Managing The Web's Information Overload - Part I

Sifting Through Information To Find What's Important To You

Nearly everyone complains about information overload. But with a little effort, you don't have to suffer from it. Since the advent of the web, information washes over us in a daily deluge. The question is: how do you take advantage of the good information that may be out there, while ignoring the 99.9% of unrelated or just plain useless data? In this two-part series, I will show you how to not only "manage" the flood of online information, but how to take advantage of some amazing technology that lets you "cherry pick" important news and information.

News Alerts From Google Or Yahoo! Will Keep You Informed

The easiest way to access new online information about any topic under the sun is via "news alerts" from Yahoo! or Google. It works on a keyword basis -- you simply plug in as many key words, or key phrases, as you want, select a notification method (such as email), and sit back and wait to be notified when a news story, press release, or any communication is released to the web. on that topic. Naturally, it does not catch everything new that comes up, but it does catch most of the important stuff. If you sign up with both Yahoo! and Google, you'll be fishing with two powerful trawlers that give you broad coverage.

Make A List Of Key Phrases You Want To Keep Up With

Let's say you are a law firm, Dickens and Defoe, and your primary practice area is Labor Law. You might well want to keep up on all the breaking news about labor law in the U. S. You may also want to know whenever your own firm is mentioned anywhere on the internet. And of course, you'll want to know about it if your main competitor, Melville and Steinbeck, is doing anything new. So, you draw up a list of key phrases that cover these areas: labor law, worker's compensation, union law, arbitration, Dickens and Defoe, Melville and Steinbeck. You plug these keywords into the relevant places, and you're done. Every time any of these topics appear in news stories on the web, you'll be notified.

Setting Up Your News Alerts

To set up on Google, go to the Google Alerts page and follow the simple instructions. You'll need to set up a free Google account as part of the process. Likewise, you can set up a news alert on Yahoo! by visiting Yahoo! Alerts. Again, setting up a free Yahoo! account is required.

In part 2 of this series, we'll look at how to use RSS news readers to "pull in" customized online information, get automatic updates, and read it at your leisure.