Google Alerts is a true necessity for anyone wanting to stay on top of the vast amount of information about a small topic.  You can set the alerts to come "as-it-happens" in case you want to know all the breaking news, or choose to receive a daily or weekly compilation of alerts.  I will caution you not to get too overzealous in your search for knowledge.  Keep your search phrases very specific in nature or else you will be flooded with more information than you need.   If you spend the next five minutes setting up an account and adding your alerts than you will be much more informed about the world around and won't waste hours later on aimlessly searching the net.

Be alerted about:

1. Yourself - You'd be amazed who's talking about you behind your back. Seriously though, just enter you name with apostrophes around it (this will eliminate articles that feature both your first name and your last name somewhere in them, but not together). If you have a common name you may not want to know what the thousands of other John Smith's out there are doing...I had no idea how many Daniel Bates' there were. 
2. Your Website - I have a "mymcclellanville.net" alert so if someone posts a link or mentions my site I will know about it (almost) instantly and can send them a great big thanks.  
3. Your Area - I'm in a small town that I blog about regularly so it's great for me to read everything anyone writes about it.   But if you live in a city of over 50,000 you may want to try your city name + real estate and see if that limits your notifications enough for you to keep up with the information.  If you specialize in a specific area or neighborhood(s) enter those.
4. Your Interests - That obviously covers a lot - but I am alerted whenever something is posted about the nearby national forest or wildlife refuge because I want to know everything that is going on there. 
5. Your competition - If you aspire to be #1 in your region a little bit of spying on your competition isn't completely unhealthy.  Don't get too caught up in this and don't run around behind them stealing their good ideas, but don't hide your head in the sand ignoring all their marketing efforts either.