Google Alerts Mean Never Having To Wonder How News Turns Out

Read the local papers or watch the local news when on holiday? Hate when something happens but you leave the area before it gets resolved? Make a Google Alert and stay on top of all the developments as they happen without having to find out of town newspapers or their web-sites.

That's what I did when I got home from Edinburgh last July. I wanted to follow the tale of "former dustman Mark Hobson" who made quite a splash on the BBC and Sky News for 2 days.

Not the kind of story any local paper here is going to cover, much less for almost a year. (Especially when Michael Jackson is making headlines again.) Well, I got an email today with a link to the Times Online (Britain) that he has admitted to committing four killings that led to one of the biggest police manhunts in British history.