[OSM-talk] Business listings

[Lars Aronsson]

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 (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se