Look It Up!

Look It Up! was Originally Posted on February 4, 2007 by lavarock

I look up a lot of words, phrases, and lyrics. Sometimes I’m researching for specific information while other times it is fur fun. I have to admit that the majority of my searches are on the Internet.

I was reading an article today, which mentioned a French curve. Although I have used one in drafting, I could not remember the exact shape. I was off to Wikipedia.Org (the online Encyclopedia) to see one.

Earlier today I read a posting on KonaWeb where someone talked about seeing photos from space. I often use Google Earth (Earth.Google.Com) to search for locations. Years ago I had found a photos taken from space of a plane on a tarmac at an airport. I posted it and along with the date of the photo people were able to play CSI (Crime Scene Investigators) to determine the airport. They zoomed out from the coordinates and found the plane at Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport. You knew the photo was taken during the day and there were few flights. That meant it was a Weekend. There was little traffic on the streets and the shadows showed the sun to be at about 10:30am. Looking up the airport diagram showed which gate the plane was sitting at. You could also just make out the Delta logo on the side of the plane. By looking at the size of plane vrs the size of the luggage carts, and throwing in the depth of the shadow, you could determine the type of plane. All that helped them decide that the plane was a charter and was being loaded for South America (based upon know charter scheduled posted). This exercise was a cooperative effort of people around the world and was quite fun. It used science and deduction to solve a problem. Most of the information came from one photo but others interactively used the Internet for further investigation.

The other day I was watching a movie filmed in Canada. They showed the name of a company on a building. I looked up the movie in the Internet Movie Database (Imdb.com) and browsed through the Locations page to see what cities hosted the movie. Then a search for that company name turned up an address. Plugging that address into Google Earth allowed me to visually zoom in on the specific location the movie was shot and even tilt the photo just a bit to see how high the building was.

Why? Because I could!

You have to be careful though. Not all of the information on the Internet is actual. For example, if you look up a product you have seen on TV, you may see glowing reports about it, only to discover that each of the people touting it are using the same wording. A search may turn up that each site you find sells the product. Then you may do a search for the product and the word “scam” and find lots of people telling you why the product is not worth the money.

Wikipedia (wikipedia.org) is an online encyclopedia with a twist. You can add or modify the descriptions. Although most of the entries are correct, it is possible to create a fictitious entry and have people believe it is true. Recently it was alleged that Microsoft wanted to pay someone to fluff up its own listing to make itself sound better. You should note that Microsoft probably did not create the original entry, thus it was not as pro-Microsoft as they would hope.

Sometimes when searching for products to buy, I use Ebay.com, Pricegrabber.Com, and Froogle.Com. These sites let me see comparative prices and deals that may keep my cost low. I also search for the product to see if I can find a coupon code I can apply to the purchase.

For consumer items I use ClarkHoward.Com as a basis. Clark has never steered me wrong and I respect his analysis. He also has published travel deals and once I even beat the master. Although he found a $199 round trip ticket from Atlanta to Honolulu, I was able to book it for $182. I got listed in his Get Clark Smart consumer book!

I used to travel quite often to Hawaii (before I moved here). In 7 years I made 13 trips and never paid more than $450 round trip for the airfare. I even created a TIPS page on my MyHawaiianSite.Com page explaining how to use sites like Travel.Yahoo.Com and Travelocity’s Dream Maps page to find real airline deals. I would search a couple times a day looking for bargains, then went to the airline websites to see if I could do better.

On a recent trip to the neighbor islands, I thought I had done pretty good on rental car prices until I thought to search COSTCO’s site. Being a member I found an even better deal and saved about 10% more!

It is not just information you can search for. Consider searching Images.Google.Com for a photo of that French curve, or try looking for your own name to see if you pop up.

If you want information of people you can try Google or perhaps Zoominfo.Com or Zabasearch.Com to look them up.

There are sites to help you see what your house is worth. There is a site just announced that will let you hum into your computer and it will search lyrics and tell you the song. If you don’t believe me, LOOK IT UP!