This week I will be continuing from previous weeks regarding sites that I find particularly useful.  First up is the DNR’s website located at dnronline.com.  I am only going to mention a few but look at the main titles from your own local paper’s online edition; News, Sports, Opinion, Arts & Entertainment, Skyline (my favorite of course), Classified, Services and Subscribe.  What more can I say, well maybe how you should definitely read the great Double Clicks column in the Skyline section.  You can find many other useful articles and not only local news but international as well.  Have you seen the daily crossword puzzle, other games, places to dine, archived news stories, coupons?  The list just goes on.  If you haven’t taken advantage of the Daily News-Record online experience you should as soon as possible.

I realize that I mention “Google” often, I even mentioned this particular part of it a couple of years ago.  However, in my opinion I consider this to be one of Google’s top 10 features.  It is called Google Alerts (google.com/alerts) which is labeled as Beta (not the final version of a product but it is close enough to allow the public to use).  Google Alerts has been beta for the eight or ten years I have been using it and it works very well. 

Let’s say that you have an avid interest Koala bears.  Coinciding with your interest you would like to be updated anytime there is news on the feeding habits of these little Australian mammals.  Just go to “google.com/alerts” and login with your Gmail account username and password.  Gmail.com is another good site that I regularly visit but I will just mention it in passing this time.  If you don’t already have one get a free account there.

At the Create a Google Alert area, first enter your search terms like, “feeding habits koala bear“.  Next, the type of item you want to search for; News, Blogs, Web, Comprehensive (all of these types) Video or Groups.  Now choose how often you want to receive updates.  Daily is the one that I use most regularly.  Then last, enter the email address where you want the alerts sent.  

Google will now be on the lookout for any type of search you entered for those terms and email you a list of them as often as you like.  This is a great way to keep up-to-date with sports, hobbies, politics, medical conditions and the list goes on ad infinitum. 

It has been interesting to me when on occasion I write a column about a particular product or web site and the owner of the product or site will contact me to give me additional information, thanks or condemnations.  I have asked each time if they used Google Alerts to find me and the answer has, so far, always been yes.

Check back next week for a few more interesting and useful websites.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 8:39 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.