We’re kind of amazed we’ve never run into wheresgeorge.com before yesterday, because a quick swing by Wikipedia shows it’s been around since 1998. Still, get out your dollar bills, visit the site and indulge in a great Friday time-waster. What you do is input the serial number and year of individual dollar bills and, if other people have entered the bill’s information into the site earlier, you can see where it’s been before it got to you. We “heard” of the site because when we unfurled a crumpled bill in our pocket the other day we noticed one of its previous owners had scrawled a note on it imploring us to go to the site. (The guy—apparently goes by the name of Fishbone—is one of those people who views a dollar bill as an all-purpose communications device; also, written on the bill were “Remember 9-11-01” and “STERN RULES!!”) Anyway, turns out this dollar bill is not a great traveler. It started in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, and in 33 days made it only 4.9 miles to its current residence, but going to the site was an interesting diversion, nonetheless. As esoteric as this site is, we were surprised to see it actually has legitimate advertisers, including Excite and Vonage. (Oh, right, Vonage’ll advertise anywhere).

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor