If you are not making use of Google Alerts, then you are guaranteed to be missing something. Google Alerts is a great way of getting email alerts of relevant news, blog links and other interesting results based on your search criteria.
For example, I have an alert set up for various news items I am interested in, such as atheism, politics, Getting Things Done, etc. I set the options to email me those daily.
But more interestingly, I have Alerts set up for my blog. By typing in this: link:http://www.cafeleone.net/ and link:http://cafeleone.net/, I can see who links to me as soon as they do. I set it to email me as soon as it happens. This is an excellent way to see who is talking about me and I believe it works faster and more accurately than Wordpress or Technorati or whatever other method you use. I can see instantly when someone throws a meme my way but hasn’t alerted me to it yet or when someone adds me to their blogroll…still waiting on that one.
As a safety precaution, I have an alert set up for my kids, my social security number and even my street address. It is not because I am paranoid. It is simply because I am curious. I did get an alert about a site that had my street address. It turns out it was my street address in a completely different state, but that was interesting nonetheless.
Click on the link above and start getting your Google Alerts.