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If you failed finding information about a person with AltaVista, WhoWhere? offers a second try. Like for AltaVista, the information available on WhoWhere? is gathered from public sources available on the Internet.* I.e., the information for the WhoWhere? database is obtained by systematically scanning Web pages, Newsgroups, and anonymous ftp archives.
There are two reasons why searching WhoWhere? for names and addresses can be more successful than searching AltaVista or similar Search Engines. Reason number one:
| The WhoWhere? email information content is growing rapidly, as people add and update information into the secure, voluntary and public WhoWhere? database.* |
Good! ... However, when did you volunteer the last time for something? It is the same as with, e.g., the X.500 directory. These things are much talked about for years, but next to nothing useful shows up. So reason number one is not very convincing. But check reason number two:
| If you aren't sure how to spell a name, don't worry! Type in what you know and WhoWhere? will find matches based on strings of 2 or more characters. You can even search on initials!* |
That is much more powerful indeed! Let us give it a try with "h flack" as Person's Name on the WhoWhere? page.
There are quite a few Flacks around. Maybe you have to scan the list for a minute, but here he is:
|
Name: Howard Flack Email: flack@cui.unige.ch Email provider: University of Geneva, Switzerland Last Updated: May '96
Name: Howard Flack |
The only difficulty left now is to decide which address to use. In this case, the more sophisticated Howard.Flack@cryst.unige.ch address looks more promising, but in general you cannot know.
We had a problem finding the e-mail address of J.V. Smith. Now, with
WhoWhere?, we can try again, entering "J V Smith". The result is: Over 500 approximate matches. No good. For the next try, we can submit additional information, in this case "chicago" leaps to our mind. However, there are still 119 approximate matches, two of which are ranked as Highly Relevant Responses -- but not what we are looking for. Smiths are always difficult to find, and this fact is not even changed by the most sophisticated Search Engines we have today.
* Citations taken from the About WhoWhere? page.
smith near joseph and chicago and mail and zeolite" does the trick. The result is just two matches, both of which contain the e-mail address.
However, guessing keywords can take you forever (and maybe there is really nothing to find), and finally you end up having a conversation like this (real!) one:
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From rwgk@laplace.csb.yale.edu Fri Mar 29 13:48:54 1996
... BTW: How did you find his e-mail address? I once tried when I was still in Zurich, but without success. Ralf |
|
From
njas@research.att.com Fri Mar 29 15:09:08 1996
i called his office! |
Continue with Quality of Search Results.