I’ve been looking at this car in front of my house and have been wondering if it might be stolen, since none of the neighbours seem to know who the owner is. Furthermore, it happens to be parked at a bus stop. It’s been there for about 36 hours.
I thought I’d investigate, and found this online tool where you input the vehicle license plate number and it tells you if the car has been reported stolen (in Canada).
http://www.cpic-cipc.ca/English/search.cfm
You can also search vehicles by VIN and check bike registration numbers. I thought this was pretty cool (it turns out the car isn’t (or hasn’t been reported) stolen.)
Does anyone know of other little-known, free searchable databases available to the general public?
-NobleBaron
I don’t know of anything quite like that, but I think there’s also a site called Carfax that will give you the full history of a car, like whether the engine was ever replaced or whatever.
Bookcrossing.com is an interesting idea for “turning the whole world into a library” – basically, when you finish reading a book, instead of leaving it on your shelf to gather dust, you stick an ID number on it, and leave it somewhere like in a coffeeshop or on a subway train. Then you post instructions on how to find it, as vague as you want. Someone finds it, enters the ID number, reads it, and “releases” it again. The website shows you who got your book, whether they liked it, and who got it after that, etc.
Wheresgeorge.com let’s you track dollar bills in a similar way.