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Finding People On The Net A wonderful benefit of the net is the ability to find specific people, whether they be old friends, old school mates, lost family members, or old loves. It does work, and I know people who have found friends they knew 30 or more years ago, including one person who has rekindled an old love. I know someone else who began searching for a friend from college only to find there were places where folks were listed by groups and she found a listing for her entire former class. Today’s column will focus on three of the free sites designed for finding people. While this may not have a lot to do with the Macintosh, these sites were chosen because they are very user friendly, just like my Mac. Switchboard [http://www.switchboard.com] allows you to search for individuals, businesses’, web sites, and e-mail addresses. There are other options offered as well, but we are going to focus completely on finding individuals. Once you open the site you will see labeled graphics. Click on the one named “Find People”. This will lead you into a screen that invites you to provide names and addresses. The only required field is the last name. Let us suppose that we are looking for Bill Wilson. The last time we saw good old Bill was in Denver, Colorado in 1984. We don’t know if he is still in Denver and we don’t know if we should look for Bill or William. I suggest that you assume you will find him still in Denver because he loved the snow. So lets ask the computer to find Bill Wilson in Denver, Colorado and click the search button. If that match is not successful you may want to try Bill Wilson in Colorado. If that match is not successful you can try William Wilson in Colorado. You can carry this pattern as far as you wish -- listing all the Wilson’s in Colorado, all the Wilson’s in the U.S. or all the Bill or William Wilson’s in either place. If Bill has a brother named Zeek you can try and find the brother as a means of finally tracking down Bill. You may have to resort to this same kind of strategy if you are looking for a female whose family name be have changed since you last saw her. Your search will only be limited by the amount of patience and time you have to search. However, if our friend Bill has an unlisted phone number or has moved to Canada, you may not be able to find him. Another option available on Switchboard is the option of finding business listings. Let us assume that Bill is an antique dealer and he chooses not to list his home phone in any directory. You can choose the Business Category and either type in a category or look on the optional listing for antique dealers. You don’t have to have a name, city, or state although the city and state could limit the number of options the computer will search. Once you click on the search button you will receive a list of all the business’ in the category. When I asked this site to give me all the antique stores in Denver, I received dozens of business listings, complete with address and phone as well as a street map and driving directions. Armed with this information you could telephone each place looking for Bill, or you could check further to see if the business’s have an e-mail address and contact them by e-mail. 555-1212 [http://www.555-1212.com] This site offers you the opportunity to search for Bill in the same manner as Switchboard. You can also look for information based just on an address. This feature allows you to find out the name of the family down the street with the swimming pool or the last name of that teenager who cuts lawns. Another super feature on this site is the ability to input just a phone number from anywhere in the U.S. and see whose number it is. If the message on your answering machine is from a lawyer’s office and you expect to be in Uncle Fred’s will you will probably want to return the call. However, if the number turns out to belong to someone whom you may suspect is selling swamp land in Florida you may choose to ignore it. This site is linked so that you can search in one or more of the other search sites. When searching for an individual you have the option of being instantly hooked up to Switchboard, Four11, or InfoSpace. You can use any or all of them, following the same steps as noted above. Four11 [http://www.Four11.com] This site allows you to search for an individual in the traditional way, but it also lets you search for an e-mail address. Let us assume that our friend Bill Wilson lives in Temple, Texas. You know for a fact that he is still there and you know he uses a computer. Your goal may be to find his e-mail address so that you can routinely correspond with him without running up long distance bills. This site will let you check to see if he has an e-mail address listed anywhere. Another unique aspect of Four11 is the ability to perform an advanced search for someone by organization (such as lodge membership, or college fraternity); by domain (such as AOL or Compuserve); or even by a known old e-mail address. You can also tell Four11 to use a feature they call SmartName and if you type in Bill it will automatically search for William as well. The advanced search will also let you type in a specific keyword, such as the name of your high school and it will search for references that contain that information. Have fun and I hope you are successful in your search. Let me know if you find someone special and I will share the story with our readers. |