Keeping updated on updates

Quite often I seem to come across references to an updated version of a program I use, and occasionally with some rather scary references to security holes which have been patched by the newer version. I'm never quite convinced that the dangers are as dire as the news stories imply but I do wonder why I was not aware of the updates. The older version of AdAware is one program which will not even tell you that there is a new version, even when you tell it to check updates -- even to the extent that one version just stopped advising of updates to the old version without telling you that there were no updates because there was a new version of the entire program. So how can you keep updated on updates. One suggestion is a program called Securia, described as a "Personal Software Inspector". It certainly gives you a warning if a new version of a very wide range of programs you are likely to have installed. Not only that, it can be used to go directly to the program site, download the update and install it, all at the press of one button. That's great, but the one program it did not tell me had been updated was itself. In order to write this, which was supposed to be an item of praise for the way it worked, I clicked on the link to go to their website and found that I was 2 minor versions behind! All I can say is that at least it is free, for single personal use. (I did subsequently notice that the updates are for minor bug fixes, and an upgrade is said to be not necessary if it is running without problems). If you are interested, it can be downloaded from http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/Personal/ but I'd suggest it may be most useful as a one-off check, You may be surprised just how many of your programs have had updates because of security issues... updates about which you knew nothing.