The question I am asked more often than any other is "how do you keep up with all the information coming at you from every direction?" So I thought I'd share some of the research tools I can't blog without....

Google and YahooNews Alerts send me emails when artilces with my name or other keywords I follow appear online. They miss a lot, but they pick up a lot I might otherwise not see right away.

Bloglines RSS feeds. I subscribe to 158 feeds from blogs and news sites at the moment, and check the headlines in my newsreader every morning. You can see my feeds here

Technorati is the site where I track who's linking to me; what the top topics are in blogs at the moment; to find blogs on particular topics and lots more.

Lifehacks tracks the most popular items posted on del.icio.us over the last 24 hours

Tech Memeorandum to follow technology business news from blogs and MSM

Digg a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.

And I have Firefox with multiple browser tabs open at all times

Wow! As I put this list together, I realize there are many other tools I use, so I will write about them from time to time. I lack the geek gene that many bloggers have, so I promise that nothing I tell you will be technically challenging.

I'll be reporting on how other bloggers find the information they blog about over the next few weeks.

What tools do you use to stay up to date? Please share them with us!