Every month on this page I'll go over my personal list of links and outline the ones that you too should bookmark. This site allows me to have all the important research links that I used routinely to be available to me worldwide on the Web.
(This page will be taken off dvorak.org when it's made into an honest commercial site later this year).
I often need to find a company phone number or a company website. The search engines are useless for this. You need a directory that specializes in this information. I have uncovered a few which I use routinely. I'm sure you'll find them just as useful. In the process I've looked at many of the people search engines and general purpose yellow page engines. The latter category is quite interesting since we tend to forget they exist. It's often easier to use one of these than it ever is to use a big search engine. I have links to the best ones below and to some obscure systems that are quite valuable.
Computer Company Phone Numbers
Here's some links we all need...phone numbers of every imaginable computer company. Both the main line and the tech support line is highlighted on this Trucost site. The emphasis here is on toll-free numbers. A great resource for a quick lookup of a phone number. If you're trying to find a computer company-related web site then the Webstart Computers and Communications search page is perfect. It has links to thousands of companies. When you begin to explore the far reaches of this site you'll find it to be one of the most phenomenal sites on the web for people interested in computers. Killer. A bookmark must-have! Another site I like is a combination resource run by Josh Hillman and one of the pages in Josh's Junkyard . It is another good listing of both phone numbers and web links. And finally there is the phone number list of Usedcomputer.com -- this one doesn't have the web link but does have the BBS lines listed for those of you looking for a quick download of a driver, or whatever. Very nice.
General Purpose Company Search Engines
Even Yahoo commented that the World Pages directory may be the single best way to look up companies world-wide. It's a fantastic engine with numerous tie-ins to other location services. A must bookmark site. It links to numerous definitive search engines such as DineNet to link to businesses in numerous ways. Probably more of a modern meta-site than anything else.
Yellow Pages Type Sites
The classic sites for this are BigBook, BigYellow and Superpages. These sites keep dicking with their interface and have become increasingly harder to use as they compete with each other by copying each others features. These systems are mostly used to find a plumber or nearby frame shop. All these sites link to mapping programs which can show you the exact location of a business. BigBook has the absolute best interface to do this. It uses a gradient scale device to zoom in and out of the map. The other systems are pathetic when they work at all. I used to use the Superpages the most, but have since switched to BigBook simply because the map interface is so much better -- and it's very important. Other than that they all pretty much do the same thing when it comes to business. All have extended features and Superpages has an interesting classified ad section including personals. BigYellow is trying to position itself as a kind of Excite!-type site trying to be all things to all people. As this shakes out it makes BigBook look better and better because it does one thing well -- find a business and give you a good map to the place.
People Finders
There are a number of good sites which will look up your name or phone number. The one I've been using recently is Info Space. It's fast and slick. For email address lookup I still go to Four11. Other directories worth noting are the classic Switchboard.com (which has added a lot of new features) and WhoWhere which has also branched out with a lot of new features and links. The databases for all these systems seems to be narrowing and I suspect they'll all have the exact same information soon. This will turn this game into an interface battle. WhoWHere has an interesting link page to International Phone numbers that might come in handy.