Where's George
Where's George? is a website that tracks American paper money — most commonly one-dollar bills, but also higher denominations. "Where's George" is free, supported by advertising, sales of T-shirts and other memorabilia, and by users who pay a fee for extra features. The name George refers to George Washington, whose portrait appears on the $1 bill.The free site, established in 1998 by Hank Eskin, a computer consultant in Brookline, Massachusetts, allows people to enter their local ZIP code and the serial and series of any United States denomination up to $100 they want to track. Once a bill is registered, the site reports the time between sightings, the distance traveled and any comments from the finders, and anyone who registered the bill earlier learns about it by e-mail and/or text messaging.
To increase the chance of having a bill reported, users (called "Georgers") write or stamp text on the bills encouraging bill finders to visit www.wheresgeorge.com and track the bill's travels. Eskin says he is often asked whether defacing currency is illegal but has been told by U.S. Treasury Department officials that it is legal to write on money, as long as the writing doesn't deface the bill to the point that it becomes unusable.
Other websites have picked up on the idea of tracking money and other objects in their travels. There are at least five other currency tracking websites, including eurobilltracker which launched shortly before the Eurobill was officially released. "Where's George" was also the inspiration for the popular BookCrossing website.
Although "Where's George" doesn't officially recognize the bills that travel the farthest or fastest, some have approached it as a semi-serious way to track patterns in the flow of American cash.
