Recent changes to the Whitepages.com people search will bring directory assistance listings into the Web 2.0 era.

WhitePages.com is now the first major online 411 people search in the United States to let people edit their own residential phone, business phone and street address listings.

These custom directory assistance listing options allow people to have more control over their directory assistance information by letting them determine what information is public or private, as well as decide how they would like people to contact them — cell phone number, email address, text messaging, land phone line or physical mail.

WhitePages.com has been one of the top people search and 411 directory assistance searches for over 10 years with their up-to-date public records, including: telephone numbers, public record data and web information.

By letting people edit and change their personal contact information on Whitepages.com, they are improving the accuracy of their people search records and the ability of people to find each other and connect online.

WhitePages directory assistance has information on over 200 million people in the US.

In July 2009 Whitepages launched their “Add Your Listing” tool that lets people create their own contact listings with their cell phone numbers and email addresses along with privacy features.

Currently over one million people have added their own listing information with this service, making it easier to find friends, family members, military buddies, co-workers, and neighbors using the new Whitepages people search.

This new personal listing tool is the most recent effort by WhitePages.com to remain competitive in the people search area by creating a go-to people search with current and accurate contact listings.

Later this Whitepages.com will give people the ability to add their social network profiles to their WhitePages listings.

People and business professionals can take use these new personal listing tools at Whitepages.com.

To edit an existing listing, you simply search for your name and address and click on the “Is this you? Edit” option next to your listing. To create a new residential or business listing, you can select the “Add Your Listing” option. You will be asked to sign in or join WhitePages.com, if you are not already a member.

In what is shaping up to be a battle among two web bigshots, Facebook is making moves that suggest they want to take on Google for search engine dominance.

Facebook taking steps to turn itself into a web site that is more powerful than just a social network. Facebook recently acquired FriendFeed, a popular social network service, along with the visionary developers that created it.

Facebook has launched new search on their social network as well as the ability to share real-time profile updates with their entire social network. These moves as well as numerous projects in progress aim to position Facebook as an must use communications service.

As of right now Facebook is no Google, but they have attracted over 250 million users in a short period of time. Facebook has reached a growth point where membership is growing exponentially. Every new user on Facebook invites friends and family to join Facebook’s social network so they can stay in touch and communicate with one another online.

If Facebook can capitalize on its large membership and create ways to turn those users into paying customers for products and services, it could take its social network to the next level.

There are signs that Google is feeling some pressure from the success of Facebook. Last week Google launched some new social networking functionality on iGoogle, its personal web portal service. iGoogle is turning into an online service for social applications, similar to the applications enjoyed by Facebook users.

Social networking are a dime a dozen. Social networks like MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are familiar names, but there have been numerous others that have gone the way of the dinosaur. MySpace took off and became a household name, but quickly losing interest among users. Facebook is taking big steps to become the next Google instead of the next dinosaur.

Source: PCWorld

In the past 24 hours Facebook started allowing people to claim custom URLs, using their real names, for their personal Facebook profiles.

This will make searching and finding people on the Facebook social network easier, especially when searching for a person whose Facebook profile has been indexed by a search engine like Google.

In the first three minutes, about 200,000 people claimed their usernames. After fifteen minutes, Facebook users had chosen half a million custom URLs. After one hour, over 1 million people on Facebook had claimed usernames.

From the numbers you can see that this URL service has been very popular with Facebook users and should make people searches online that much easier for people who are trying to find old friends, coworkers and family.

Source: Mashable.com

In a controversial move to fight the spread of HIV in Indonesia’s Papau, lawmakers are considering a proposal to monitor the behavior of known HIV carriers with a microchip implant.

From Breitbart.com –

Lawmakers in Indonesia’s Papua are mulling the selective use of chip implants in HIV carriers to monitor their behaviour in a bid to keep them from infecting others, a doctor said Tuesday.

John Manangsang, a doctor who is helping to prepare a new healthcare regulation bill for Papua’s provincial parliament, said that unusual measures were needed to combat the virus.

“We in the government in Papua have to think hard on ways to provide protection to people from the spread of the disease,” Manangsang told AFP.

“Some of the infected people experience a change of behaviour and can turn more aggressive and would not think twice of infecting others,” he alleged, saying lawmakers were considering various sanctions for these people.

“Among one of the means being considered is the monitoring of those infected people who can pose a danger to others,” Manangsang said.

“The use of chip implants is one of the ways to do so, but only for those few who turn aggressive and clearly continue to disregard what they know about the disease and spread the virus to others,” he said.

A decision was still a long way off, he added.

Source:
Microchips mulled for HIV carriers in Indonesia’s Papua

Here is an interesting experiment in computer programming, investigative tactics and creative sleuthing.

Wired News is reporting that they created a software script that sorted through MySpace profiles and compared them with sex offender registries to find a number of registered sex offenders who had personal profiles on the social network site.

From the article –

Six months ago, Wired News launched an investigation of MySpace with the goal of comparing the company’s 120 million user profiles against public sex offender registries to see how many matches we could find.

The project began when Wired News contributor Jenn Shreve found a handful of matches based on a random search. How many would you find with a software script that systematically went through those records and compared them all?

We decided to find out. I wrote a series of Perl scripts and began sifting the data.

The technique was crude, like searching for a needle in a haystack. When I began checking ostensible matches by hand, false positives registered in the thousands.

Nevertheless, after several weeks of part-time work on the project, I was led to one suspect whose behavior was so disturbing I contacted New York’s Suffolk County Police Department for comment. The suspect, Andrew Lubrano, was arrested earlier this month on attempted child endangerment charges.

Some 700 other matches were also confirmed, though none of those individuals could be linked by public MySpace posts to actual evidence of wrongdoing.

Wired News is also making their sex offender script available for anyone to use, validate and improve upon. You can read the rest of the article and download the script at the link below.

Source: How to Catch a MySpace Creep

Experian press release regarding Debt Portfolio Evaluator –

Debt Portfolio Evaluator(SM) Gives Debt Buyers Superior Analytics and Detailed Credit Analysis During Due-Diligence Process

COSTA MESA, Calif., Feb. 6 /PRNewswire/ — Debt buyers can more quickly and accurately assess collections recovery and profit potential when considering the purchase of a debt portfolio using a new analysis tool from Experian, a global information solutions company.

Experian® today announced the launch of Debt Portfolio Evaluator(SM), which provides debt buyers with a deeper level of analysis by using Experian’s vast credit databases to generate a detailed profile of each consumer in the portfolio. By using Debt Portfolio Evaluator during their due-diligence process, debt buyers can bid on a debt portfolio with greater confidence, knowing that they have the most thorough analysis of the portfolio’s true value before making an investment.

“As the debt buying market continues to grow, those with the best information will make the most profitable purchase decisions by more accurately assessing the true value of portfolios before bidding,” said Kerry Williams, group president of Experian’s Credit Services. “By looking at the overall profit potential in a portfolio — from the difficulty of skip tracing to assessing which debtors have the greatest risk of bankruptcy — debt buyers using Debt Portfolio Evaluator have a distinct advantage.”

Debt Portfolio Evaluator is driven by Experian’s powerful Collection Advantage(SM), which combines consumer credit data, credit-based scoring and advanced analytics to gain insight into the characteristics of the portfolio.

The benefits of using Debt Portfolio Evaluator include:

- A comprehensive, easy-to-analyze view of each debtor’s current credit
standing on all accounts

- An indictor of whether quality contact information is readily available

- RecoveryScore(SM), which scores each debtor to determine which ones have
the greatest recovery potential

- A bankruptcy score that predicts those at greatest risk of filing for
bankruptcy in the next 12 months

- Experian’s proprietary Find Consumer search logic, which provides
superior match rates

- Quick turnaround, giving debt buyers more time to evaluate the portfolio

According to killermovies.com, Columbia Pictures is planning on releasing a comedy in 2006 called “Skip Tracer”.

The movie is about a man who accidentally kidnaps a young girl embroiled in a custody battle when he repossesses a yacht.

Columbia Pictures should have hired our readers; I am sure they have some stories that are even wilder and funnier than that.