One way to find the information you want is by setting up computer-generated alerts. These electronic notifications are relatively simple to use and offer a range of helpful services, from a virtual heads-up when your name is mentioned online to messages about a product’s price suddenly dropping.

For years, I’ve used Google Alerts as a way of keeping track of myself online. If my name is mentioned in a blog or if this column appears on the Web, such as on the site of a newspaper that syndicates it, a Google Alert sends me an email about it. Google Alerts can work for you to find a variety of things, such as telling you if a video of a favorite band popped up online or that a blogger posted something about last night’s episode of “Mad Men.”

In about a month, Google will begin delivering these alerts to users via feeds, as well as emails. Google (GOOG) certainly isn’t alone in the alerts arena, as Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) and AOL (TWX) are also players. This week I tried two small companies that recently joined the mission to help users find the Web content using alerts.

Pinpointing Searches

I tried Alerts.com and Yotify.com, and found worthwhile features in both. While Google Alerts does a good job of finding search terms in news, blogs and videos, Alerts.com and Yotify use forms that are a cinch to fill out and let you pinpoint your searches.

Alerts.com offers to notify users via email, SMS text messages or even voice calls to a cellphone or landline. The site organizes your alerts on a personalized Web page and uses a desktop application called Elertz to tell you when an alert has generated results. I liked this site’s flexibility: It not only gave me different ways to receive notifications, but also enabled a variety of options for time-specific deliveries of alerts.

But Yotify has advantages of its own, including the ability to integrate with FriendFeed and Facebook so friends can offer their recommendations or opinions. It also lets users search for event tickets or items auctioned on eBay (EBAY). And a smart preview panel gives you an idea of the type of results your search will return before you submit the request for an alert.

Viewing Results

For now, Google Alerts and Yotify will send alert notifications only via email, though all three services will let you view your alert results online. All three are free, but SMS alerts sent to a cellphone via Alerts.com may not be, depending on your plan.

All in all, I found there were certain things each service was good at doing. For example, Alerts.com lets me know college football scores when I want them: only after the final score; at the end of each quarter and after the final score; or at the end of each quarter, after the final score and after each time a team scores points. Yotify gave me detailed options in a Craigslist search for furniture, including showing only listings with photos or just those that included the word “sofa” in a title; it will even hunt for a specific price range.

For the person who wants to spend minimal time creating basic alerts, Google Alerts will do the trick. These can be narrowed down to show results that fall into the News, Web, Blogs, Video or Groups categories, or you can perform more-blanketed searches using a Comprehensive category.

Alerts.com offers plenty of simple alerts that require only a bit of scheduling to set up. Each alert appears as a widget that can be expanded, edited or deleted with a simple click, and this page has a clean look with attractive, cohesive graphics.

I didn’t care much for Elertz, the desktop component of Alerts.com, because once installed, it notified me of new Alerts data using an irksome star that glowed red until I checked my notifications. Elertz didn’t work properly on my Windows XP machine until Alerts.com fixed a bug.

But Alerts.com’s price watch and price protection alerts are incredibly useful. Price watch looks to see if an item’s price drops into a lower price range, at which point users are notified. Price protection watches to see if products you bought are now on sale so you can get a refund. I tried both, and I’m hoping I’ll hear soon that a specific pair of Anthropologie boots is on sale.

Yotify uses the idea of virtual scouts that scour the Web for specific information. Scout findings can be condensed or expanded in one click, and results can be filtered for more specific findings or shared with friends via Facebook or FriendFeed.

Scout Work

But some scouts took too much work to set up. When I tried to set up a scout for college football scores, I didn’t see a sports category (Alerts.com had a colorful NCAA icon right on its home page). Instead, I had to choose News, then select ESPN, then NCAAF and finally enter “Penn State” in a key word box for my scout. And after all that, the scout offered results only daily or hourly via email.

I would also prefer if I could better organize my scout lists. As it was, all of my results appeared in one list: The NCAA scout was right above the scout that found Obama mentions on Huffington Post, and below that were results for YouTube’s most-watched videos. Yotify says it will add ways to more neatly arrange data in the next month or so.

On average, Yotify returned more results instantly, such as 10 instant Craigslist sofa results compared with Alerts.com’s two in the first few hours.

Overall, these sites are worth trying so you can find which alert system works best for you and stop wasting time searching the Web the old-fashioned way.

– Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

VTech Communications wants to put an end to this mad phone dash with its new $150 Expandable Cordless Phone System with Bluetooth, the LS5145. This device synchronizes with your cellphone and redirects incoming cell calls to ring wherever the VTech phones are placed in the house. It works with your landline and up to two Bluetooth-linked cellphones, and can be expanded using additional handsets that cost $80 each.

The $150 Expandable Cordless Phone System with Bluetooth from VTech Communications Inc.

The concept of a cellphone extender isn’t new, but not many of them have caught on. Another popular add-on to cellphones at home is the repeater, which focuses on boosting a phone’s signal in a place with poor coverage. The VTech 5145 could work as a repeater, assuming you put it and the finicky cellphone in a place with good coverage. But if your entire house has lousy cell coverage, it won’t work as a repeater.

AT&T licenses its corded and cordless phones through VTech, which sells a less-expensive product similar to the 5145 called the AT&T EP5632. It costs $100 and has the same basic functions as the 5145, but is clunky and much less stylish. Its additional handhelds cost $60 each.

This week, I put my feet up and tried the VTech 5145 and one of its accessory handsets, the LS5105. These phones are stylishly thin and have bright color display screens, which can be set to one of 27 still color wallpaper images or four animated designs. It took me only a minute to pair cellphones with the system using Bluetooth, a wireless technology that connects devices that are within about 30 feet of one another. And the VTech’s primary function — extending the cellphone throughout a house to make it more convenient to answer — worked well, ringing much louder than my cellphone.

But the 5145 didn’t display the numerous names and numbers stored on my cellphone’s contact list. Unless I wanted to painstakingly enter the data into the VTech, incoming calls were only identified with phone numbers, so I rarely knew who was calling. And I could only call the handful of numbers that I know by heart.

Bluetooth technology isn’t incapable of transmitting data: My BlackBerry Curve even tried to transfer its contacts to the 5145, but couldn’t. VTech chose to use headset Bluetooth synchronization on the 5145 rather than hands-free synchronization. Hands-free is the same technology used in most Bluetooth-equipped cars; it provides more access to the Bluetooth device, such as phone-book integration.

I also missed other features on my cellphone when it wasn’t by my side, such as text messaging and voice mail. Incoming text messages were sent to my cellphone unbeknownst to me since I wasn’t near it, and when I didn’t answer incoming calls through the VTech, I had no way of knowing if the caller left a voice mail on my cellphone.

The 5145 includes a base station and primary phone; the 5105 additional handset includes a small stand just big enough to hold it upright. I set up the base station near where I drop my work bag after coming home each night. After the initial pairing during setup, phones automatically link to the VTech, meaning I never had to take my cellphone out of my bag.

I paired the 5145 with two phones at once: a Motorola Razr using Verizon and a BlackBerry Curve with AT&T service. I also tested pairing a third phone with the system, the HTC Pocket PC 6800 from Sprint, though only two cellphones can be paired simultaneously. Just one of the Bluetooth phones can be used at a time, in addition to the landline. As long as the two paired phones stayed within about 30 feet of the base station, they automatically started routing calls through the VTech.

Call waiting worked like using my actual cellphone, except I pressed different buttons on the 5145 to “swap” calls. If you’re chatting on a landline call, you can answer an incoming cellphone call by placing the landline call on hold. If each line — landline and cellular — has call waiting, a total of four callers could potentially be linked to the VTech system at once.

In my house, we gave up our landline years ago, so I tested the system using only cellphones. I saved myself a few trips racing up and down the stairs to find where I had left my cellphone, instead placing the base station on one floor and the additional handset on the other. Using cordless phones for the first time in years reminded me of the issues that accompany this system. The line became fuzzy when I moved too far away from a phone’s base station, though VTech says a connection can stay clear for up to about 900 feet.

I almost forgot that cordless phones can’t be taken out of the house. While on a phone call, I had to stop myself from heading out the front door and continuing my chat as I walked to the corner store. Cellular calls that are in progress on VTech handsets can be continued on the cell by adjusting a setting on the cellphone, or by walking far enough away from the base station to receive a cellphone prompt to disconnect from the system.

I made calls from the handsets by first choosing which of the paired cellphones to use. My calls were received by friends and family just as if I was calling on my cellphone, though a couple of people told me that the connection didn’t sound quite as good.

Each handset is equipped with a speakerphone, and missed calls are noted on the color screen and in a call log, along with the date and time. A built-in intercom system lets handsets communicate with the other or the base station. Users can choose from one of 23 ringtone-like melodies; I chose a steel drum tune for one handset.

If you’re looking for an easier way to answer your cellphone whenever and wherever it rings, VTech’s system might be a good solution for you. But if you rely on your cellphone’s address book to identify callers and aren’t up for inputting these data again, it might be worth waiting for a Bluetooth cordless phone system that will automatically copy data from your cellphone.

Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

• Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com