When you land on Names, there are a few options to explore the site.  The home page allows you to see the most popular names and a hand-picked “Name of the Day”.  You can also use the no-fuss search feature at the top of every page to look for a first name, last name or both.

Once you arrive on a details page for a name you are presented with data on pronunciation, meaning, age distribution, gender distribution, geographic distribution, popularity, contact information, and social network activity — it’s a lot of data, but we’ve designed it to be as compact and easily readable as possible.

If you are curious about names but aren’t sure where to start, click “Discover” from the top of any page and check out our page for Names exploration.  A personal favorite is the Search By Time module - a draggable slider that lets you view the most popular and least popular names of the past century.  Did you know in the 90′s there are 119 people named Andromeda and they are all girls?

We’ve also made it easy to share with friends whenever you find an unusual name or an interesting fact — through Google+, Facebook, or Twitter.  If you Tweet about WP Names, you can be listed on our Twitter leader board, gaining publicity for your Twitter account.  I’m currently dominating the Jared pages with 23 followers.

We’ve laid out some of the features in this infographic, but the best way to get to know the new Names site is by playing around with it yourself.  Enjoy!

As is the case for me after most of these events, I found myself on the plane ride home thinking about the key takeaways – what I thought was good, what I would have liked to have been better and what (if any) action items may have come out of the past few days. I am a firm believer that you get out of conferences what you put into them – both on the content and networking side. So, because I feel the content side of these is important, I sat through every session – individual conversations, quick product pitches and full moderated panels.

After that reflection, I had a few thoughts and ideas. Like a lot of people out there, I always wish that content were “better” at industry events. But in this case, I am going to change the word “better” to “edgier.” I’d like to see more healthy debate. I’d like to see more people disagree (with solid reasoning) with each other. I’d like to see people stop pandering to the audience for fear that they may anger a prospect. I’d like to see more poignant questions posed by moderators. Edgier is what I’d like.

As Jim Rome used to say daily to the callers on his talk radio show before they were let on the air, “have a take, come hard and don’t suck.”  I’m not paid to put these industry events together, but I have to think there are a lot of people out there who would agree that if we did make things edgier (and smarter), the content would be a whole lot more valuable and interesting.

Last night WhitePages hosted our first annual Seattle Mobile VIP bringing together some of the area’s mobile heavyweights into one room. This event was born out of a need to bring greater connectivity to Seattle’s mobile tech companies and introduce our guests of honor - Sprint – to the breadth and depth of our city’s mobile solutions.

We heard great demos from a slew of Seattle area tech companies who innovate from two main fronts: the need to use mobile to make our lives better and the need to enable business models.

Companies like Glympse, Mindbloom, INRIX, Cozi, Uber, PetHub, Zillow, GameHouse, Zapd, Big Fish Games and Rhapsody see the great potential mobile technologies have in keeping us organized, efficient, motivated and entertained. They are also taking great leaps forward to both bridge the gap between mobile and desktop to make our lives infinitely more seamless, and to make mobile an even more relevant part of our lives.

On the other hand, companies like Sprint, Hipcricket, FLK, MobileDevHQ, Buck and Zumobi focus on innovative ways to grow the mobile industry and help both mobile and brick-and-mortar companies effectively monetize. Their solutions, such as rich ad integration, mobile payments, mobile couponing and app store optimization, ensure the mobile industry will keep its position as the fastest growing industry on the planet for years to come.

By the end of the day it was clear that the mobile community is inherently symbiotic. And by working together to share ideas and integrate products, we will further unleash the potential of mobile in ways we can’t yet imagine.

On behalf of the WhitePages team, we’d like to thank all the companies who participated in last night’s event and wish them the greatest success in the future!

Jeremy Wacksman, VP of Marketing at Zillow, giving a demo

Cocktail hour and mingling following the event

Bryan Trussel, CEO of Glympse, giving a demo

Mark Keeney and Brian McGarvey of Rhapsody International giving a demo

Brent Poole, CEO of Mindbloom, explaining his life gamification app

Our very own Lori Roth giving the low down on WhitePages' mobile products

Charles Yu of FLK giving a demo of their mobile couponing solution

Holly Mesrobian, CTO of Cozi Group, listens intently as Ian Sefferman tells us about MobileDevHQ

Jolene certainly fits the bill here at WhitePages and as such, we celebrate her today (& every day for that matter!) and look forward to the official event on April 12th! Congrats Jolene, you make us oh so proud and we know that we are very lucky to have you.

With this new iteration our users will be able to find the best local haunts in record time with a nearby map view & category pull down from the home screen, Android Quick Search integration and more precise location detection.

Check out some of these cool new features:

Click here to download Localicious v1.3 for free from Google Play

More news on the Localicious front:
Last week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona the Localicious team previewed Localicious for Android tablet. This new app will run on Android’s new Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) platform and will take full advantage of the improved user experience on ICS. Stay tuned for the tablet version of Localicious!

Are You Trying To Find People?

Today, with the advent of the internet, this big blue ball that is home to billions of people has never been so small. You would think that when you are trying to find people the internet would be the fastest and easiest way to do it. And the fact is, you would be right, or would you?

Trying to find people on the internet can be either incredibly easy or incredibly frustrating depending on who you are trying to find and why.

You see most people do not use their real names on the internet they use “nicks” or nicknames such as dragonqueen,rainysmom,brain1234 etc. This makes things a both more fun and dangerous at the same time, and often for the same reason. You see, the internet is anonymous which makes it that much harder to find people.

Find People on Public Records sites

For those who are trying to find people for a specific reason such as child support or other official reason there are thousands of public records search sites. To use these types of sites to find people you will need information about the person such as:

• Name
• Date of Birth
• Last known residence
• Social security number

In fact to use a public search site you will need as much information as you can get a hold of. Public records search sites are not free and generally range in price from $20 to well over $100.

Use Google/ internet search engines to Find People

When most people need to find information on anything they turn to the internet and search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, so is it any wonder the first place that we all turn to when trying to find people is one of these search gurus? But finding people on a search engine may not be as easy as you might think. Don’t believe me? Try to search for yourself. You already have all of the pertinent information so it should be easy right? I don’t know about you, but I ended up with a couple of thousand results. Luckily for my sense of self worth a few of those were actually me.

To find people using a search engine you will first need to come up with a good keyword or set of keywords. Keywords are the term you use to search with. Just typing in the person’s name may or may not help, so the more information you can add to your search the better your results will be. For instance, rather then run searches for John Smith consider trying John Smith Tampa Florida to narrow results.

FaceBook/Social networking to find people

FaceBook, the biggest and most popular social networking site on the internet, it should be easy to find people here, right? Nope! Trying to find people on FaceBook can be an effort in frustration. Why? Because not everyone uses their real name and FaceBook does not allow you to narrow your search very far.( Hey FaceBook Guys can you please add more ways to narrow searches so we can all find people? )

To find people using FaceBook all you need to do is log on to your account and hit the find people button it is on the left side menu bar under your avatar marked friends. Click the friends button and you will see a new page open with several choices to search through your own contact information. If you want to find someone you know who is not in your regular contacts list then you can type their name into the FaceBook search bar at the top of the page. That will open a new page and from there you can either scroll through the results or look on the left side menu bar and click people.

Find People through e-mail

Electronic mail or email is also a great way to find people although much like a public search most of the places/websites that volunteer the information will charge you for it. The best way to get someone’s email is to ask them for it but if that option is out it is possible to find them through one of these sites. For folks who like to FLAME or send nasty emails then you really should be aware that there is a way to look up your REAL name and address with a reverse look up function from email directory sites.

Find people on Dating sites

To find people you do not know there is a multitude of dating and friend finder sites on the internet. But beware. Many of the people using these “free” sites are just looking to spam you or defraud you out of money. Those who are looking to find people for a love interest should understand this and keep it close to their minds as there are at least as many websites listing dating site fraud (with last known photos of the perps) as there are dating sites.

To avoid dating site fraud when trying to find people understand that only a complete idiot looks for love from people who are in other countries or states. Never ever for any reason send anyone you meet online money unless you want to give your money away. There are even companies in other countries that prey on people by actually hiring folks to find people on dating sites, make friends or pretend to fall in love with the express purpose of getting your money!!

Find People Offline with Online Phone Books

One of the easiest ways to find people on the internet that you know is through the white pages. Just like the phone book in your house, the online white pages require that you know a little about the person you are trying to find. They will often give you a real time address and phone number but so far most online white pages are not set up to include the email or other online contact information for you to find people online.

Find People with Ancestry sites

Looking for information about Great Aunt Ida or wondering where you come from. Using ancestry and family tree sites may just be the best way to find people, even those you do not know!! Most of these places do charge a fee for the service but if you are trying to find people in your family tree then they are an excellent resource and a lot of fun besides.

-Find People