A Google Alert Success

A while ago, under Clint’s suggestion, I signed up for Google alerts for my name, my husband’s name and then just “TGAW”.  Since then, the alerts I’ve received haven’t exactly been ground breaking.  I was well aware that my husband is a fan of Talib Kweli and De La Soul.  I was not surprised by my own LinkedIn profile and the items I’ve put on my own blog or website were still old news to me. 

But this week, I got my first interesting alert.  One of my photographs from my walk on the Virginia Tech campus was used in the April 25, 2007 issue of The Saint, a school newspaper for Aquinas College in Michigan.  The editor-in-chief had contacted me a couple of weeks ago on Flickr asking for permission (which I gave), but the whole thing had slipped my mind, probably somewhere between Kansas and Atlanta. 

But…thanks to Google Alert, I was made aware there was a new reference to me on the web.  Quite spiffy. 

P.S. Other Google tools I would recommend would include:

1. Google Reader – My RSS-subscription reader of choice
2. Google Analytics – A comprehensive and FREE web statistics tool– complete with on-the-fly graphing and reporting capabilities.