Need to do some quick research or settle a beer-fuelled dispute, but lack a decent web connection? Email or test SnapAsk.com and get the relevant Wikipedia article sent to your phone or email.SnapAsk.com can respond with many other information services when you email or text [email protected], including weather conditions (albeit not in Celsius), word defintions (including UrbanDictionary.com results), and much more. But its replies with the full text of Wikipedia articles, and a subject-defining snippet up top, makes it truly useful for last-minute look-ups and, say, your never-ending arguments about which David Bowie was released before the other. SnapAsk.com is a free service, and may throw a text ad or two in its responses. SnapAsk

Planning a trip and feeling cheap? I Want That Flight lets you enter a domestic destination, date and target price, and emails you when it finds a flight matching those specifications. In truth, I'm not convinced that this is particularly useful: if you know you need to fly somewhere on a particular day, you're better off getting in and searching the relevant airlines as soon as possible, because it's rare these days for domestic flights to get cheaper closer to the date. However, there's some potential value in the hot flights list of deals found by other users if you're scouring for bargains. I Want That Flight

Make it nearly impossible for you to forget an important reminder or event with Remindr, a free multi-medium reminder service that doesn't require registration or account sign-ups. Written as part of a Ruby on Rails coding contest, the simple webapp asks for a reminder text, date, and time, then lets you enter a Twitter account, email address, Jabber/Gchat IM name, and mobile phone number for SMS alerts. It's not the spot you'd go to for regular alerts, but for one-off, must-not-miss things, Remindr can be pretty handy. Remindr

Ready to buy a great holiday gift, but not sure if it'll drop just a bit more before the season is out? ShoppingNotes.com is a simple, useful price watch tool that isn't confined to a single site. Give it the URL (or Google search and choose from its page) of any product page at an online merchant, hand over your email address, and verify the alert over there. If you just want emails whenever the price drops at all, that's all you have to do. Signing in or editing your alerts, however, lets you get specific on how much of a discount should trigger an alert, and change the number of days to watch (the default is 30). There are, of course, many other price-watch services, but ShoppingNotes is notably clutter-free, and not too annoying with the ads. ShoppingNotes.com is a free service, requires an account to manage and edit multiple alerts. ShoppingNotes.com

Web site Notify Me When It's Up performs a very simple but worthwhile task: It sends you an email when a downed site you want to visit returns to the internet. Similar to previously mentioned Down For Everyone or Just Me—which helps you figure out if a site you're having trouble reaching is really down or its, well, just you—Notify Me When It's Up takes the next logical step by monitoring a downed site and letting you know when it returns. Might be useful next time your favourite weblog is unreachable or a link you really want to check out crashes under the weight of its popularity.

Notify Me When It's Up

Free alert service Exactfactor tracks search engine results by key words, and can email anyone interested in how any web site is doing in the battle for the top Google, Yahoo, or Live.com spot. After signing up for an account, you enter one or two web sites and key words to track them by. You'll see an instant report on the site's ranking on each search site, and can hit "Get alerts" to be e-mailed when that site improves, declines, or hits the front page of the search results. If you're looking for ways to juice your standing in the world of web search (or bury something unfortunate), check Tamar's guide to managing your online reputation. Exactfactor

If you're one of our commenters who feels overwhelmed with iPhone news, you'll have absolutely no use for a new service offered by the got apps? blog. But for those intrigued but overwhelmed by the iTunes App Store's multitude of apps, it's as simple as entering your email address and a keyword you're interested in, then clicking "Create Alert." The site does hourly scans of the store and mails out the matching results. Helpful if you're looking for programs related to your field, or, say, praying for the day when synchronised Notes becomes available. The got apps? blog says it won't spam you and posts their privacy policy at the link below. iPhone App Alerts