The "smoking gun" behind the boom in REALTORS®, at least according to PoliticalCalculations.com, is technology. "Our working theory is that technological innovation, first in the form of the computerized MLS and later through improved access to information through computerized database and Internet technologies, lowered the barriers and costs of entry to larger numbers of real estate agents, above and beyond what would be expected if only the health of the U.S. housing market and economy is taken into consideration," says PoliticalCalculations' April 9 entry.

The theory certainly has merit, although technology is only part of the story behind the growth of real estate as a career. Lower interest rates and the general demand for housing are also significant factors, among others. And it's worth noting that 1975, the year noted by PoliticalCalculations for both the launch of computerized multiple listing systems and massive growth in NAR's membership, was also the year that NAR began offering a REALTOR-Associate® category of membership. NAR had primarily been an organization for brokers before 1974, but the new category opened membership to hundreds of thousands of sales agents. That change was the major force behind NAR's sudden exponential growth in 1975.

Redfin lets buyers do their own shopping with tools to help them research and find the home they'd like to buy, then offers the services of a real estate agent to assist in making a formal offer, negotiating the deal, lining up inspections and coordinating the closing. The company rewards Web-savvy buyers for their work with a rebate. By letting buyers find the property they want and letting agents handle the transaction details, Redfin hopes to bring changes to the real estate industry. The company is barely a year old, and already "[o]ur numbers have gone from zero percent market share to about 2 percent [in the Seattle area]," CEO Glenn Kelman told the Seattle Times. "That's insignificant, but time is on our side."

But real estate professionals are only just beginning to see the benefits of blogging. A blog requires a certain amount of time and effort to work well, keeping many time-squeezed agents on the sidelines. "You have to be blogging consistently for six months to a year, with good content, not just boilerplate, to generate transactions," one agent told the Tribune. Those who persist and find ways to make their blog interesting claim the technology can generate clients and more sales.

Okay, maybe not you specifically, but "you" as in anyone who creates content and posts it on the Internet. Instead of focusing on the violence and skirmishes that made so many headlines this year, Time decided to pay homage to the growing trends of individual contribution and cooperation that are making many of today's most popular websites so successful: "It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes."

The colleges are trying to narrow the gap by adapting to other forms of communication to get their messages out -- MySpace, text messaging, RSS feeds, podcasts, etc. "It's not that they don't read e-mail," said Brian Niles, chief executive of a student recruiting firm for colleges. "It's that they have their own world, and you need to know how to reach them in that world."

The first change comes from Zillow, which since its launch earlier this year has frustrated homeowners and real estate professionals by providing inaccurate portrayals about home values and features. "Zillow is hoping to address that issue with a new version of the service that leverages the knowledge of the people who know the property the best -- the homeowners," reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. On Wednesday Zillow began allowing owners to add information about their homes, calculating new values based on their input and letting them add comments about recent remodeling work, etc. By letting owners do some of the footwork about their properties, Zillow hopes to be able to provide a more accurate, useful service (although a professional appraisal is still the best way to find out a home's value).

Another housing search engine, Trulia, is expanding its service to include all 50 states and next week will start providing more useful information about neighborhoods -- school quality, home sales trends, crime data, "heat maps" and more. "While it’s unclear how valuable it is to designate a neighborhood as hot (for instance, number of sales is ranked on an absolute basis, driving larger neighborhoods higher), this kind of data is going to find a use, from voyeurism to nervous buyer counseling to (perhaps) smarter investments," says the GigaOM blog.

And last but certainly not least, Coldwell Banker's Personal Retriever is making the home search process even easier by taking the form of a widget that will display listing information directly on a computer desktop. On downloading the widget and setting up specifications for the kind of home they're interested in, consumers "will have the most updated listings right at their fingertips, without having to search through e-mail or log on to a Web site," reports the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

Of course, if you're really worried about what someone might find on your phone after you're done with it, there's always the more drastic method suggested by computer security expert Peter Zatko: "I'd run over the phone," Zatko told the AP. "Maybe give it an acid bath." That might not be very beneficial for the resale value of the phone, but it does the job of keeping your information out of someone else's hands.