From Research Buzz: “Google is finally offering news alerts, which may finally fill the giant hole left in my life by the demise of Northern Light News and THEIR alerts. You can get to ’em at http://www.google.com/newsalerts. Apparently you will not have to have an account for this. All the site offers is a space for you to enter a news query, a note for how often you want it (daily or as it happens) and your e-mail. Once you’ve entered a query Google News will send you a confirmation of that query. Confirm that and you’ll start getting news alerts. Alerts contain links to storie containing your alert keywords as relevant “snippets” of the stories.”