Things To Do In SW Florida

LAS VEGAS — Artificial intelligence will play a bigger role in helping consumers buy and sell homes, as it moves from behind the scenes to front and center in a whole range of areas, according to members of a panel at the annual conference of the National Association of Real Estate Editors in Las Vegas.

Zillow, the country’s largest real estate portal, began offering “natural language” searches on its mobile app to bring up more precise results. Rather than setting filters across a limited set of criteria, like the number of bedrooms and ZIP Code, consumers can speak or type what they want.

For example, a consumer could search for a three-bedroom house with a brick exterior built in the 1950s or 1960s with a large backyard near a public park in Denver.

“Artificial intelligence will have a tremendous benefit to the real estate industry,” said Jasjeet Thind, senior vice president of AI and Analytics at Zillow, on Wednesday.

Zillow has been deploying machine learning and artificial intelligence since 2006 in its Zestimates, which are automated estimates of a home’s value, Jasjeet said. Initial efforts generated a pricing error range of 14%, but that is now down to 2%. read more

SeaWorld Orlando has opened a coral rescue center attraction where theme-park visitors can observe some of the company’s conservation contributions in action.

“It’s fully functional. So if a guest comes in, on any given day, what they’re going to see is the coral biologist doing day-to-day husbandry. They’re going to see them feed the corals. They’re going to see them cleaning the corals. They’re going to be doing health assessments, measurements, you name it, water changes, everything that’s necessary to keep these very sensitive, at-risk animals healthy,” Jim Kinsler, aquarium curator at SeaWorld Orlando, said Friday.

Visitors are “They’re going to be talking directly with the experts. And so they’re going to be able to ask those hard-hitting questions about what’s happening on the reef,” he said.

The center’s corals – 15 different species – were selected and transferred from the nearby Florida Coral Rescue Center to the SeaWorld Coral Rescue Center for care and with the goal of being returned to the Florida reef. read more

A new nonprofit is tasked with helping Orlando’s tech startups access more money and help build the city’s brand as a thriving tech base.

The group called Innovate Orlando, was founded by the Orlando Economic Partnership, as well as the City of Orlando and Orange County government.

Its primary task is leading a five-year plan, which was finalized earlier this year that sets goals including luring $3.5 billion more in venture capital by the end of 2028 and creating a community of 2,000 entrepreneurs in the same time period.

It also is hoping to develop an annual tech convention in Orlando which draws 10,000 people annually.

The initial conference is planned for later this year at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts downtown called MetaCenter Global Week. It’s scheduled for Oct. 17-19 and will feature Amazon, Meta, Google and Sonym, according to a news release.

The nonprofit will be headed up by David Adelson, who will become its CEO after serving as the Economic Partnership’s chief innovation officer. read more