This post comes to us from the Market Leader blog:

The importance of the advent of the smartphone and its cousin, the tablet, cannot be overstated. The power of the World Wide Web is now as portable as a pocket watch, and this is changing the way real estate is bought and sold. Agents who don't change with technology will soon be left behind, as wider and wider swaths of their market embrace new methods of communication.

How can you keep up? It's important to become more modern in your methods and more responsive to communications. Technology is a vital part of that effort. With that in mind, here are a number of tools that may help you become a more productive and successful agent.

1. Full Contact Card Reader

If you're like me, you've driven around with piles and boxes full of business cards from people you've been planning to call when you get to your phone. But it takes time and effort to key all those contacts into Outlook or your CRM.

Card Reader lets you take a quick scan of a business card and upload the information to the cloud in a snap. From there, a team of actual human employees – not robots or computers, transcribes the information on the cards into a fully searchable database. The fact that it's humans entering the data addresses a flaw from earlier versions of the technology – computers would do strange things with the data, making it tough to work with later.

A couple of taps on a newly scanned card invites your new contact to LinkedIn, further solidifying the contact. And Card Reader backs up and synchs your contacts to your SalesForce, FullContract address book and your iPhone/Android contacts. Data is ISV-Certified secure. Plans start at $9.99 per month. It's not quite a full-time personal assistant, but it goes a long way.