In the colorful, centuries-long history of house hunting, when have so many buyers come to the table knowing so much about prices, neighborhoods and school test scores?

Probably never. Credit an average 16 weeks spent browsing the Internet before buyers contact a real estate agent to get serious. Fifteen years into the World Wide Web, home searches once defined by riding around in agents' sport-utility vehicles – a process in which agents knew all and a buyer knew little – have been thoroughly recast.

Buyers – 84 percent of whom use the Internet for house hunting, according to a California Association of Realtors study – have taken on much of the information gathering formerly done by agents, who occupy the middle of a transaction and typically get a commission of 6 percent of the sales price, 3 percent for the seller's agent and 3 percent for the buyer's agent.

A variety of mostly similar Web sites now enable buyers to browse homes for sale, probe a home's transaction history, gauge its tax bite, compare area values and even see, via aerial photos, whether the neighbors have planted grass in the backyard.

This maturing of real estate Web sites has raised questions about where 519,000 California agents and brokers fit in and opened some debate about the size of their commissions. At least one online brokerage is trying to redefine the agent pay structure to gain business by making it cheaper to buy and sell.

Still, buyers and agents alike say the sheer complexity of buying and selling homes is keeping the current system largely intact. House buying as a click-here and do-it-yourself job is still much in the realm of fiction. Today, only about 5 percent of real estate sales occur solely between a buyer and seller, said Glenn Kelman, chief executive officer of Seattle's Redfin, an online brokerage aiming to simplify home buying.

Even the most Web-savvy buyers balk at trying to close a deal without an agent.

"I can buy $100,000 worth of stock with the click of a mouse. But I can't buy a $100,000 house without going through a ton of paperwork," said Adam Bradley, an Elk Grove information technology staffer. Early this year, he found an attractive listing online and went so far as to make an offer without actually seeing the house.

"We submitted an offer based on the pictures and the Google map showing me an overhead and a street view, and then we went out and saw it that weekend," he said.

But Bradley turned to an agent to navigate the daunting process of buying the house and closing escrow in May.

Many agents, especially younger ones, say the Web is enhancing, not damaging their careers.

"Last year I had 26 transactions and 14 came from the Internet," said Erin Attardi, 30, of Lyon Real Estate. Agents traditionally have gotten clients from referrals or from doing open houses.

"Most of my business comes from the Internet," said Attardi, of Sacramento. "It comes by way of my blog. I get a lot of business from Trulia. I get a little business from Zillow. But mainly it's my blog. People follow me on Twitter or find my Facebook page."

Said Attardi, "I got my license at the end of the housing boom. I knew I wasn't going to be getting any referrals. This was my strategy from the beginning."

Even as the Internet lessens buyer dependence on real estate agents, it's also making it easier for them. A 2009 Home Buyer Survey conducted by the California Association of Realtors showed that buyers who used the Internet, on average, visited 13 homes with an agent. Buyers who didn't use the Internet needed an average of 25 visits before deciding.

Chris Saizan, 26, a Keller Williams agent in Elk Grove, said he's established a relationship with a Bay Area real estate search site, movoto.com, that brings "four or five phone calls" daily. Among clients closing escrow this month are a couple from Fiji who searched the Sacramento housing market from thousands of miles away.

Saizan pays Movoto 30 percent of commissions from clients it sends his way. But that's just one site among many where his listings appear.

"When I get a listing, I enter it into our (Keller Williams) system. It automatically links to realtor.com, to Trulia, Zillow and all those other Web sites," he said.

Such sites have become a big bang in the online universe during the past five years. Others such as ziprealty.com, cyberhomes.com and smartzip.com also provide streams of visual and written information to help buyers investigate neighborhoods, property taxes and histories of individual homes. Sites that either rely on advertising or paid subscriptions distinguish themselves by specializing in automated home value estimates, highlighting price reductions or predicting values 10 years from now. Add to all this the sites of local and regional real estate firms, local newspapers, the public site of Sacramento's Metrolist Services Inc. and those of individual agents.

In Antioch, Michael Mohr spends hours online at these sites looking for houses in Orangevale and Rancho Cordova. A state correctional officer who hopes to move closer to his work in Folsom, Mohr checks values and comparable sales trying to decide if the market is nearing some kind of bottom. It's much different than 1994, he said, when he mainly found U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development listings online.

"This time I've got a lot more tools," he said. "But I still feel that I need to use an agent so all the T's are crossed and the I's dotted. I would do this on my own if it wasn't for how difficult it is."

Some online sites recognize that buyers are doing more of their own work in finding houses. They've tried to win clients by cutting agent commissions. Redfin.com is among them, entering the Sacramento market this year. The broker refunds half of its 3 percent buyer's agent commission, contending agents often just guide buyers through the paperwork.

"You're probably not going to see millions of real estate agents in 10 years if Redfin succeeds," CEO Kelman said this week.

But even that will leave plenty of work, some agents say. Saizan, asked if real estate agents will be around for a while, answered, "I would argue that with exclamation points behind it."

Clinical coordinator David Buettner, left, trains paramedic student Bobby Blanco on a birthing simulator at UC Davis Medical Center last week. UCD also has a lifelike dummy that can blink, breathe and on cue mimic a full-blown heart attack – one of many innovations being tried to cut costs and save time.

In a warehouse tucked among rows of nondescript office buildings, medical wizardry is taking place.

A wand remotely controls beams of light, a robotic cart dashes through the hallways, and camera-equipped metal arms hang from ceilings, poised for surgical duty.

At Kaiser Permanente's laboratory for innovations in San Leandro, emerging tools in medicine – as well as some low-tech problem-solving – are being put to the test.

The talking robotic cart, known as TUG, might not have the bedside manner of an affable doctor, but soon could be wheeling through the corridors of Kaiser hospitals in the Sacramento region.

So could hand-held electronic tablets that might serve as conduits for better medicine, bringing new tools to a patient's bedside, said Sean Chai, senior technology manager at the Kaiser lab.

In the long run, saving time saves money, Chai said. "Everything we do here is geared toward saving money."

There's a national focus on taming health care costs and improving the quality of care. For institutions such as Kaiser and Sacramento's UC Davis Medical Center, scouting innovations is critical for improving hospital efficiency and patient safety.

"We have to be better at delivering care more effectively and more efficiently. Technology will play a critical role," said Dr. Javeed Siddiqui, associate medical director at the Center for Health and Technology at the UC Davis Medical Center.

As a teaching institution, UC Davis Medical Center is also at the forefront of technological advances, sometimes testing medical tools in real-life hospital settings.

At the Center for Virtual Care at the UC Davis Medical Center, lifelike dummies blink, breathe and on cue mimic a full-blown heart attack. They act as simulators to train the next generation of doctors. There are also robotic surgical arms that perform less-invasive surgeries, saving time for doctors in the operating room and patients in recovery wards.

"We're focused on helping to develop the next generation of technologies," said Betsy Bencken, a clinical instructor at the virtual care center.

The health system's Innovation Center, housed within the Center for Health and Technology, serves as a think tank for expanding telemedicine to far-flung reaches, not just in the rural areas of California but around the globe.

At the Garfield Health Care Innovation Center in San Leandro, Kaiser assembles teams of doctors, nurses – sometimes volunteer Kaiser members – to test the latest in medical research.

Nothing is too minor, such as testing the healing properties of paint colors. To enhance patient convenience, one room is equipped with a wand that directs beams of overhead light.

And there's TUG, the robotic courier that ferries supplies and equipment from one spot to the next. The robot already has been darting through the hallways of some Kaiser facilities in Southern California on a trial basis.

This summer, hand-held LCD monitors – which could extend the portability of electronic health records – will be tested at the Kaiser Sacramento Medical Center to help evaluate products that could become standard issue across the health system's facilities.

The San Leandro center, which sprawls over 37,000 square feet, opened in June 2006 and is the only one of its kind in the Kaiser health system. It is equipped with patient rooms, mock-ups of workstations, operating rooms – and a living room equipped with gadgets that turn the home into a control center for personal health.

"By 2015, the home will become the hub of care," Chai predicted.

Home-based equipment will connect a patient at home to the doctor, who can monitor vital signs and other health care metrics.

But it's not always about high-tech gadgetry. Useful changes often come after simple brainstorming, said Sherry Fry, operations specialist for the Kaiser facility.

A case in point: How to keep nurses charged with administering medication from being interrupted during their rounds.

There were no bells and whistles. At first it was just a neon-green vest, to be worn while on duty. But the vest wasn't exactly a fashion statement. In the end, the team settled on a simple white sash to be worn during rounds, meant to deliver the message: "Don't bother me."

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Rob Allshouse of Sacramento multitasks on Mechanical Turk with his kids Jonathan, 11, center, and Jordan Hart, 8. "Turkers" make small change doing small tasks for a "requester," such as identifying photos; Amazon gets a small cut.

With the economy reeling and California's unemployment rate moving toward 12 percent, many people are looking at all possible options for earning an extra buck or two.

Amazon Mechanical Turk – an online site based on the evolving concept of "crowdsourcing" – is emerging as a way Web site visitors can make a few dollars, without the hassle of launching a formal search for a job or freelance work.

"I'm saving up for some Christmas presents for my wife," said Rob Allshouse, of Sacramento, a casual user of the Web site run by Amazon Web Services, the online retailer's foray into computer technology.

Crowdsourcing was coined in 2006 by Wired magazine to mean taking work that would traditionally be performed by an employee and outsourcing it to a large group of people on the Internet as an open invitation for work.

Via Mechanical Turk, Amazon has established a marketplace where firms – known online as requesters – can post tasks that they want crowdsourced. Looking for HITs – human intelligence tasks – is a vast pool of about 200,000 people – called turkers – ready and willing to do small tasks for small amounts of money – say 10 cents apiece. Amazon collects a percentage from each transaction.

The name Mechanical Turk refers to a chess-playing machine in the 18th century that turned out to be a trick using a hidden human.

A typical task posted by a requester at Mechanical Turk is something that's hard for computers to do, but easy for humans to complete in a few minutes. Often these are image-related tasks according to Chris Van Pelt of San Francisco-based Dolores Labs – a requester who uses Mechanical Turk extensively.

"The classic example would be inappropriate image detection," Van Pelt said. Current automatic scanning and computing technology can't accurately distinguish between – for example – the flesh of a baby from pornographic skin-tones.

You still need people to look at and OK the images that go up on Web sites, Van Pelt said.

Other sites using crowdsourcing have put out calls for information and photos about events, or answers to vexing questions. Mechanical Turk is the best known among those that pay for online tasks.

So just how much can you make as a turker?

Joel Ross, a doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine, studies Mechanical Turk and found that most people use the site casually – not as a full-time job.

Earnings, on average, are about $2 to $5 a week. Some people do earn $50 to $100 or more. A typical hourly wage can range from $1 to about $3.

Van Pelt says that when he creates tasks he shoots for about $3 per hour but can tweak the rate if clients need results faster.

Ross' studies have shown something else too: People aren't there just for the money.

"A lot of workers don't necessarily view it as work," Ross said. "It's a hobby and activity that's almost like a game, yet you make money on the side."

The entertainment of the experience may be part of what makes people willing to work for less. Van Pelt also said he believes that potential turkers are attracted because they have a lower level of responsibility and time commitment and can start and stop when they want – even conduct turk tasks while doing other things in the background.

"I tend to use the site during breaks at work or while at home on the sofa killing 10 minutes," Allshouse said.

He's a multi-tasker: Sometimes, Allshouse said, he'll turk while watching television.

Two-thirds of turkers are from the United States; an additional 22 percent are using the site from India, where $1 to $3 an hour translates to considerably more money.

Lilly Irani, another doctoral candidate at UC Irvine, is concerned about a lack of workers' rights on Mechanical Turk. In one survey she conducted, more than half of the respondents complained of unfair rejection of work that resulted in no payout.

Irani and another UC Irvine student built software called Turkopticon, which aims to level the playing field between workers and requesters by providing better community feedback and information on requesters' reputations.

"We're watching out for the crowd because no one else seems to be doing that," she said.

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When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969, you were either in front of your TV set when it aired, or you missed it.

Today – or, let's say, if we ever return to the moon – you could save the moment using a cell phone to set your home digital video recorder from work.

Almost exactly halfway between those two technical wonders, something called VCR+ (or VCR Plus) was invented to help tape television broadcasts.

In the late 1980s, VCR+ was the brilliant new way for those of us who were technically inadequate to program videotape recorders to capture shows to watch later.

All one had to do was read a numeric code in the newspaper and enter the code using the VCR remote. And, voilà, the show would be taped.

Digital video recorders have made capturing programs much easier, and the June switch to all-digital television signals has made VCR+ all but obsolete.

Even with digital converters connected to his antenna, Bob Mazur of Folsom found he couldn't record using the codes in the newspaper, so he contacted The Bee.

If Mazur had cable or satellite, his codes might still work, said Michael Wan, service manager at Sacramento's Paradyame Sound & Vision.

Even Macrovision – which works with manufacturers and provides codes used in newspapers – says there will be problems for those working with old technology.

The codes built into controls may not correspond with DVRs, and "code alignment" may still be a problem with older VCRs trying to interface with modern converters.

Still, there are VCR+ die-hards.

"The people that use it are unbelievably loyal," said Simon Adams, Macrovision's senior vice president of marketing.

If people can find their VCR manuals, there may be ways to reprogram the recorders to use the codes, but Adams said the solution is "not very elegant."

In other words, trying to use a labor-saving code may require extra mental labor.

Macrovision, in an e-mail statement responding to questions from The Bee, said this: "With the switch from analog to digital and the huge proliferation of cable and satellite DVRs available, the best method to avoid this issue is for the consumer to upgrade their devices/ systems."

Because few consumers still use the codes, some newspapers have already quit publishing them. The Bee discontinued the codes in 2007, then resumed printing them after readers complained.

Following the digital switch, however, the codes are an endangered species.

They're still useful in Europe, though, Adams said, because cable and satellite transmission is not as widespread there.

For the die-hard loyalists, codes may still be found with diligent Internet searches.

Technical information can also be found at Macrovision's site, www.vcrplus.com.

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