Finding Friends and Businesses Without The Print Phonebook
You're trying to reconnect with some old friends and having trouble finding their address and telephone numbers? Are you looking for a good "people finder" tool that offer searches for telephone, email and address listings online? Did you know that you can get free directory assistance if you're blind or visually impaired?
I have an accessible name, phone and address search tool called Infospace: http://www.infospace.com.
At the InfoSpace home page, click on White Pages then you can key in the last name, first name, city and state to start your search for someone in the USA. Here's a little something to remember when searching: Don't enter a first name, or try using just a first initial. The person may be listed under a nickname or a spouse's name. If a very specific search fails, try leaving one or more of the fields blank.
If you're after someone outside the USA, Infospace also has listings for Canada, United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and a page with links to other phone directories around the world. Click on "World Directories" at the Infospace home page to get there.
To do a search for a Business, click on the Yellow Pages tab at the Infospace home page. You can enter a business name or type, and the city or state to search in.
InfoSpace also offers reverse lookups on Phone Numbers, Street Addresses, Email Addresses, and Area Codes. This means you can find a person's name and address if all you know is the phone number. Or you could find someone's name and phone number if you know just the street address. From the InfoSpace home page, click on search by phone or near an address.
Here's a little trick I found: Infospace can tell you the names of everyone on your street. Just omit the street number on the Search by Phone/Address Lookup screen, and it will return ALL of the listings for that street.
Infospace also provides handy links to business, government offices, and a city guide for the city where the person you looked up lives.
If you DON'T want your listings in an online directory, use the Remove feature. At Infospace, just look up your own listing then click the "Update/Remove" link to change or remove yourself from their database.
Even though the Infospace directory is quite extensive, and is updated several times a year, you may not find the person you're looking for. If that's the case, try the sites below since they all use different databases.
Long distance phone companies provide free directory assistance to persons who do not use print. Because long distance companies use different guidelines to determine who qualifies and how they should sign up, it is necessary to contact your long distance service provider to find out if you are eligible and how to obtain the service.
There is a free, nation-wide directory assistance service available over the phone. Simply call 1-800-free-411, or 1-800-3733-411. There is also a website at www.free411.com.
Your regular telephone operator can do a subject search on business listings to provide business numbers. You will need to identify that you are blind or visually impaired.
1-800-Free-411 has been serving us well, but when it comes to free services, the more competition, the better. AOL is offering a free 411 service as well. Dial 1-800-AOL-1234, press *, and presto, you got yourself free directory assistance. They don't even require that you are signed up for any of AOL's other services.
Another service, the TellME Business Search beta, can be accessed by calling 800-555-8355.
Google and 411
Wouldn't you know it. Before too long, our friends at Google would have to enter into this arena as well. Google has announced there Google 411 service. Simply call 800-goog-411, that's 800-4664-411. An interesting note about this service, you can simply ask for electricians and you'll get the top results in your area. Now, blind folks can do a little browsing of the phone book too.
The Desert Skies reports on yet another free way to get that phone number you're looking for. Microsoft's 800-CALL-411 not only gives you numbers for businesses, it will give weather, movie listings, travel information, and traffic updates. From calling the service, it sounds like it's built by TellMe. In our initial tests, we like the fact that human recorded prompts are used for much of the listings and that the number is given without much delay. In other words, it's more efficient. Like Google's service, you can also be connected directly to a business or have the number sent as a text message. If you call back from the same phone, it remembers the last listing you requested, in case you need to call them back or you forgot the number.
Have you ever Googled yourself? You might be surprised to see what others can learn about you with just a few clicks. Enter the name of someone you're looking for at your favorite search engine and you're likely to find links to local newspaper articles, clubs, and professional associations that mention him or her. If that person is active in online forums or blogs, you might learn a lot by seeing what they've written. If the person has a common first or last name, it might help if you can add a few keywords about the person's location or profession to narrow it down.
Yahoo's People Search is another powerful tool you can use. Type in your own name and address, and their mapping system will pinpoint your house. Scary? Maybe, but keep in mind the Internet hasn't made any "private" information available. Even 20 years ago, anyone with a phone book and a map could do the same thing, albeit a bit slower.
Other online white pages such as InfoSpace, Switchboard or The Ultimate White Pages can help if you have some idea of where the person is located. The latter is interesting because it will search several sources from one screen. Oh, and if you've got a phone number but you don't know who it belongs to, try a reverse lookup at one of these sites.
Searching for friends online is so popular now that it was part of the reason behind the origin of Facebook. Although it originally was designed to help students find other people on their campus, it has grown into a tool that will help you connect with old friends from high school, college, a workplace, or geographic region. their database of over 50 million, this is an excellent place to start. Try a search on Facebook or Myspace to see if the person you're looking for has a profile there.
Sites such as PeekYou and Wink take the social network approach one step further. These services aggregate information from over 200 million members of social networks to find your friend. It will check such sites as MySpace, Facebook, and others.
ClassMates and Reunion are designed to help you locate long lost acquaintances from high school or college. Classmates alone has more than 50 million members, so it's a good place to start when you're searching for an old school chum.
If you're searching outside the USA and Canada, try the InfoSpace World Directories or the AnyWho International page. If you want to search for someone in a particular country, Search Engine Colossus can help you find search engines local to a specific country.
Another widely used paid search is Intelius. This service not only offers names and address, but has recently added phone tracing. This includes address, phone number, and carrier for cell phones, VOIP, unlisted and unpublished numbers. A report with number will set you back $14.95. Other services include background checks, and home ownership info.
Finally, let's go to the extreme. Gene Tree and Ancestry will help you trace your family roots. GeneTree can access over 100,000 samples in a data base of 6 million. You can order a test kit from the company for $99.99. Ancestry also allows you to check for relatives and is building its own database from scratch. With a base profile of about 50,000, you can receive a cheek swab from the company for $149.99.
These are just a few of the many search options that are open to you in your quest for your former friends, relatives, or those you are merely curious about.
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