Google alerts on my Blackberry...

I only recently discovered Google alerts, which are great. Search results are run periodically, or as things happen, and then sent via email to the user. I run searches against Google News.

I have found that getting the results on my Blackberry is actually very useful. Firstly, there's the interrupt-effect. This is otherwise known as the "bump into effect", a phrase that I heard (I think these were his words) Tom Peters use in one of his early books. His argument was that if you leave things lying around where you might bump into them, you're more likely to use them, read them, listen to them etc.

[Note: If you have kids, the bump-into-effect is especially useful. For example, if you leave books lying around, they will read them. If you leave arts-and-crafts materials around, they will use them. If you leave your mobile lying around, they will play with it....OK, so don't leave your mobile lying around then... :) ]

With the interrupt-effect, I tend to read the alerts as they come in.

Secondly, on the Blackberry, as you will know if you have one, it is incredibly quick. Opening mails and doing any task happens instantly, without a hard-disk chugging away. I can actually skim-read my mails much quicker on the Blackberry than I can on my desktop. [Interestingly, I use the Blackberry to skim emails as they come in, even when I'm sitting at my PC. Using Runbox, they arrive on my Blackberry instantly without the extra polling delay that my IMAP client adds.]

My search terms are "3g" and "mobile", which I find catch a lot of useful news events as they happen. Although I can check for news with other sources and RSS feeds, I have found that using the alerts service is the most efficient way of staying in touch.

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