Piero della Francesca - Federico da Montefeltro - (c) Canali Photobank

Today, each one of us needs to be continuously in-touch and up-to-date.Too many critical items in our lives now are connected to being informed to leave this responsibility to chance.

Some days we find great news and discover partners and competitors we didn't even know about. Some others, we don't even have time to open the browser.

Information, breaking news in critical interest areas, new products and services, critical commentary, new research info, updated investigative research can all make a profound difference in how you can conduct your business and personal life and on the decisions that you are going to take. The more informed you are the more qualified your decisions can be.

Intelligent Information Agents are the tools that allow you to move from stone-age news seeking to space-age automatic news gathering, searching and aggregation.

While we all attempt to shield ourselves from the deluge of information items coming daily to us, we also have an increasing need to seek out specific information about things that interest us, products and services we work with, news that affect our business and lives, and updates to what other people in the same field are doing or saying.

The fast and all pervasive growth of the ocean of information available on the Web has created a new information and communications revolution. In the new knowledge economy, new companies must find novel ways to succeed, and established firms must innovate to survive. The race to market and growth in competition require innovative ways to find, gather, and process information needed for:

a) Designing new products and services

b) Improving or refining existing products

c) Satisfying customer requests and complaints

d) Attacking new potential markets

e) Learning from other organizations and industries

The Web has also recently evolved into a highly effective and unique marketing tool. The opportunity of leveraging with much increased potential the power of viral marketing and the informal nature of chat rooms, discussion boards and Usenet groups, has given way to realize how much the Web is a perfect breeding ground for "memes" and stories that, when relevant, touching, or properly presented can create a phenomenal "buzz" around any issue.

Everyone wants also to know what other people think of them. Organizations of all kinds proactively seek new solutions that replace traditional clipping services and that would allow to more effectively run current awareness profiles.

More and more these days companies and organizations NEED to know what other people, reporters, customers and partners are saying, not only about themselves, but about their competitors or adversaries.

As a matter of fact the Web has become an all-time favorite weapon for dissatisfied customers, fired employees, and consumer activists to expose, report and at times even attack specific companies and their products.

Such published criticisms can seriously influence the buying attitudes and purchasing decisions of large numbers of people worldwide, boosting a company or product into stellar performance in a matter of days or threatening a company's reputation and "identity" while potentially causing serious financial damage through reduced sales, lowered stock price or consumer complaints and legal actions.

As a general rule, the more the "buzz" persists, the greater is the damage being done. The longer the "buzz" is out on the Internet and the more difficult is to remove it both from the Internet and, even more so, from the minds of those who have absorbed it.

No company or organization is immune to this. Problem is most organizations do not find out about such online published criticism until it is too late to stop the negative consequences deriving from it. As a result, monitoring what is said on the Internet about a company and its products has become a skill in very high-demand. Individuals who can effectively take responsibility to:

  manage corporate reputation,

  protect brand images,

  track market opinion,

  correct misinformation,

  improve customer service

are paid in gold for what they weight.

Tracking selectively breaking news and information available online is therefore equally valued by competitive teams in public relations, public awareness, marketing communications, market research, investor relations, competitive intelligence.

Intelligent Information Agents are also of great support to business planning departments, information and communication managers, librarians, independent publisher, journalists, and even to legal departments for automatic detection of intellectual property infringements.

The Web has also had significant effects on the stock process of small and large companies alike and being on top of what you need to know, out of the ocean of information moving on the Internet, is a strong, rare and powerful advantage.

Notwithstanding the above very few people today are able to stay on top of the river of information coming to them.

In the last one month I have taken the time to study, research and try out all of the tools, technologies and services that can allow each one of us to become a NewsGod.

A NewsGod is someone who is able to stay on top of the relevant news and information that sHe needs to know in order to do hir job right. Information and up-to-date news must arrive in the NewsGod inbox without hir having to move a finger.

There are tools and services that when combined together give you so much power and control over what you know and over how fast you can find out about something, that I can safely say that any NewsGod can know everything about anything sHe wants to know.

NewsGod is also the title of my new Mini-Guide that I will make available tomorrow on this site. Over 100 pages of great content for a very small price plus reviews and access to over 50 unique tools.

To find out more just stay tuned.