This post contains a tip for the few people out there, that - like me - have been able to prevent Twitter from taking over their lives completely.

The disadvantage of being in that position is, that you do not hear about things as early as other people do.

It is for example not an easy feat to hear about the next T-SQL Tuesday topic in time to participate. All the #TSQL2sDay tweets will pass – unnoticed by you.

But there is help: Google Alerts.

Google Alerts can notify you about anything happening in the blogosphere (or the complete internet). If you click on the link above you will get to see a form like this:

Type in the search term you are looking for and provide information about how often you want to be notified and the next time T-SQL Tuesday rolls around, you will find a notification in your inbox.

Happy tweeting alerting.

Technorati.com is one of the most famous blog directories out there. To increase visibility of your blog, it is a good idea to claim it with them. Go to technorati.com/blog-claiming-faq for the details.

The steps are simple:

1. Create an account

2. Login

3. Click on your username in the upper right corner

4. Scroll down all the way till you see the “Claim Blog” form

5. Fill out the form

6. Technorati will send you an email with a claim code (E.g.: WZB2CAS6297Z )

7. Create a new blog entry containing this code

8. Repeat steps 2,3 and 4

9. Click the “Check Claim” button

10. Click the “Verify Claim Token” button

Now your Blog will undergo a review process, which might take some time, so be patient.