Popular real estate company Zillow today announced work on an all-new iOS application that will make it incredibly easy for real estate agents to add interactive 3D tours of homes and apartments.
It’s long been taken as read that high tech company salaries push up housing costs in the surrounding areas, but the WSJ commissioned home tracking company Zillow to provide some hard data. By tracking the increase in values of homes owned by Apple employees, it was able to prove that home values in those areas rose further and faster than in surrounding areas with similar demographics.
The piece notes that zoning laws and regulatory red tape also have a significant effect, by limiting the supply of housing at a time when demand is increasing, but the comparison does suggest that there is a direct link to tech companies like Apple.
Homes occupied by Apple workers are appreciating at 18% a year, compared with 11% for San Francisco as a whole and 12% for San Jose. Since iPhone sales launched in June 2007 [and stock values rose], the Zillow analysis found, the average difference between the median home value of Apple workers and San Jose workers has swelled to 20% from 13%.
The problem of lower-paid workers finding it hard to find housing within reasonable commuting distance of tech companies like Apple has been highlighted in the past. Apple took the decision back in March to hire the majority of its previously contracted security guards as staff, providing them with health insurance and retirement benefits. The company also arranged for its contracted shuttle bus workers to get an improved deal.
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Apple announced on Tuesday that iOS 7 will be publicly available on September 18th. The revamped OS moves completely away from the realistic designs of the past six generations, dropping almost all “artificial shadows” (as Apple SVP Craig Federighi called them), gloss, and even button borders. Instead, the Jony Ive-inspired interface features an entirely rethought design language that focuses heavily on large icons, lightweight fonts, whitespace, transparency, and conservative use of color.
We previously took a look at what some of Apple’s own in-house apps could look like when redesigned for iOS 7. During Apple’s September 10th event, Federighi flashed up a slide displaying the upcoming iOS 7 updates for many third-party applications. None of the apps were labeled, but we’ve tracked down names for most of them.
The apps featured are:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ax1gMhKvMo]
Sing! version 1.0.1: The developers of popular iOS music apps “AutoRap”,”Ocarina”, and “I Am T-Pain have just released its latest social sing-along experience with the new Sing! app. Smule described the app as a “global karaoke party.” The app allows you to select from a large collection of songs, record your karaoke version, and share the results with friends and other users in a format similar to Ocarina and the developer’s other apps.
Features:
-Connect with your friends by giving & receiving comments and likes.
-Share your performances with the community through the globe.
-Join other songs for free and make it a duet or group song!
-Enhance your voice with special voice effects: Pop, Vintage, or SupaTune.
-Easy sharing to the outside community via Facebook.
-And much more!
FlightTrack Free: The developers of FlighTrack, the top-grossing travel app for the last four years, announced today that it would make a free version available to all users starting tomorrow. The free version will also be accompanied by a huge update that includes a redesigned UI with integrated flight maps and details, zoomable maps, and full international coverage for over 1400 airlines. In terms of what is different in the free version, you will not be able to sync with TripIt. However, a full comparison of FlightTrack features is below. The new app will be available for free starting tomorrow in the following languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, and Spanish.