Online phonebooks
The only good thing about it is that I can store a list of places I frequently look for in a personal online address book.
For instance, I'm looking for a local bookkeeper. I can find the section online, but the site doesn't provide anything but the business name and contact information (usually). I can't see their advertisements or any features that each company offers over the other. And, there aren't any links to the business's websites either. That's lame!
What is really annoying too is that the site shows the "featured results" that are probably the people who spent the money to advertise in the book, but there still isn't anything provided that would help people decide them over anyone else. I bet that is even more annoying to the businesses who paid a LOT of money to do advertisements in the book and aren't given anything on the web for it.
Eventually, the local phone book companies are going to go out of business I think. They just aren't going to have enough business to make it cost effective or worthwhile for even the phone company.
And, it's sad just how easy it would be to create a website that would mimic how the pages of the book look and behave. Then you'd have an extremely useful web application that people would actually use. It would only take me a few hours to create the UI. Maybe the phone book companies should take notes!? Or, at least give me a call for some consulting work..
