: keys, wallet and mobile phone. The aim of technology companies today is to bring that down to just one item: the mobile.

Uniting a key with a mobile phone is a relatively simple process; the move to develop the phone into a mobile banking system capable of letting you pay for small items with your handset is taking longer. But, despite being hampered by the recession, things are now well under way. (See http://www.futureintelligence.co.uk/content/view/49/57/) Further mobile updates expected over the next five years will include new OLED (organic light emitting diode) screens which will have hugely increased resolution, soft metals, touch screens with tactile feedback, fast and accurate voice recognition systems, and keyboards and screens made from light.

The long-term aim is to produce completely mobile communications systems that can be easily worked with while on the move, have the same power and display functionality as a desktop PC, and which will provide instant internet access. The result of this will be mobiles that can be integrated into clothing, powered by our immediate environment, and capable of producing instant, full-size ‘air screens’ that we can interface with, either by talking or using ‘air keyboards’. Until the full emergence of this technology, in the short-term the attention is on the development of ultra-high-definition tactile screens that we can reconfigure into any interface required, using our fingers to access information.

The content industry is already gearing itself up to accommodate these developments, with film and mobile companies working hard to develop films, games and TV access via the mobile. Big internet companies, such as Google and Microsoft, are not only supporting this new technology, but are also actively engaged in developing it.

It’s a brave new world that is ignored by real estate companies at their peril. Real estate technology guru Professor Bernice Ross (See her interview and blog elsewhere in this issue) flags up the growing consumer trend to use their mobiles both to display property listing information, and then navigate to the location. She says companies should not just develop an internet presence, but one that can be accessed by the mobile.

‘The mobile is something that the real estate sector should not ignore. More and more information is being held by people on their mobiles; it is something that the President of Nokia has referred to as iPodification. All of your services should be delivered to one point. Because of that, there should be two variants of a real estate website – a full-blown version and a dot-mobi version which carries short, one-line descriptions for mobile.’

Some Realtors have already started to experiment. ‘We are seeing a lot of real estate companies starting to come to us for mobile websites,’ says Daniel West, CEO of Unity Mobile, a company that specialises in producing fully functional mobile websites capable of streaming high quality video.

‘Our technology allows people to set up incredibly inexpensive mobile phone websites in 10 minutes, which means that we can bring the functionality that only used to be available to large companies to smaller businesses, and that is proving very attractive to real estate.

‘We can redirect any website to a mobile so long as the content is digital, though it has to be remembered that no phone can deliver 100 per cent of the functionality that you get from the internet because a different technology is used. In some cases, people are finding that they have to build other applications to get an equivalent experience, but that’s not difficult to do.’

West points out that Unity’s system also allows huge amounts of analytical data to be extracted from any visit to its mobile websites. ‘Information about who a person is, what their phone number is, and what they have been doing while they were on the mobile website, can all be recorded. If you then think about the potential of being able to link that with SMS, then this becomes very powerful.’

Doug Garcia, director of research for Colliers Parrish, a large commercial real estate group based in the San Francisco Bay area, is already looking into ways that his company can exploit the trends in mobile, and also looking into the potential of the new locational services offered by companies such as Google. With other companies now working hard to offer services that will allow messages to be triggered on a mobile phone when you drive down a particular street, he predicts a world where you will sign up to receive alerts about a particular type of house within a certain price range from a Realtor’s internet site, and then be sent a message when you are near to a property advertised by that agent, asking you if you want to view it. This new mobile world will be supported by a huge raft of viewing technologies.

‘The rate of development of these technologies is already having an impact on the US real estate market,’ says Garcia. ‘We’ve explored using 3D modeling on the market. We are working towards a future where actual 3D tours will allow you to go to different floors of a building and look around the location using Google Earth.

‘Increasingly, we think that people will want to use 3D to assess the value of a property remotely, and the challenge there will be in the refresh of the 3D worlds that will evolve – though I could see that happening with social networking for an area where people will work to contribute information.’

Messaging that incorporates 3D as a means to demonstrate a complex problem or share views of properties and infrastructure projects is about to become standard internet practice, says industry insider Harry Vitelli

One of the features of United Lane’s pioneering Go CreateTM technology, 3D internet emailing has already been successfully developed for use with high-end civil engineering systems, according to Harry Vitelli, VP of platform product management for Bentley Systems MicroStation and ProjectWise 3D products. (is this still Harry’s position?)

‘We have been producing 3D systems for the infrastructure marketplace for a number of years, and we have found that it was relatively easy to send that information in a PDF format,’ he says.

Bentley’s software is used in large-scale building projects, such as bridges, roads, sports stadiums and power-plants, projects that range in cost from thousands to millions of dollars.

Given the complexity of the models the company was building, Bentley devised a system that, by dragging a mouse over a particular part of a 3D model, could pull out the 3D co-ordinates and store them so that they could be sent out as a snapshot or fragment of the parent model.

By working with Adobe, Bentley has perfected this method of working so that its customers can now send out 3D PDFs to contractors and other parties involved in a large project.

Says Vitelli: ‘We work on visualization during conception, design, construction and operation. We are there for the entire life cycle of a building to make sure that an asset is sustainable and cost-effective. 3D PDFs are instrumental in that, because you can send out a picture that shows the problem you are having and you can then discuss it.’

The company has found that this increased capacity for problem sharing has slashed production costs, and has led to improved efficiencies by allowing enhanced teleconferencing. ‘One of the great advantages of 3D is that it allows far better visualization. It’s the difference between a video and a photograph; it’s the reason why 3D is revolutionizing the civil engineering arena. There are now far more projects being carried out in 3D than in 2D and that trend is going to continue.’

And the growing demand for 3D is not restricted to the construction industry. Vitelli says Bentley is now seeing an increased demand for 3D by the public so that projects can be demonstrated and progress tracked.

‘When we do a bridge retrofit we are finding that we are being asked to make models available to the public so that they can get an idea of how a project will be done.’

For more information on Go CreateTM technology, please visit www.Open3dHouse.com