STAYING BRIEFED ON THE NEWS

By: Charles Bowen BriefMe.com Lends a Helping Hand


I don't know anyone who isn't busy. Call it the Data Explosion or the
Information Age or the Internet Factor - whatever it is, it means that
staying abreast of the topics that you have to follow to do your work takes a
monumental effort. Meanwhile, finding time to also track those additional
subjects that you're simply curious about - either out of personal interest
or for story and column ideas - gets harder and harder. So it's about time
that the Internet gave us a helping hand.

That's why I've started using a service called BriefMe.com, a relief for those
of us with information overload. This site tracks some 80 topics - ranging
from sports to politics to music to computers to cars to beauty secrets -
and generates a weekly e-mail newsletter for each one. In addition to brief news
summaries, the reports also include Web site reviews and links to online
articles, all collected by volunteer online editors. Subscribe to as many of the
topics as you want, all for free, and you can choose to receive your reports
either in plain text or in hypertext markup language (HTML) format, which has
clickable hyperlinks embedded for quick access.

To use the resource, visit the site at http://www.briefme.com and click the
"Subscribe" button in the left-hand column to see the list of available
newsletters. Click checkmarks into the boxes to the left of as many of the
newsletters as you want. Next, scroll to the bottom of the screen, where you are
prompted for your e-mail address. Enter it and then indicate in the next box
whether you want to receive the data in text or HTML format.

You also can say whether you want to receive additional targeted e-mail about
related subjects. And there is a box to click to indicate that you are not under
13 years of age. After you have filled in the data, click the "Subscribe Now!"
button to continue to get on the list. This will set you up for all future
publications of the designated newsletters.

Each BriefMe.com newsletter usually contains six to 10 reviews and article
summaries. The original site or article uniform resource locator (URL) is
reported in each review so you can refer to the original material.

In addition, you can browse the backlog of previous newsletters in any of the
topics. Click the "Archives" button on the main screen. A hyperlinked list of
newsletters then appears. Click a name to see its file of previous publications,
each clickable to view its contents. While browsing, if you find a newsletter
you want to sign up for, use your browser's "Back" or "Previous" button to
return to the hyperlinked list and click the "Subscribe Now!" button beside that
newsletter's name.

You also can search the BriefMe.com database. To do that, return to the main
screen and click the "Search" button among the options printed at the bottom of
the screen. A subsequent search form will take your query, which can be any word
or phrase, even a partial word. As many as 200 hyperlinked search results will
be returned.

Other considerations in using BriefMe.com for your writing and editing:
o BriefMe.com was founded in 1999 and boasts 1,100 contributors who scour the
Web for the 80 topic newsletters. The site also currently reports more than 2
million subscriptions. Headquartered in New York, the service's editor in chief
is Allison Conner.
o BriefMe.com editors usually review new Web sites and articles. However, some
older sites are frequently cited again if they have new articles and content of
interest.
o If you later want to discontinue receiving a particular BriefMe.com alert,
return to the site and go into the "Unsubscribe" section, where you will be
asked for your e-mail address. Then simply click the "Unsubscribe" button. You
will receive an e-mail message confirming the cancellation.

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Bowen writes columns, articles and books from West Virginia, and is host of the daily Internet News syndicated radio show (http://www.netnewstoday.com).
charlesbowen@compuserve.com


Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher