Username Check

[Andrea Mitchell]

A cool tool alert from Amybeth Hale's Research Goddess blog on a tool called UserName Check. Often when I have come across people in forums but been unable to find their real names I have resorted to searching on their username. This tool looks like it would be useful for checking out someones other profiles as well, providing more information as you follow the trail.

Check out Amybeths post for her take on the tool.

[Simon Townsend]

Looks like I need to register at some more sites...
I think this should be a useful tool, I'll definitely be adding it to my arsenal.
I'll still be throwing handles through the search engines though - social networks are great, but industry forums are so much more useful.

[Andrea Mitchell]

Thats a good point, and one I am constantly trying to encourage all researchers to do, is to use a variety of tools rather than relying on a few stock standard ones and therefore getting a much narrower range of results

[Simon Townsend]

It's a difficult trade off, do you go wide and deep grabbing all you can, or do you focus and get results quickly knowing you've missed people?

[Andrea Mitchell]

I think thats where some of these tools really come in handy. You can mix deep down techniques with tools that save time and get sort of a compromise between the quick dirty searches and the more comprehensive ones, thus improving your ratio of time spent vs results.