Some very good observations, Lars. Even simpler than webcrawling would to imitate these guys and just provide a simple web form : http://www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage?gl=us&hl=en-US
On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 5:52 PM, Lars Aronsson <[email protected]> wrote: > John Smith wrote: > > > Don't ya just love a good chicken and egg problem. Yellow pages > > works because it has both critical mass and usually a physical > > product is sent out. > > Before telecom deregulation (1980 or so), every person (or > household, anyway) was in "the phone book" because there was just > one phone company, and you were listed in their catalog. I > dropped my landline around 1996 and have since only used a > non-incumbent cellular provider. Today, the only reliable place > to find my number is on my website. > > I doubt that any "yellow pages" catalog covers a critical mass of > all business any longer. We're back to the 19th century, when, > before telephones, various private publishers printed "address > calendars". > > Theoretically, you can still use governmental census registers and > business incorporation listings. But the number of illegal aliens > (temporary guest workers on a tourist visa, or without any visa) > is constantly increasing. > > Maybe, in this era of Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap, it is our task > to compile the new (and free) business directory and put these > names on maps. With a web crawler, we could try to dig out street > and city names (and opening hours) from web pages. Or we could > instruct businesses who want to appear in OpenStreetMap to embed > exact coordinates in their websites and then "ping" our crawler. > > I'm not going to run that project, but it's not completely > unrealistic anymore. You only have to figure out how to make it > sustainable with people and money for servers. Maybe some kind of > Craigslist for shops and restaurants? > > > -- > Lars Aronsson ([email protected]) > Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se > > _______________________________________________ > talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk >
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