Spock.com showed up as a result while I was running searches with Google. I decided to find out what the site had going for it besides the eye-catching domain name.
It’s a new people search engine. Making the obvious test, I typed in my own name. Spock.com came up with a hit, with great confidence displaying a picture of “Mike Glyer” beside the text — who to my surprise appeared to be the identical twin of George R. R. Martin, right down to the green Archon 25 badge that read “George R. R. Martin.”
Now I was even more curious. I put in “Ben Yalow.” Spock.com found him too, sort of: with his entry was a photo of Priscilla Olson. Things were getting worse: at least George and I both have beards.
Still, mistakes happen. So the third time, I gave Spock.com every chance to succeed and typed in the name of the most famous fan I know, “Forrest J Ackerman.” Eureka! This time the image returned with the text was Forry, surrounded by his collection.
Why didn’t this seem to be working for us lesser mortals? I went back to re-run the “Ben Yalow” search, looking for clues. If nothing else, I intended to read the silly motto on Priscilla’s pullover and mention it in this article. But, no. Now, next to Ben’s name was the picture of a toothbrush.
I can see why they call this beta software.
That’s way too tempting. Obviously I tried to look up myself. It failed to find me, even though I’m responsible for 6 of the top 10 Google picks on my name. However, all of the people it did find are younger and prettier than me (well, except the one with the goatee beard). I may start telling people that this one is me.
Oddly enough, when I searched for “Kevin Standlee” I found only a single handsome chap that I seem to recognize from somewhere.
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Nope, doesn’t seem able to find me either, and my main website is Google hit number 6.
After my experience, it was especially funny to search Technorati for posts about Spock.com and read so many glowing compliments about it, some worded almost identically — which I suppose removes any mystery about how that might have happened.