Google Rocks

By now, its certainly not "we interrupt this program" material to sing the praises of Google as a search engine...we all use it and we all love it. But there are actually a ton of really cool other Google features that have seriously come in handy to me as a small biz owner trying to keep track of...well...everything. One of my faves is the News Alert option which allows you to choose a word or phrase and then get emailed each and every time it comes up in a news story. You can have as many alerts as you'd like and be as specific or broad as you want. Of course I have a news alert for my company name (not likely that you'll be surprised with a piece of press, but you never know!), but I also have alerts that keep me up-to-date with what's going on in the industry; I have a "wedding industry" alert and a "celebrity wedding" alert as well as some alerts for some competitor's companies. You can choose to have alerts sent to you once a day in digest form or every time your word or phrase comes up.