Total information awareness with Google Alerts

The Personal Tech Pipeline blog has a post on setting up your own "Total Information Awareness" system (a little over the top, perhaps?) using previously-mentioned Google Alerts.

Let's say you have a friend who lives on the other side of the country. Let's call her "Janet Birkenstock." You can set up a Google Alert using quotation marks around her name that searches both news stories and web sites. Then you can just forget about it. From then on, whenever Janet runs a marathon, gets promoted, is quoted in the local newspaper, or does anything that someone mentions in the news or on the web, you get an e-mail with a link to that page. You can always be the first to congratulate her, or whatever. The point is that you're staying in touch with and remain aware of your friend without any effort at all.

This does seem like a cool way to keep your eyes on a lot of people and topics - though clearly you're out of luck if you've got a lot of John Smith-type friends. How do you keep track of friends and topics near and dear to your heart? Let us know in the comments or at tips at