You give it a set of Web pages to watch and tell it how often to check them, and it notifies you when they change.

It’s ideal for keeping up with Web sites that don’t offer RSS feeds, or checking changes on just a single page of a large Web site (for example, a company’s listing of open jobs).

You can also use it to see exactly how a news story changes as it evolves online.

Here’s an example: I set Update Scanner to watch a page that showed an Associated Press story about President Barack Obama planning to call for tighter restrictions on banks.

Update Scanner has options, as you can see in the screen shot below, including setting how often it checks the page (as often as every five minutes, though it gives you a warning if you choose this).

Another option is to highlight changes to the text.

If Update Scanner checks a page and sees a change, it alerts you with a small box in the lower right corner of your Firefox window.

Clicking on the link in the alert takes you to the page. Update Scanner highlights the changes (if you’ve chosen that option) and offers you a chance to see both the old version of the page before the change and the new version.

As you can see, this is useful for learning which parts of a news story change from one update to the next.

The changes to the news story above are relatively minor, but on fast-paced breaking news stories you may get frequent updates bathed in yellow highlighting. Such is the nature of online news!

Update Scanner only uses highlighting for changes, not strike-through text, so it appears it won’t show you when text is eliminated.

However, you can see for yourself where text has been eliminated by looking at the older version of the page (via the “Old Page” link) and comparing it to the newer version.

Do you find this useful? Do you know another good use for Update Scanner? Leave a comment below!

Quite frankly, if you are spending hours each morning checking a bunch of bookmarks one by one, you are wasting valuable time.

I prefer Google Reader for managing RSS feeds but any RSS reader will do.

Once you’ve got a handle on the basics, here are seven quick and easy steps to take Google Reader to the next level.

1. Follow all local news sites in your coverage area, plus as many national news sites as you can handle

This is the most basic thing a journalist can do with Google Reader, but it’s one of the most important.

Get RSS feeds from every local newspaper and TV Web site that covers your area.

You’re probably already reading them anyway; why not save yourself the hassle of visiting all their sites individually?

2. Follow all local bloggers in your area

Bloggers report news too, no matter what some professional journalists like to think.

You need to stay on top of everything your local bloggers are saying.

Even the biggest crackpot might reveal a valuable news tip at some point.

3. Follow Google News searches for locations related to your beat

This is easy. Follow these steps:

• Go to Google News
• Search using a location you cover, in the dateline format that it would likely appear in a news story (like “Lynchburg, Va.”)
• When the results appear, click “Sort by Date” to ensure you’re getting the latest results (you can decide for yourself how relevant they are)
• At the bottom of the page, click “RSS feed” and load it into Google Reader

Now anytime a new result would appear in a Google News search for that term, you’ll see it in Reader.

You’ll find publications you never heard of writing stories about your city or quoting people from your city.

4. Follow Google News searches for keywords related to your beat

This is similar to No. 3, but you’re searching for keywords related to your beat instead of locations.

These can be company names, people names, whatever.

Examples relevant to the Lynchburg, Virginia area could include:

• Babcock & Wilcox (a company)
• Jerry Falwell (a famous person)
• Virginia tourism (a general topic)

5. Follow people who will teach you something

Don’t just read the news – use Google Reader to learn new skills.

For example: want to learn multimedia reporting? Follow Mindy McAdams’ blog, Teaching Online Journalism, Mark Luckie’s 10,000 Words or Shawn Smith’s New Media Bytes.

There are plenty of people out there giving tons of terrific free advice. You just have to find the ones you’re interested in.

6. Read what other journalists read

Use Google’s Power Readers feature to take a peek at national journalists’ Google Reader lists.

You can also see what people are sharing on Google Reader (when they use the “Share” button underneath an item), no matter how famous they are.

Here are some items I’ve chosen to share.

7. Learn the keyboard shortcuts

Once you’ve got a few dozen (or a few hundred) feeds in your Google Reader, you’ll get tired of clicking.

Learn the keyboard shortcuts to help you scan through news items more quickly.

Intimidated by the long list on that page? Even learning just these few will give you a big boost of speed:

• j/k – go down/up an item (expanded view)
• n/p – scan down/up an item (list view)
• space/shift-space – go up/down a page
• v – view the original item

Got any other tips? Leave a comment!

You may already be familiar with Google News e-mail alerts (and RSS feeds). If not, here’s a primer.

For journalists, the best way to use them is by clicking “Sort By Date” after searching Google News but before signing up for the e-mail alert. That way you always get the newest information, and you can sort out what’s relevant to you.

The techniques available to refine regular Google search results are also available for Google News alerts. That means you can refine your news alert terms by excluding sources you already read or don’t trust.

If you work for a newspaper covering Ankeny, Iowa, and you have a Google alert for “Ankeny,” you’ll probably be bombarded with news alerts from your own paper. Since you’ll already be familiar with those stories, these alerts will be useless.

In Google searches, you can restrict a search to a specific site using the following:

searchterm site:domain.com

For example,

"City Council" site:newsadvance.com

to search for “City Council” only on www.newsadvance.com.

Similarly, you can exclude specific sites by adding a minus sign before the site parameter, like

"Lynchburg" -site:newsadvance.com

By using “-site:newsadvance.com,” I will exclude www.newsadvance.com from search results for “Lynchburg.” This is OK because I work for www.newsadvance.com and am already familiar with its stories.

After turning that search result into an e-mail alert, I won’t be hit with lots of e-mails about stories from my own paper.

Did you find this helpful? Do you have any questions about using Google News alerts? Please leave a comment!

Don’t have administrator rights on your computer to install software?

Grab a copy of Firefox Portable and run it off a USB drive.

Here are five great add-ons for journalists, in no particular order:

Juice

Select text, like a name or a term. Drag it out of position (into empty space somewhere in the browser window). Juice will launch a sidebar with Wikipedia, Google and video search results.

Thanks go to Mashable for turning me on to Juice.

Get Juice

Update Scanner

This Firefox add-on will check Web sites for you periodically and tell you if they’ve changed. You can set how often it should check your list of sites and how big of a change is needed for it to alert you. It’s great for keeping up with sites that don’t offer RSS feeds.

Update scanner will tell you when a Web site has changed. No more wasting time checking a huge list of sites.

Get Update Scanner

ScrapBook

ScrapBook lets you save pieces of Web pages, highlight them and make notes. It’s very handy for general research or for collecting information for a news story.

It can also follow links and capture the pages behind them. If you see a page with 10 links, and you want to save not only the page you’re on but every page it links to, you can do that.

Get ScrapBook

Split Browser

This add-on lets you split your Firefox browser window into multiple panes so you can compare two things side-by-side or just read numerous sites at once.

Get Split Browser

TwitterFox

If you can’t or don’t want to use Tweetdeck, the next best thing might be TwitterFox.

It’s not a big full-featured app for monitoring multiple Twitter searches and groups.

It’s a small, unobtrusive icon in Firefox’s status bar that you can click to quickly bring up the latest Tweets, replies and direct messages.

Plus, you can quickly switch among multiple accounts, which makes it a snap to update both your own personal Twitter account and any newsroom accounts you might be responsible for.

Get TwitterFox

What other Firefox add-ons are useful for journalists? Leave a comment!

But how do you stay on top of Web site changes when the site doesn’t use RSS?

Or what if you want to keep track of something that wouldn’t typically be published in an RSS feed – for example, a published government policy or a list of company executives?

There are several services you can use that will periodically check a Web page you have specified and notify you when it changes.

For those using the Firefox Web browser, I highly recommend Update Scanner.

It is very simple to manage the list of Web sites you are watching, and you have numerous options for how often a page is checked.

Also, because it uses your browser to check the page, rather than a third-party service, such as the e-mail-based services covered next, it is (in theory) more reliable. Your receipt of the updates is not subject to any downtime that befalls a third-party service’s servers.

There are also services that will e-mail you when a Web page changes.

The advantages of an e-mail-based service are that you do not have to use Firefox (for those who prefer another browser, or do not have a choice) and some people may like receiving the updates in their e-mail.

The biggest disadvantage is that you may not receive notification of a change as immediately as you do using Update Scanner.

I have used Change Detection and it is pretty good. It is free to use.

Here are two similar services. I have not tried them, so I can’t vouch for them. It appears they are free, but the free accounts are limited.

• WatchThatPage
• Detect Change

If you have a recommendation for a similar service, please let me know!

Now you can install a search plugin in your browser that will search the AP Stylebook’s online edition from your search box.

This requires an AP Stylebook account.

If you search, and you have not already logged in, you will be taken to the login page. After you log in, you will be taken to your search results.

Once you’re logged in, you can search from the search box to your heart’s content.

Click here to go to the download page.

Click “AP Stylebook” on that page to install it.

It works with Internet Explorer and Firefox. It may work with other browsers but I haven’t tested it.