[OSM-talk] Business listings

[Nic Roets]

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