Google Alerts

One of the many challenges facing writers using the web is how to keep track of all the changes going on out there. RSS and blogs are a very excellent way of noting new material and changes in the web. However, not every site has a feed yet and there are other ways to see relevent new stuff. For instance, you can always get the most popular search engine on the planet to send you an e-mail with a link when it notices something that you say you are interested in.

The Google alerts service comes free (for the moment) with a google account. It is very easy to set up (you simply provide it with a series of search terms like a google search). Like many others, I am rather a fan of googling myself so I gave the alerts service 'Gavin Stewart' as my search term. The initial e-mail I got back was full of an assortment of strange and irrelevant stuff. However, since then things have settle down to a few e-mails a month of highly focussed stuff. Perhaps the only short coming to this service is what one might call 'spider-lag'; i.e. it takes a while for a search engine to get around to the interesting page. Back in November
2006 I gave a research talk and placed an image of the talk on flickr. The alerts service sent me an e-mail for this change yesterday. Arguably, I did not need to know that this change had occurred ( because I made this change myself). However, it rather demonstrates how searches are not always complete ( as they might not contain the latest additions to the www). Still, I am sure that google will sharpen up this performance otherwise technorati will steal their thunder!