Who said there was no money in free?

The Kelsey Group predicts that U.S. Free Directory Assistance revenues will reach $462 million by 2012.

They also state that many directory publishers are bypassing using ‘Yellow’ in the brand to
free themselves from people’s perception of “Yellow” as they delve outside the core business into verticals, search, DA, mobile, classifieds and beyond

Funny that Yellow Pages NZ just did the exact opposite rebranding to “Yellow”.

Matt Mullenweg is the 22-year-old creater of WordPress. In an interview about simplicity and what made WordPress (the software behind this blog) successful he listed 3 points which resonated strongly with me

• Being adaptive to user-led changes in product direction. The underlying principle is we will not and cannot predict far in the future.
• Articulating the broader philosophy around where we are and where we want to go. The underlying principle is people want something to believe in, not just use.
• Aligning the economic and social incentives of businesses around WordPress. Capitalism is a lever.

(22?! What a legend!)

Is Zenbu something that people can believe in, not just use?

We live in the future

Last week I gave a speech about the history of GPS technology and made a comment about how in a ‘not too distant future’ we would speak into our phones and it would give us search results and directions. I didn’t think it was too ’sci-fi’ but I didn’t think I’d be reading about that technology this week.

Vlingo takes your vocal input over the cell network and returns the text string, bingo. Now all you need is a local search engine with everything to give you what you were looking for!

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Spock is a people search engine launched only a few weeks ago and has already indexed 1.5 billion records. A quick vanity search found myself, but I was amazed/amused to see my location listed as Auckland, Niger . I didn’t even know there was an Auckland in Niger! I decided I had to fix that up in case I got mixed up in some email fraud and the my Spock profile is a bit more authentic. Pretty awesome how they already knew my email address and I had to authenticate by clicking a link in an email they sent to me.  Rad.

Talking phones, computers that learn who I am, I love this shit!

Zenbu API

Part of the vision with Zenbu is to provide ubiquitous and open digital access to the very same information that is available to you walking down the street. Who does what, where and when is it open?

A key component of that is providing an API (Application Programming Interface) so that 3rd parties can access the raw Zenbu data in real time and use it in their own websites and applications.

Now the Zenbu API is live. There are no commercial boundaries on the API for up to 10,000 requests per day – above that and you have to work out a deal with us. The API adds to the Zenbu Widget as another simple and powerful way to provide local search and content on your website.

We really look forward to seeing the innovative ideas and businesses powered by Zenbu data.

Microformats

Google Maps Official Blog posted about adding microformats to Google maps today. It’s not often that we get to say we did it before Google, but we did, we did! Microformats have been built into Zenbu since day 1. No reason not to enable people to export the data as easily as possible with our open license.

Microformats are a way of telling your browser exactly which parts of the page are the contact details – name, address, phone, etc. That way plugins like Tails for Firefox can do fancy things with those contacts like export them to your address book in one click. Nifty.