The fact is, everyone has a little bit of that longing to become a hero, no matter how old you are. You’d like to save someone’s life, and reach your final day knowing that at least once in the many years you’ve spent on this earth, you made a real difference in someone’s life. Now, with the new mobile amber alerts provided to cellular providers by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, more people than ever before have an opportunity to become a real life hero.

Why Using Mobile Amber Alerts is So Important

According to the FBI crime statistics for the U.S., reported kidnappings in that country rose from 154,341 in 1982 up to an astonishing 876,213 in 2000. The scariest part of those statistics is the fact that almost 90% of those abductions are children under 18 years old. The kidnapping rates throughout the rest of the world are quite as bad as in the United States, but the potential for child abductions demands that all countries should strive toward an automated system of mobile amber alerts so that all citizens can help in the fight to stop child kidnapping.

While the problem may be mostly in America, other countries are taking a stand against child abductions with their own Amber Alert systems, such as Australia in 2003, various regions of Canada from 2002 through 2004, France and the UK in 2006, as well as France, Greece, the Netherlands and additional countries every year. The most promising technological advance from the Amber Alert System is a mobile alert system created through a joint partnership between the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, The Wireless Foundation, Amber Alert, the Department of Justice and the Ad Council. Signing up your mobile device couldn’t be easier.

It’s as simple as going to the WirelessAmberAlerts website and typing in your wireless phone number. Once you do, you’ll start receiving wireless SMS messages to your phone whenever there’s a missing child alert for your local area. The system doesn’t charge anything for the messages, and most mobile phone carriers waive SMS message fees when you receive Amber Alert messages (but check with your carrier to be sure).

Are there Other Options to Receive Mobile Amber Alerts?

While the system above will work perfectly for anyone with a cellphone that can receive SMS messages, there’s a fair population of mobile users who don’t, or can’t, receive SMS messages. iPhone users have a solution in the form of a cool iPhone application that’s available for free at the iPhone store. However, other mobile users, such as Windows Mobile or Blackberry don’t really have the option of downloading a specific application yet. However, thanks to Google, both mobile and PC users have a way to receive Amber Alerts wherever they are.  At the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, you can download a gadget that you can embed on your blog or any web page, such as your own mobile web page that you can access with your phone, that will print updates form the Amber Alert system.

On your iGoogle page, you can also install the Amber Alert widget so that the Amber Alerts are displayed alongside your calendar, email, and weather.

Follow Mobile Amber Alerts, and You Might Be a Hero

There may come a day when you’re driving along on the highway, and you receive an SMS update from the Amber Alert system that notifies all local mobile users to be on the lookout for a black sedan with a particular license plate number. You quickly realize that the car in front of you is the suspect kidnapper’s car. You pass the car, and peek into the back window. Through the foggy glass, you see the small face of a scared child staring back at you. Realizing that your moment of truth has come, you glance back down at the callback number on the Amber Alert message and quickly dial the number. Barely ten minutes later, the blue lights appear and the car is stopped. You’ve just saved the life of an abducted child. You are a hero.

Would you ever consider adding the Amber Alerts to your phone? What would you do if you spotted an abducted child from a mobile alert message? Share your opinions about this system in the comments section below.

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The whole thing is fairly simple. I am pretty sure some of you have been using it already.

First you need to get free email to SMS gateway for your mobile carrier. If you didn’t get it last time you can easily do so now. The page lists email-to-sms gateways for 10 major US carrier and lots of international ones.

Once you have the email for your mobile number (say 1234567890@tmomail.net), simply login to your Gmail account and go straight to Settings -> Filters tab. Now, there are two ways to use this.

1- Get SMS Alerts for Emails from Specific Addresses

The first way is to setup SMS alerts for emails coming from certain people or places that you consider important. These can be emails from your employer, bank, hosting provider, site uptime tracker etc.

Create new filter and enter the email address for which you want to receive SMS alert.

In the next step, setup a Forward rule to your free email-to-sms number.

Click on “Create Filter” and you’re done. Next time you receive email from that address you’ll also get SMS message with about first 150 characters of the email. As simple as that.

2- Get SMS For Urgent Emails If You’re Away

Say you’re on holiday and don’t want to be bugged with regular work related emails. However at the same time you want to make sure that when it’s something really urgent people can reach you.

Here is what you can do. First create an auto-responder message (see in Setting -> General) that looks something like the one below.

Then go to ‘Filters’ tab and setup a forward filter for it. As you can see, in the above auto-responder message I provided sender with option to reach me by simply emailing me again using “urgent” in the subject line.

As soon as email hits my inbox I get texted to my mobile.

Are you using anything similar to that right now? Share with us in comments.

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For those who have come in late, Google Alerts is nothing but ‘email updates’ (and now RSS feeds too!) of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. It distills the results from the first 20 or so pages of its search engine results and sends you the alert. It simply allows us to automate our search, setting it just once instead of doing it every day.

For a freelancer, Google Alerts can become a homing missile in his or her arsenal. So here are some ways I use the service to save me lots of time and the dimes on my caffeine.

(1) Walk around the writer’s block – Get fresh ideas to write on.

The obvious…but for us keyboard tappers, Google Alerts are a fountain of fresh topics to write on. Simply, set up an alert on your area of interest and let the breaking news trickle (sometimes it’s a deluge) into your mail box.



(2) Be in step with your niche – Get the news delivered to your inbox.

A fine-tuned alert updates us on what’s happening where. New beta announcements, new software launches, new posts get indexed by the search spider and Google sends out the alert. For instance, set up a Google news alert with this – Windows source:cnet (delivers Windows related news from CNET.com).

(3) Become a cyber paparazzi – Become an ardent follower.

We all have our favorite blogrolls, our favorite authors or we just want to slaver over Brangelina. A specific keyword in the search query box allows us to note when and where any relevant snippet gets published. Follow them around on blogs, news websites and even on Twitter. For instance I follow some of my favourite blog authors through the blogosphere with this simple query – inpostauthor:Seth Godin [Alert Type: Blogs]

(4) Use it as a job scout – Go where ‘no freelancer has gone before’.

Life for a freelancer often means a 24×7 job hunt.  Jump ahead of the queue with just-in-time alerts. It could easily be on an obscure site not on your feed list. Sometimes major events in a company could signal an opportunity for the freelancer. Especially during a recession when a company looks to retrench its rolls with outsourced work. Seek, prepare and apply. Google Alerts is a powerful tool if set up with your skills matched to your niche.

(5) Proof the future – Prepare a job directory.

I try to take my job hunt a bit further by using the job postings as a future source of reference. Keeping a list of sites where jobs usually crop up means I have a prepared database to bank on when my well runs dry. Bookmark them, tag them, or put them on an Excel file or just a notebook. A ready list saves time and hassle.

(6) Climb up the SERP – Do your own SEO.

Page rankings revolve around keywords. Bring out your own list of keywords and see which sites rank near the top for those phrases. A look at the content of those websites will help you not only give you knowledge but also a bunch of other keywords to use. This is a precursor to the next activity.

(7) Be with the crowd – Take your work to the community.

A visit for information is just so casual. We can increase the interactivity with our niche by using the power of comments. A well thought out (polite, please!) comment with a backlink/trackback/linkback to your own article/blog helps to build a community on the web. Using something like Trailfire helps to find relevant forums where you can contribute. Make sure they allow linking. Such peer to peer communication not only brings in additional information to a post but also helps to generate traffic.

(8) Spot the spotter – Know when Google finds you.

When you are delivering content like there’s no tomorrow and like to know when Google indexes the page (and how popular you just became), Google Alert notifications enable instantaneous tracking. Use a unique line of text from a page as a Google Alert search term.

(9) Do some ego-googling – Manage your reputation.

On the web everything is permanent. Both positive feedback and acerbic comments. Use Google Alerts to see where your name crops up or if someone links to your blog. Somethings deserve a thank you…but I wouldn’t tell you what to do with an acidic barb. It also helps to keep tabs on your profile by removing long forgotten mentions on other websites. And just for fun see if there’s a personality clash with Googlegangers (namesakes)!



(10) Catch the copycats – Defeating plagiarism.

Copyscape is good but add Google Alerts to it. Make up some unique phrase or keyword combination. Put it somewhere in the article (preferably, towards the end)…and wait for the fly to catch.

Some Tips to Manage Google Alerts –

* Get friendly with Google search queries. There are specialized search queries for news and blogs too. For instance, Blog search has specialized queries like – [inblogtitle:], [inposttitle:], [inpostauthor:], [blogurl:]

* Alternatively, you can use the Advanced Search in Google Search to create a search parameter and copy it to your alert.

* Google has introduced RSS Feeds option to deliver alert results. It is a more compact option to the earlier email only option.

* If email is the choice choose HTML mails. You are always a click away from the source.

* Get accurate results by putting quotes around your search terms.

* Choose ‘Comprehensive’ as Google Alert Type for getting results across the web, news, blogs and groups.

* Choosing ‘once a week’ in the ‘How Often’ dropdown prevents clutter in your mailbox or feed reader.

Old world searching is passé`. It’s time to sit back and let the results come in on their own.

How do you use Google Alerts? Maybe a tip from you could add another to those mentioned.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Both retailers and resellers (as well as their affiliates) are getting more creative offering easy-to-use web-based tools that update their users of the company news and recent deals.

Here are the four common methods :

Getting Updated via Email

Offering their customers or readers a newsletter subscription option is the most popular way to keep them updated of the site news.

With email alerts you never miss a deal as it will come right into your email inbox. You don’t have to remember anything. All you need to do is just to check your email regularly – which you most probably do in any case.

Do you like receiving plenty of email messages daily? At some point you think you can control that but in reality you end up subscribing to anything that seems useful. Besides, the majority of services maintaining opt-in lists stuff their newsletters with ads and promotions you never agreed to receive.

With email subscriptions I tend to be rather picky choosing those services that either don’t bug me too often (e.g. FreeShipping sends email alerts once per week) or those that allow me to choose the update frequency (RessellerRatings offer to choose between daily and instant alerts).

Some online services go even further allowing their users to track only selected product(s). Both BeatThat and PriceGrabber offer to create watch lists monitoring certain product prices and availability:

This option allows for full control of what you want to track. You will never miss the best deal for the product you are most interested in (example: get alerted only once the product price matches your preferences (e.g. gets below some line)).

Again, that’s a great option only if you don’t mind receiving (multiple) updates to your email inbox. However in this case you of course have more power to control how many messages and how often you are going to receive them.

Getting Updated via RSS Feeds

Most coupon code directories and merchant rating communities maintain a blog where they post the hottest deals allowing you to subscribe via your preferred RSS reader.

With RSS readers your email inbox is kept free from heaps of mail. Besides, with RSS readers your subscriptions are more organized (either by category or based on your personal preferences).

Unlike email newsletters, with RSS readers, you need to always remember checking it out. However, if you’re in habit of checking your RSS subscriptions regularly, that’s no problem for you. Other potential disadvantages are directly connected to your favorite RSS reader: some of them, for example, allow for limited space (e.g. with PageFlakes you are limited to your screen size to avoid scrolling).

Getting Alerted by Your Browser

Some shopping resources develop FireFox extensions that alert you to current deals once you visit the merchant’s website.

The updates are limited to the addon provider’s website database. If you enter an online shop that is not included in the database, you will not see any coupons, offers or price comparisons.

You are only alerted once you enter the merchant’s site: no multiple notifications when you don’t need them, no full email inbox, etc.

Example: PriceAdvance’s FireFox add-on that shows other sellers’ prices for the product you are viewing:

Getting Updated via Twitter:

Twitter has been the hottest social networking service recently. From “What you are doing right now?” concept, it has evolved into the rapidly growing business tool all the potential of which is yet to be explored. Dell , for example, uses Twitter to update their customers of recent deals and limited time offers (see: Refurbished Dell computers).

Due to multiple Twitter clients, this type of offer-tracking is by far the most customizable. With Twitter you can get updates to Google Talk, Jabber, Livejournal, to your FireFox, right to your desktop, mobile phones (if you are in the US, Canada, or UK), etc.

The only disadvantage I can see here is that if you are a Twitter newbie, you will have to learn to use it and choose among hundreds of Twitter clients, the one that best suits your needs – that might take some time but is definitely worth the effort! On the other hand, if you are an active Twitter user, you can’t afford following everyone you would want to; as in the end you will end up receiving hundreds of updates every single minute.

So which alerting method is preferable?

There is no definitive answer, I would say. Here is my personal take:

• I hate receiving hundreds of email messages daily;
• I can’t afford subscribing to all the RSS feeds I would like to;
• I can’t follow more Twitter users as I am already unable to keep track of all the existing Tweets;
• I can’t add more extensions to my FireFox as I already have too many of them installed by now;

So what to do? First, I can choose to stick to only a few really valuable resources (the ones mentioned above) and refrain from tracking any new ones until I am persuaded they are really worth it.

Secondly, like I said, I can stick to customizable services that allow me to set the alert frequency, watched product or merchant.

Last of all, I can keep track of recent hacks to find more better easier solutions: for example, Twhirl allows me be logged in to several Twitter accounts simultaneously – so I can maintain a separate account that tracks online deals and shut it down once I don’t need that.

Which alerting method do you prefer?  Is there any online shopping tool I missed out?   How do YOU keep track of the best online shopping deals?  Share your tips and tricks with us in the comments.

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Considering the huge information overflow online, you can have some excellent tools which help you to effectively organize the information flow and help you stay informed and up to date everyday. Let’s take a look at some of them.

1. RSS

RSS or feeds as we like to call them is an amazing technology which lets you stay updated with various websites, blogs and journals in one place – your feed reader – which could be Google Reader, FeedDemon or any other one. We at Make Use Of love RSS and have published lots of posts up to now for RSS addicts. Do a search for “RSS” in our search engine and you’ll get all of them.

Assuming that most of the readers of this site already know all about RSS, those who’ve heard this term for the first time today (yes, believe it or not, RSS hasn’t gone mainstream yet ) should start making use of this technology immediately.

2. Google Alerts

Google Alerts is one of the most useful services by Google, especially for those who care to stay informed online. Through Google Alerts you can monitor a specific term or phrase and check what people are saying about it. Read more about it here.

3. MonitorThis

MonitorThis is an effective online reputation management tool which lets you subscribe to 20 different search engine feeds at the same time, for a particular search term. It includes all the main search engines including Delicious tag search and Flickr tag search.

4. Memes

Memes on the internet aggregate the information which quickly spreads from one blog/website to the other and present them in a river of news format. There are various such meme websites, the most famous of them being Techmeme, which aggregates the latest tech news from around the web. There is also RSSmeme which aggregates what people are sharing in their RSS readers.

5. DailyMe

I wrote an elaborate post on DailyMe sometime back and I think that it’s certainly one of the best personalized news aggregators available online which also boasts some nice features like the newspaper reading format.

6. FaveBot

FaveBot works like Google Alerts and lets you track your favorite keywords online. It allows you to monitor through various categories like blogs, books, DVD’s, events, music , podcasts, pictures and videos.

7. Twitter And Friendfeed

Both Twitter and Friendfeed, apart from from being cool ways to communicate and be social, also serve as a way to get the latest information about various events and happenings from all around the world.

Twitter also has its own version of Google Alerts called TweetBeep which alerts you via email when someone mentions a keyword on Twitter which you’ve flagged for attention.

What online tools do you use to organize your information flow and stay informed and up to date? Let us know in the comments!

(By) Abhijeet Mukherjee is addicted to the internet and loves blogging and freelance writing. He blogs about tech tweaks, blogging tips, productivity hacks at Jeet Blog

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• IM Feeds – A Tool for the RSS Power User (8)

RSS feeds is basically an alternate version of a website that can be “read” by a machine. A blog, for example, looks like a very simple list of articles that an RSS reader can then display to the user in any format they desire. IM Feeds has made a simple IM account that reads your chosen feeds every five minutes and reports any updates via the chat window in your IM client (such as Pidgin, Digsby, or Trillian).

Setting up IM Feeds is extremely easy:

• Go to their website and click on “get started.”
• Add one of their robot addresses to your buddy list. They have one for AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and Google Talk.
• Once that “user” is added, send it an instant message with the command “join” as the text.
• From there, the automatic response will tell you the next steps in the process.

Once the IM buddy is set up and you have created an account on the website, you then need to add your feeds. There are several ways to do this. First, you can simply go to a website you want to subscribe to, copy that feed’s address (usually associated with the orange radio icon), and enter it on the IM Feeds website. Second, you can IM the robot the “sub” command, followed by the feed address, and that will add it to your subscribed feeds as well. For that option, I suggest typing “help” first, which will list all of the commands you can use with the IM bot.

Lastly, you can take all of your pre-existing feeds from another feed reader and import them into IM Feeds. This is what I did because I already have many, many feeds that I subscribe to and I want to get the latest updates on the fly. Simply look in your current feed reader for the option to export into OPML format. Once you have that file, IM Feeds has a place on the website for importing it.

Be careful to only submit the file once and expect some delays, as their servers are in a period of growth. I accidentally submitted my OPML file several times and had duplicate feeds, but the support staff for the site were nice enough to clear it all out for me so I could start over.

Your feed updates will be displayed like this on the site:

And you can manage your feeds here (click the “x” box to remove them):

All in all, I really like this service because there are a ton of different uses for it. If you already have a lot of feeds (like me) but don’t want to have to check your reader for the latest stuff, it makes for a good snapshot of “right now.” The only downside to this is that you are constantly inundated with IMs from the bot. It takes some getting used to.

I can also see some very selective uses for it. If you have several feeds that alert you about big events or maintenance issues, you could subscribe the IM bot to only those feeds and it would ensure you never miss an update. Also special events like WWDC or MacWorld (if you are a liveblog-reading fanboy like me) might warrant their own dedicated IM bot.

Inside Info:

While the IM Feeds staff was fixing my account, I asked them about any new features they are working on. Aside from obvious server expansion, they are also planning on supporting German, Spanish, Mandarin, and possibly French as well as providing a new kind of alert type. The new alert system would allow users to enter bits of data like a stock abbreviation. Instead of having to hunt down an RSS feed for each stock you want to keep track of, the new alert will simply find the most logical feed for each stock and do the work of setting it up for you.

This new tool may not be for everyone, but any serious feed user should check it out and see if they can put it into use. Can you think of any neat uses for IM Feeds other than those listed above? Post your thoughts in the comments!

[rating=3]

(By) Jimmy Rogers is a biology major at George Mason University and an avid freelance tech blogger. Check out his blog, Mason Tech Beat.

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So I went looking for a free web-based tool, preferably a chat bot, that would send pre-selected RSS feeds to an IM program. After trying several that didn’t work as advertised (I won’t name any names), I finally ended up using ZapTXT – although the set-up didn’t exactly go too smoothly at first.

What I like about ZapTXT is that you can choose to have the RSS updates sent to either your email, an IM program or your mobile phone (although personally I was only interested in the IM option). The IM program options are particularly good – all the major networks are covered including Yahoo, MSN, AIM, Skype and GTalk / Jabber.

When you first set up your account, you have to set up your delivery options. I chose the IM program option and entered my GTalk details. You then have to add the ZapTXT bot to your contact list.

Once that is done, you have to then specify what feeds you want sent to you and how often (immediately, once a hour, once a day, and so on). A particularly good feature is the ability to also filter those feeds by keywords so you only get feed updates based on what you are looking for. If you don’t specify keywords then you will get everything that RSS feed produces. If it is a feed like Digg, then you will be buried underneath an IM avalanche! So if the feed produces a lot of updates, it might be best to decide which specific subjects you are going to follow and set up filters.

If you’re not sure of the exact feed address for a site, the ZapTXT engine will auto-detect all the RSS feeds on a domain that you specify and you can then choose which ones you want :

The difficulty I initially had was that the feeds didn’t kick in straight away, despite new posts being added to those sites. The ZapTXT bot also seems to have problems accepting Google Talk’s chat invitation so it took well over a hour for me to receive my first RSS updates. But once it starts, it works extremely well.

Here is what one of the RSS updates on Google Talk looks like :

You might be wondering at this point what the advantages are of using a service like this when you already have excellent RSS readers such as Google Reader. Well for me, some feeds are more important than others – in particular, the sites I write for, including Make Use Of. I don’t always have my Google Reader window open and so it is good for me to get a pop-up window from Google Talk whenever a post from one of my favourite sites is posted online. I also like to see my favourite feeds coming in on Google Talk if I am stuck for story ideas. Sometimes just seeing the headlines of my subscribed blogs is enough to spark an idea of my own.

Another benefit is if you are following a comment thread on a forum or a blog, sometimes seeing new comments coming in on your IM program allows you to respond faster.

Want another benefit? If you use Google Talk instead of one of the other IM programs, everything that comes in is logged in your Gmail account for future reference!

As Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration points out, ZapTXT is not meant to replace your RSS reader, only complement it. I have only been using ZapTXT for two days and already I am finding it indispensable.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Here are some Google services that need a lot more loving (cue Barry White music) :

(1) Google Labs

My favourite online playground (although the offerings at the moment are a little dull). This is where new Google products are first given the beta label and unleashed onto an unsuspecting world for testing and commenting. If you try something out in Google Labs, you are invited to email the Google team involved with comments / suggestions / complaints (on two occasions, I got a personal reply back from a member of the team, discussing my comments).

The way I see it, this is a good way to influence future Google products by getting involved in a product’s development. How many Google users use Google products but don’t bother to provide any creative input to make them better? Next time a Google product doesn’t go as planned, don’t complain on a forum – contact Google and offer constructive advice & criticism!

(2) Google Pack

If you know an internet newbie who has not so much knowledge of the internet and software products (like my mother), Google Pack provides an excellent software package to start with (although I personally wouldn’t choose Norton and Real Player). Check out full program list here.

(3) Google Translate

Translate text or even complete webpages into eleven languages (you can even translate from “simplified” Chinese to “traditional” Chinese). As with all online translators, this won’t give you a 100% accurate translation (online translators can’t grasp things like idioms and contexts) but if you want to buy those crates of AK-47 assault rifles from that online shop in North Korea, Google Translate will let you overcome that Korean language barrier.

(4) Google Co-Op

Allows you to customize Google search results with your own self-rolled search engines. You can also provide information from your website as a subscribed link or if you are a specialist in a particular subject area, you can label and categorize search information which other people can click on. Again, this is another way you can actively help in making search much better (otherwise known as user-generated input).

(5) Google Code

This one is for the computer geeks (of which I am a honorary member). Allows you to find and download source codes and developer API’s to make mashups for Google products.

(6) Google News

Google News has been around for a while and is old-hat to many. But how many of you knew that you could customise the page to only see the news you want to see? Or the fact you can set up customised RSS feeds for the news subjects that interest you? Never miss another news story about Paris Hilton ever again. You can also use the new news archive to find very old news stories, either scanned pages of publications or online sources. Some free, others not.

(7) Google Patent Search

If you’re in business and you’ve developed a hot new invention, don’t you want to check first to see if anybody got in there before you and filed a patent? Google Patent Search will show you the patent applications for pretty much everything so you can see right away if you are the sole inventor of the combined coat hanger and cigarette lighter.

(8) Google Blog Search

One of my personal favourites as it helps me to find current blogs on my favourite subjects (and swell my 200+ RSS reading list even further). Find blogs catering to various subjects. Want to know if anybody shares your overwhelming passion for navel lint by blogging about it? GBS will help you out.

(9) Google Alerts

Want to know if anybody has been talking about you online? Maybe somebody trashed your website by insulting it in a forum? Or a disgruntled customer to your online shop made disparaging remarks in their blog? By setting up a Google Alert (with pre-defined search terms), you will get an email with links anytime Google finds something matching your keywords. Britney Spears probably has one set up now with the keywords “Britney” and “MTV Music Awards”.

(10) Google Catalogs

Guys rejoice! (and women too). Want to buy some Victoria’s Secret lingerie? Or perhaps a new light-sabre is in order for you trusty Jedi Knights? Google now offers the chance to browse through scanned pages of catalogs and magazines such as GQ and Cosmopolitan to find products you might be looking for. No more raking in bins looking for catalogs of women in bikinis – Google now gives them to you online!

Do you know of a Google service that needs more user loving? Let us know in the comments. I’ve got Lionel Richie on speed-dial.

Mark O’Neill is a freelance writer, proofreader, editor and blogger. Check out his blog at http://www.betterthantherapy.net

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