I've started this topic for the NowPublic community so that I can share a few of the online tools that I use for article writing, news stories, and for other online tasks.  Every tool (online website) described below helps me in one way or the other and all are 100 % free.

My favorite online news gathering tools

1.  Popurls.com

I've been visiting Popurls for some time now because they display the world's most popular stories from 30 awesome websites all on one page.  They also have links for approximately 100 more sites that feature some form of online news.

2.  ChaCha Guide Tools

If you haven't heard of ChaCha, it's basically a free service for mobile devices.  The link above takes you to the 'guide tools' page of their website.  On that page there are many useful resources for researching and fact checking.  If you want to know more about ChaCha, here's a page I wrote about ChaCha's mobile answering service awhile back. 

3.  Stock.Xchng

The Stock.Xchng is a photo sharing website.  Their photos are in the public domain with a few that have very little restrictions.  All images on that site are super high-quality.  I've found many photos in here that are relevant to news stories that I cover.

4.  Google Alerts  (powerful)

Google Alerts can be a powerful time-saving resource for gathering information of any type.  It's by far my favorite tool that I use on a daily basis.  The more I learn how to use Google Alerts, the more amazed I am.

G.A.'s are email alerts from topics, keywords, or queries that you set up.  For example, I set a G.A. for the query 'love nowpublic'.  Anytime someone publishes a blog post, news story or even a comment on a blog and they happen to write 'love nowpublic' , Google shoots me an email.

You can use alerts to follow certain news topics that you like to cover.  I've even used alerts to follow a specific news story for updates.  For all you writers out there that have dealt with plagiarism, try setting a Google Alert for the title of your articles or even a unique sentence from your article.  Anytime they are used you'll be notified immediately.  I've found so many punks that have created entire web sites from my articles while replacing my name with theirs.

In order to use G.A's, you must have a Gmail email account.  If you don't send me a PM and I'll send you an invite.

5.  RefDesk.com

Have look at this massive listing of resources.  I've only recently starting using this page.  Check out the page and start scrolling down.  As you scroll down the page,  you'll see exactly why I chose to share this site with you.  Are you ready to gather some news or what? 

These are just some of the many tools I use to fact check and gather information with.  Hopefully some of these tools will be of use to some of you here at NowPublic.  The fourth tool on this list is by far the most powerful and entertaining of them all. 

With all that said, if you'd like to share your most useful tools / online sites that help you please feel free to do so.