Google Alerts - Surfing less and reading more

I recently read that Ridley Scott, one of my favorite directors, is going to be directing a new film about the Gucci family.

I also found three sites with technology news.

I read one of my college professors is publishing a new book.

The nifty part about all this news is that I never had to search for it.

Google Alerts is probably the most useful tools that Google offers. Properly used and configured, you stay informed every time you open your e-mail.

Alerts have been around for a while, but it was not till recently that I sat down and tweaked the settings to make sure I get the right information.

Part of the trick was using the advanced search operators to narrow my results. By using quotes on certain search terms, I get news about Ridley Scott, not everybody in the whole wide world named Scott.

I've routed my alerts to an e-mail address that the spammers haven't discovered yet. Reading mail from this account is like finding a stack of articles printed out by my own personal assistant.

There are days the articles retreved are ones I've seen before and I delete more links than I read, but that is worth the effort when I find sites and information that would have taken me hours of searching on my own.