Whats Buzzing In: Technology

Every year, over 1 billion trees are cut down in order to satisfy the needs of office workers around the world and estimated to grow more than 2% annually. Trees remove 100 to 120 billion tons of carbon from our atmosphere each year and help to remove carbon dioxide from other man-made sources. We can't afford to keep cutting down trees! Imagine a world where people agree on contracts and agreements in seconds, electronically and more secure than pen and paper. The contract is then portable and can be viewed and verified for authenticity by nearly every device on the planet. This is a world where signatures are accomplished through the touch of a button, reducing the carbon footprint required to simply agree or disagree. A convenience like this is straight out of 1960's commercial, where everyday actions are quicker, electronic, instant, and better. How do you save the environment by signing documents electronically? Saving money using electronic signatures is real and incredibly efficient. For example, suppose you are a real estate officer... Your phone rings, it is a title officer advising you that a home in your community just opened escrow. The title officer requested the appropriate documents in order for them to fulfill their requirements during the escrow process. Then you send them a letter to complete (costing staff time, materials and postage) giving consent on behalf of the owner to provide the documents to the requestor. Once completed the escrow officer returns the document to you (again costing postage). A member of your staff then finds the appropriate documents, makes copies, compiles the packet, prepares it for mailing and mails the disclosures in a huge envelope with almost a ream of paper (costing staff time, materials and postage, not to mention all of the auxiliary impacts on the environment such as mail truck emissions, fuel, etc). Electronic Signing is a better way to sign documents because of the ease of use and rapid turnaround time. Traditional methods require physically printing and traveling or mailing, faxing, scanning and signing a printed document. All of the traditional methods require more time, effort, cost, and carbon footprint to achieve. There are several services on the internet that allow for documents to be signed. Some are more popular than others, but they all allow you save paper, time and money. Docusign (www.docusign.com) is the oldest company doing esignatures online and can get you started for free with just a credit card. The service is full featured and has been working with California Association of Realtors for years. Docusign is probably the most used service in the Real Estate industry. However, the interface is a little quirky and the features are tough to learn. Docusign charges monthly for their service. Agreenments (www.agreenments.com) is one of the new players in this space. Agreenments.com offers a clean and simple interface, but also allows for dragging and dropping of signatures on the form that is uploaded. Agreenments recognizes the signatures in Adobe PDF documents and separates the audit trail from the document itself. Agreenments is a Pay as You go service. EchoSign (www.echosign.com) is the next largest company that offers signatures online. The process is quick and can get your document signed within a few moments. However, the service wants to sign the document in a weird place that might not be as natural to you as the signer. Verifying the document requires an internet connection and getting an audit trial can be a little challenging. EchoSign charges monthly as well for their service. RightSignature (www.rightsignature.com) is also one of the new players in this space. RightSignature allows you to attach a photo of yourself to the signature. The service is simple to use and although perfectly legal, right signature's photos make for a modified document with photos and an audit trail at the end of the document. RightSignature charges monthly for their service Overall, my favorite service (and cheapest) is Agreenments.com. It offers more bang for the buck and is a lot easier to use than the other three. An Agreenment is actually a series of documents and signatures. It goes straight to the point and helps you save the environment. My customers usually balk using other services because they are reluctant to share their personal information for a reason that is not quite clear to them. However, with agreenments.com, customers know that this is about saving paper and are more willing to participate. In fact, one customer told me she "felt ashamed that she had not used a service like this before". The less time you spend shuffling papers makes you a more efficient professional, period. The more you can avoid using resources the greener your process becomes. In the end, "Going Green" is a no brainer decision. You save the environment by being more efficient, and requiring less time in face to face meetings... plus you save money! Going Green is the best thing you can do to reduce your operating costs and increase your business!

Lifehacker recently announced the results of a survey of their readers regarding e-mail. 54% indicated they prefer to manage e-mail on the web, versus just 24% who prefer a desktop email client. 20% prefer a hybrid approach (see “Web-based e-mail slaughters Its Desktop Counterparts“). Web-based e-mail is preferred for lots of reasons. With this note I’ll highlight one you might not have considered yet. Web-based e-mail can be better for the environment. Google has been the driving force behind Data Center and Server efficiency and optimization for the last few years. They have been using a variety of means to lower data center energy use (detailed at Google’s Going Green site). The gist of it is that they use water evaporation, streamlined electrical infrastructure, and minimized technology requirements to curb their energy desires. They even take the Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) out of their servers to lessen energy requirements.

Many homeowners finance their solar panels, which can increase property values by roughly the cost of the system plus 10%. With the state rebates that are now offered, many home owners end up coming out way ahead!