Twitter.

I'm amazed by the usefulness of Twitter. When I first heard about it, I imagined it to be a collection of Paris Hilton text messages. I signed up on the theory that anything that stupid was bound for glory.

But the truth turned out to be altogether different. Twitter is a terrific search engine and news aggregator. The trick is to find Twitter-ers who are interested in the things that you are interested in and then follow their messages. So, for instance, Karen Swisher of the WSJ's All Things Digital is interested in digital matters. So am I. Karen tweets away about what's on the ATD site (and other stories of interest). And there it is on your Twitter home page. The Sports Illustrated football writers are visiting all the NFL training camps and reporting on pre-season matters. Follow those writers and there it is on your Twitter home page. It's terrific.