6.6  FINDING SOMEONE ON THE NET
 

So you have a friend and you want to find out if he has an Internet 
account to which you can write?  The quickest way may be to just pick up 
the phone, call him and ask him.  Although there are a variety of "white 
pages" services available on the Internet, they are far from complete -- 
college students, users of commercial services such as CompuServe and 
many Internet public-access sites, and many others simply won't be 
listed.  Major e-mail providers are working on a universal directory 
system, but that could be some time away. 

In the meantime, a couple of "white pages" services might give you some 
leads, or even just entertain you as you look up famous people or long-
lost acquaintances. 

The whois directory provides names, e-mail and postal mail address and 
often phone numbers for people listed in it.  To use it, telnet to 
 
     internic.net
 
No log-on is needed.  The quickest way to use it is to type
 
     whois name
 
at the prompt, where "name" is the last name or organization name you're 
looking for.  If there's a match, you'll get back an e-mail listing.

Another service worth trying, especially since it seems to give beginners 
fewer problems, is the Knowbot Information Service reachable by telnet at 
 
     info.cnri.reston.va.us 185

Again, no log-on is needed.  This service actually searches through a 
variety of other "white pages" systems, including the user directory for 
MCIMail.  To look for somebody, type
 
     query name
 
where "name" is the last name of the person you're looking for.  You can 
get details of other commands by hitting a question mark at the prompt. 
You can also use the knowbot system by e-mail.  Start a message to

     netaddress@info.cnri.reston.va.us
 
You can leave the "subject:" line blank. As your message, type

     query name

for the simplest type of search.  If you want details on more complex
searches, add another line:
 
     man

Another way to search is via the Usenet name server. This is a system at 
MIT that keeps track of the e-mail addresses of everybody who posts a 
Usenet message that appears at MIT. It works by e-mail.  Send a message 
to 
     
          mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu

Leave the "subject:" line blank. As your message, write 

           send usenet-addresses/lastname

where "lastname" is the last name of the person you're looking for. The 
system will write back with any matches and the associated addresses.