Spock, the new people search engine, has just added data from political contributions so that anyone who has donated to a political campaign is now tagged as a supporter of that campaign. Spock is pulling the data from the Federal Election Commission.

Why is this so great? It’s automatically adding individuals to Spock which may have never made it on there otherwise.

For example, if I do a search at FundRace for a semi-random zip code, say 48169 (located in Hell, Michigan), my top result is a Mr. Gerald Reiss, neurologist, who has contributed $250 to Guiliani and lives at 8733 Pebble Creek Drive.

Mr. Reiss now shows up on Spock,  tagged as a Republican party contributor and Rudy Guiliani supporter, as well as an employee of Greater Annarbor Neurology PC.

In the future, will Spock include the address information as well?  Perhaps with a Google Maps / Google Earth link to satellite images of the person’s address?  And pull additional data from professional licensing websites about Mr. Reiss’ background as a doctor?

One can only hope.

Check RottenNeighbors before you move to a new neighborhood (or check your own neighborhood) to find out if anyone has reported any rotten neighbors nearby.  Search by zip code.

Unfortunately, you can’t search by address.

via Lifehacker.

Yahoo has created Yahoo! Mash, another social network, and will be launching Yahoo Teachers next week.

via Mashable

Koinup, the first social network designed for your virtual life, has launched, featuring the ability to create profiles, share multimedia, and publish stories relating to your online persona in virtual worlds like Second Life, World of Warcraft, IMVU, and The Sims 2.

via Mashable

Squidoo has a new companion page, Squidwho, described as “a people-powered Who’s Who on the Web.” It’s targeted to contain data about famous people, but users can add themselves and others. Not very populated now, but worth keeping track of and adding to the list of people searches.

This tool, if used by the masses, could be an excellent tool for tracking lesser known individuals - the Wikipedia of local backgrounds. For example, I have created a Lens on Christopher Vaughn, a man accused earlier this year of shooting his entire family, but it could equally be used for even lesser known individuals, like Murrell Howell, a fellow randomly chosen from a Colorado police blotter.
via Depth Reporting

The Salt Lake Tribune’s Utah’s Right To Know contains statewide and local databases, including…

• Court charges - 1997-2007. Search by first and/or last name. Provides name, filing date, violation description, and judgement.
• Public salaries - search or browse by location and name. Provides name, position, city, and hourly and annual salary.
• Sex offenders - search by name or zipcode. Provides name, gender, age, offense, zip code, and targets. Click on the name to link to a mini-dossier, with photo, address, height, dob, physical description, and conviction specifics.
• Political contributions - 2008. Search by name. Provides, name, company, donated to, city, zip, and amount. Click on the donated to to see who else has contributed to them.
• Divorce records - 10 years. Search by first and/or last name. Provides name, spouse, location, attorney, type, and date.

via PI Buzz

Oakland Crimespotting, an interactive map of crimes in Oakland, California, has been launched, pulling data from the Oakland Police Department’s Crimewatch site.

The Oakland Police Department also has CyberWatch, a subscription service that provides automated email alerts of recent crime activity for a desired area of interest.

MyFloridaTeacher.com - powered by the searchable database of the Florida Department of Education Bureau of Professional Practice Services, it reports on actions taken up to and including revocation of teaching licenses.

Search by last name and/or district.  Provides case number, name, district, order type, order summary, order date and a PDF of the order.  FREE.

via SearchEngineJournal

SlackerManager has a short article on improving your Google search.  Basically, he is encouraging use of the advanced options:

• with all the words
• with the exact phrase
• with at least one of the words
• without the words
• by 10, 20, 30, 50 or 100 results
• in specific languages from Arabic to Vietnamese
• in formats such as Microsoft PowerPoint or Adobe Acrobat
• first seen in the past 24 hours up to the past year
• from appearing anywhere on the page to the title or the URL
• by the type of domain (.com .org .ca etc.)
• usage rights from free to share or use even commercially to not filtered by license
• by page specific searches
• by topic specific searches

An even better resource for Google searching techniques is the GoogleGuide.

Ixquick.com submits your search to 14 search engines with ranked results, and includes power search options and an international phone directory search, including reverse lookup.

via Search Engine Journal