New site offers e-mail alerts to keep tabs on public records

This recession has forced a lot of worried consumers to keep a closer eye on nearly everything.

Now, a new Web site in Elburn is offering you the chance to keep track further.

Watch Illinois (http://watch.public-record.com/src/metcalf) launched in February and allows users to receive e-mail alerts related to public records filed in Northern Illinois. This includes documents related to a person, business, phone number or a property PIN number.

Watch Illinois scans about 14 million past and new public records, including mortgages, real estate transactions, businesses, bankruptcies, divorces, foreclosures, evictions, felonies and DUIs.

"In this day and age, when we have so much financial turmoil in our economy where credit scores are crucial to get credit and we have massive amounts of foreclosures, you have to be all over this," said site creator Jeff Metcalf, who is also president/CEO of Record Information Services' Check Illinois in Kaneville (www.public-record.com.)

If you want to watch your own PIN or property Identification Number and be notified of any liens filed against your property, you have three options. First you need to register at the site to receive e-mailed alerts and choose three months for $5.95, six months for $7.95 or a year for $9.95. You would establish the PIN number, name or business name, and each would be considered an "agent."

"People don't realize that anyone can go to the recorder's office and file anything they want on your property and you would never know it," said Metcalf. "I think we all have heard stories about liens being filed on property. If you think about it with all of this going on, one transposed number on a PIN could be filed on the wrong property. There was nothing else like this out there when I conceived the idea."

The system will automatically send you all public records that exist in the system related to your request.

In the future, it will then e-mail you weekly with any new public records that are filed or send a notice that there are no new public records filed.

"It's kind of like the credit bureaus that notify you of any activity on your credit report," said Metcalf.

Surfing: Orbitz.com and CheapTickets.com have both removed booking fees on flights through May 31.

•Chicago-based Allscripts partnered with Fujitsu to create a kiosk for patients to use to get information on physicians. They debuted the new technology this week at a trade show at McCormick Place in Chicago.

The Illinois Science and Technology Coalition, iBIO, TechAmerica and the Illinois Venture Capital Association will host "NanoNow, An Illinois Science & Technology Forum" April 21 at the University of Chicago's Gleacher Center, 450 N. Cityfront Plaza Drive, Chicago. For information, see www.istcoalition.org.