Come check out the new blog from NAR's Information Central! "Power Tools on Technology" is no longer being updated, but you'll find plenty of interest in the InfoCentral Blog. The InfoCentral Blog keeps you up-to-date on new and useful information resources for the real estate industry -- websites, research reports, eBooks, news articles, services and databases from NAR's Information Central, and more. Surf on over to http://narblog1.realtors.org/mvtype/infocentral/.

Recently added to NAR's Virtual Library eBooks Collection: del.icio.us Mashups, MySpace For Dummies®, Videoblogging, Digital Video Essentials, Digital Video For Dummies®, Videoblogging For Dummies®. Check out eBooks.realtor.org for these and other titles. NAR members can borrow up to 3 eBooks, digital audios, and/or videos for FREE. New to NAR's digital library? Just follow the Quick Start Guide...and have your NRDS number ready!

The membership of the National Association of REALTORS® has grown steadily over the years, although it has taken some hits every so often in the face of economic recessions. But for the most part, NAR membership has grown in defiance of economic and housing market conditions.

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.

Amazon, Microsoft, and a number of other Internet powerhouses make Seattle their home. Might the next big thing in online homebuying emerge from the West Coast city, too? Already garnering praise from homebuyers in Washington State and California, Seattle-based Redfin is taking its successful business model national, with new offices opening soon in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, DC.

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."

Both consumers and real estate professionals are flocking to the Web, employing new technologies to find, buy, sell, and market property. BtoB, a magazine for the marketing industry, believes direct marketers can learn some things from the real estate business and its use of videos, RSS, blogs, and other Web features. "Make an emotional connection," "Build relationships," and "Dare to dream" are among the five top tips explored in BtoB's article. One central theme tying the five tips together is learning to adapt to new technologies. "?One day someone will be driving through a neighborhood and they?ll see a sign with a podcast URL. A few minutes later they could be sitting in front of the property, watching a video tour on their cell phone. We want to be ready for that ? and make sure we?re adapting to accommodate it,? said one real estate executive.

Are blogs poised to become the next big thing in real estate? According to a Chicago Tribune report on a recent symposium on real estate technology, experts are predicting that in 2007 "real estate bloggers would at last depart from the tried-and-true formula of offering just home listings and common-sense home-sale advice and instead swing toward personalization to cultivate an image of authority and trustworthiness.

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.

One of the millions of people Time magazine is referring to in its 2006 Person of the Year report is Krista Miller, an agent with Windermere Bay Area Real Estate in Berkeley, CA. Using the video recording feature on her digital camera, Miller recently made a video tour of a client's home and posted it on YouTube for free, where it could be viewed by anyone in the world. The listing recently sold to someone who first saw the house on YouTube.

Congratulations! All of that hard work and sacrifice paid off. Time magazine has announced that you are its Person of the Year.

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."

Three products show how the power to create and share content is changing the Web as we know it. Find out more in the latest Web Wizard Report from NAR's Information Central.

REALTORS® have a variety of methods for communicating with clients, but e-mail is by far one of the most popular. 96% of REALTORS® report using e-mail for client communications at least some of the time, according to NAR's 2005 Member Profile. Instant messaging, however, isn't used nearly as much. Only 27% of REALTORS® said they IM'd clients in the 2005 survey.

Several popular online real estate sites have been busy making upgrades over the past few days, welcome news for home buyers and sellers using the Web.

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).

If you were among the millions of people affected by the recall of potentially explosive laptop batteries by Dell and Apple recently, you might be wondering if there's some alternative power source out there that might be a little less incendiary and a little more reliable. "The prevailing technology to power gadgets is lithium-ion batteries, which experts view as relatively safe despite last month's recall," says a Reuters report today. Part of the problem is that more is expected of laptop batteries than ever before, as people use their machines for power-hungry tasks like video-conferencing, interactive games, and watching full-length movies. Technology is available that would produce safer, longer-lasting batteries, but don't hold your breath for the new power sources to hit store shelves soon. "The next step is fuel cells, but (they) are a little way away," Gartner chief of research Jim Tully told Reuters. "In five to 10 years, fuels cells will become an integrated replacement for conventional batteries."

Catering to the needs of both REALTOR® members and their potential clients has helped make the Houston Association of REALTORS®' website one of the most successful association sites around. HAR members can access the MLS, check for leads, and pay dues online, among other activities. Consumers can search for listings and agents in the Houston area, of course, but some of the more unique features they'll find include a multilingual search tool, school comparisons, a "Highrise Finder" for apartment searching, and tools for finding only recently-added listings and open houses. Members and consumers can even search listings via their cellphones, and consumers have a chance to rate the service quality of individual REALTORS®.

If you've read the Harry Potter books or seen the movies, you probably remember the ever-changing staircases at Hogwarts: ?wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump.? Some of those shape-shifting qualities from the realm of Harry and his wizard pals might be appearing in a smart building near you -- although hopefully for more practical purposes. A new breed of architects is developing the concepts of "responsive structures" and shape-changing building envelopes, which would allow buildings to monitor their environment and change shape to suit a situation, much like a living organism.

More on the theme of keeping your information secure, this time regarding cell phones. Cell phones are the workhorse gadgets of the real estate industry, used by about 96% of REALTORS® at least a few times a week, according to the 2005 NAR Member Profile. Most consumers trade in their cell phones for a newer model every 18 months or so, but what happens to the information stored in your phone when you sell it or give it away? "Selling your old phone once you upgrade to a fancier model can be like handing over your diaries. All sorts of sensitive information pile up inside our cell phones, and deleting it may be more difficult than you think," warns the Associated Press.