Obtaining Birthdays in One Step
Frequently Asked Questions

Stephen P. Morse, San Francisco


1. What's the advantage of using this one-step form rather than going to www.anybirthday.com directly?
 
 

www.anybirthday.com one-step search form
search on parts of name (beginning, middle, end) no yes
number of hits per page 5 variable
sex not displayed displayed on results page
search on specific birthdate (month, day, and year) no yes
search on range of birthdates no yes
search on specific birthday (month and day) no yes
sort the results
no
can sort by zipcode or by date of birth
starting record beginning of database only any position in database so you can resume a previous search

Of course this form uses the anybirthday.com data and still drives traffic to that site.
 

2. Where was all this birthday information collected from?

I have no idea where anybirthday.com obtained their information from.  But I have found it to be a rather extensive database.  On the average, about half the people that I have attempted to find birthdays for were actually in the database.  I consider that to be a very substantial hit rate, considering the type of data they are displaying.
 

3. Was there some reason (other than esthetics) that you recently added the ability to sort the results by zipcode?

Sorting by zipcode gives a very powerful method for finding couples.  Suppose you are looking for a couple named John and Mary Smith.  Of course those are common names and you'll get more Johns and Marys than you can handle.  But if you sort the Johns by zipcode and the Marys by zipcode, and then scan the two lists to see if there is a John and a Mary in the same zipcode, you'll have a good chance of finding the couple John and Mary.

-- Steve Morse