find

Find It! for BlackBerry tells you where to go

Google and Microsoft haven't quite cornered the market on mobile search and directions apps, at least not yet. Infospace Find It!, built with the BlackBerry in mind, gives users multiple entry points to search businesses, people, and directions while squeezing in features not yet stocked by competitors.

To satisfy variant search methods, Find It! sorts searches by name, by category, and by maps and directions. When choosing to search by name, you can look up a business or person in or near a location. This wasn't always successful during my tests, nor was the reverse phone number lookup, a feature unique to Find It! among its better-known and more prosperous rivals. However, when Find It! did strike gold, it didn't skimp in doling it out. Upon locating an individual or business, users can click-to-call, view a map, get directions, save the entry to the address book, and see what else is nearby.

I should mention that both Microsoft's Windows Live Search for Windows Mobile and Google Maps for Mobile had their fair share of data holes--one didn't even register CNET after a search, the brute--so Find It!'s defaults are common to still-youthful mobile search.… Read more

Start-up to Google: OpenSocial's too close to our name

A small New York-based social media start-up called FindMeOn intends to send Google a letter asking that it change the name of its OpenSocial initiative, CNET News.com has learned. FindMeOn founded a project called OpenSN (Open Social Networking) in 2006, and according to founder and CEO Jonathan Vanasco, the similarity of its name to Google's newer project is getting in the way of business.

The company also has tentative plans for legal action.

FindMeOn, which develops technology to aggregate profile data from various social-networking sites, created OpenSN as a way to convert a profile from one social network … Read more

As remotes multiply, they find each other

It was bound to happen: Two gadgets that act as remotes for each other.

That's right, the cleverly named "Find It" remote will locate your lost keys as long as their attached sensor is within earshot. But the opposite is also true (which, in our case, is far more important)--just click a button on the keychain, OhGizmo says, and your perennially misplaced remote will be magically found.

And it makes perfect sense that this latest invention should come from GE, which is apparently trying to corner the remote market with such creations as its "Flip&… Read more

Find files faster

Last week, in an article about optimizing hard drives, I mentioned that I'm a digital pack rat. I'm continually bumping up against my disk size and burning files off to DVD.

While maintaining my hard drive is no big problem, finding the files I need among 120GB of images, songs, movies, Web pages, Word docs, and other personal data can be a challenge, especially when I need something ASAP.… Read more

Other uses for Google Spreadsheets: Word-find puzzles?

An amusing entry in the Google Docs and Spreadsheets Blog highlights a neat use for the online app: word-find puzzles. The idea came to Jonathan Rochelle (a Google Spreadsheets product manager) when his son came home pining to create his own puzzle like the one his teacher had given his class at school. Rochelle's solution? Google Spreadsheets, of course.

You won't get complex auto-creation and custom publishing tools like you'll find in standalone software apps. You could also achieve similar results using Excel. What makes Google Spreadsheets neat is the ability to embed for sharing. Your embed … Read more

WHERE: widgets for your phone

With the release of Apple's iPhone just a few months away, we're already seeing phone companies scramble to to keep customers by adding value to their phones and services. WHERE, from start-up uLocate, is no different, providing a bevy of GPS-enabled widgets for mobile phones while managing to use a drag-and-drop Web interface. Subscription to and use of the widgets requires a monthly fee of $2.99. For now, the service works with only six of Sprint's handsets, though about a dozen more are being added next Monday.

The widgets range from weather information providers to locators … Read more

News Roundup: March Madness on YouTube, Google privacy, and SkypeFind

NCAA tournament clips on YouTube. Just because Viacom has gone lawsuit-happy with YouTube, that doesn't mean CBS wants to keep its content off Google's video-hosting service. CBS will be adding highlights, press conferences and specials available "immediately" following live TV coverage. YouTube users will also be able to vote on and rank their favorite game clips.

Google adding search privacy protections. Google will be "anonymizing" search queries connected to your IP address and browser cookies about 18 to 24 months after they were created. Currently, all three pieces of information are grouped together and … Read more

Wii-dar: FindNearby.net locates game consoles

Boston--I just met with Andy Estes, the ambitious CEO of Nearby Networks, which runs FindNearby.net. This service is a mashup of Google Maps, Amazon, eBay, Craiglist, and WalMart.com. You tell it where you are and what you are looking to buy, and it will find the items available for sale near you. Items are color-coded on the map by type of sale (auction, private party sale, retail). Auctions about to expire are red.

It's a really cool way to find an item you're looking for if you're itching to hop in the car to go … Read more

Find the one that got away with Long Time Lost

Getting in touch with people from your past can be difficult, especially if they don't show up in a Google search or on popular social networks. The truth is, without a large Internet presence or a last name such as "Einstein," you're going to be tough to find for the casual searcher, which is where Long Time Lost attempts to fill in the gaps. Long Time Lost essentially lets you create a beacon to get the attention of the person for whom you're searching or others who know their whereabouts. This virtual beacon shows up … Read more