Why Yellow Pages Suck

I came across a very interesting post by Brownbook about the results of a Kelsey Group (THE Yellow Pages industry consultants) study where they compared the feedback from industry execs and actual users of local search websites.

Factors rated as important by industry execs
#1 Ability to get additional info on businesses
#2 Access to useful maps and directions
#3 Depth of information provided
#4 Relevance of advertising
#5 Availability of additional information

Factors rated as important by a user panel
#1 Ease of starting search
#2 Ease of navigating site
#3 Accuracy of results
#4 Overall layout/organization
#5 Ability to refine search
*** none of the above even featured in the industry list ***

There is a complete disconnect between what users want, and what the yellow pages industry wants to provide them!

I’ve always built Zenbu with a focus on users and a bloated pre-internet industry which, by necessity, is driven by advertiser demand will not be able to compete longterm in this new paradigm.

iPhone 2.0

Apple tells me Version 2.0 has been accepted, guess my 5000 Heil Steve’s to the mighty Ringo deity last night paid off. iTunes is still showing 1.0 for me but hopefully it will update soon.

2.0 features ’search’ and ‘find nearest’ functionality as well as the latest Zenbu data. Upgrade essential.

The biggest bummer for me about this version is that the screenshot I’ve chosen to demonstrate Zenbu uses a search for ‘burgers ponsonby’. Well, I was in Ponsonby on the weekend and there’s a new burger store! Murder Burger is in Zenbu now but didn’t make it into the 2.0 release. Even more of an incentive for me to extend the app to include data updates outside the App Store!

Profile of a Kiwi thief 2008

My flat was burgled on Friday afternoon. I did use Zenbu to look up the nearest police station phone number as well as a nearby locksmith but these were small rays of light in a bleak evening.

I am somewhat a techno-whore, with an interest in the outdoors, so I managed to provide the thief an excellent combination of high value electronics and backpacks to take it with.

I am insured, but even that time consuming process will not give me back the valuables that can not be measured in dollars. I’d be lucky to get $50 for the 10 year old backpack I’ve taken around the world and the Waitakeres a million times – but if I ever see anyone carrying my very distinctive bag, there will be retribution and they should hope a hockey stick is the sharpest item I have to hand.

From a completely analytical viewpoint I was able to learn some interesting things about this thief, who will I call by the handle I’ve assigned him; theiving-kunt-08.

• theiving-kunt-08 spent at least 2 hours in me and my girlfriend’s 3 room flat, displaying boldness and/or great preparation in knowing our time schedule.
• theiving-kunt-08 took my (fingerprint-login) laptop, cameras, laptop, ipod, GPS, external hard drives so obviously has a keen interest in electronic gadgets. (I hope he doesn’t develop a keen interest in my finger)
• theiving-kunt-08 took my phone base station, but not the (now useless) phone, so maybe he just likes shiney objects and actually has no idea what they are.
• theiving-kunt-08 took my 1kg bag of Australian mandarins, an avocado and some kiwifruit. He didn’t touch my beer, wine or spirits but did take a 1L bottle of chilled tap water from the fridge. I figure theiving-kunt-08 is on a diet or a member of some extremist sect (stealing is OK, but alcohol is the work of Satan!)
• BEST OF ALL: theiving-kunt-08 took the remaining half of my 1kg block of cheese. I guess this is more an indictment of the price of dairy in NZ today than on anything else, $12 a kilo?
  Now that’s daylight robbery!

The Zenbu iPhone app 2.0

Over 1600 people downloaded the Zenbu application in September and I’m sure every single one of them will be stoked to get the updated version. It’s under review by Apple right now so should be out soon, I’ll let you know when if iTunes doesn’t do it for me. (iTunes will tell you when updates are available for any applications you have and prompt you to download them, nifty).

Exactly one week after the app went live, Apple released their 2.1 firmware. But the firmware is available to users before the SDK is available to developers so there was nothing to do but groan when this firmware introduced a very nasty bug to the Zenbu app. The startup screens from 2.0 and 2.1 below, can you spot the difference?

 

 

Nasty. Only one line of code to fix but it was definitely a hack of Windows programming proportions, oh Apple, you were supposed to be better. I forgive you, but only because the Find Nearest functionality with the Zenbu database in my (admittedly sexy) 3G iPhone is so damn cool it makes everybody go – wow.

Here are some sneak preview screenshots from version 2.0

Your phone knows where you are so you don’t need to tell it, just ask it for what you want and there it is. Rad. The app still requires no network connection – unless you elect to load the preview map in the detail view; which loads directly inside the Zenbu app and comes with a location marker (thanks to the user feedback for this idea).

One thing I’m particularly happy with is the engineering behind the Nearest colouring. (See how the font colour of the Nearest button in the above screenshot is orange).
The problem is that the phone identifies its location using a variety of methods (cell tower triangulation, GPS) which have varying accuracy and will obviously affect the relevance of your distance sorted results.

I battled with a number of ideas before settling on a choice that hopefully is so intuitive that people will think it was the obvious, only choice.

The Nearest button uses a font colour which represents the accuracy of your location.

Red = Location unknown, Nearest search unusable
Dark Orange = Location accuracy > 500m
Light Orange = Location accurate to 100~500m
Green = Location accurate to <100m

The Green Nearest will probably only happen with a GPS fix, so you would need to be outside or have a clear view of a reasonable amount of the sky. The cell tower fix happens almost instantaneously so you can get a usable result very quickly. Cell tower accuracy will vary with the number of cell towers around but that should directly correlate to how many people and ‘things’ are around so should be perfect for most usage cases.

All a bit of a tease as the app isn’t out yet, coming soon, coming soon!

(If I’ve lost anyone with the geek speak, lemme know and I’ll try to explain it in language that doesn’t require 12hrs a day of starting at a screen on the internet…)

Can you say… ouch?!

Mental note to self: those email’s you’re checking on holiday in Fiji better be worth it. Ai carumba.

September 2008 on Zenbu

What a month.  I know, I know, I say it every month but this was the biggest, bestest month yet.

• Visits were up 80% on August, now regularly hitting 2000 unique visitors a day,
• 90% of that traffic comes directly from Google, the search engine took a fervent interest in Zenbu last month with a
• 300% growth in Zenbu pages in the Google index. 

Anecdotally I am hearing more and more stories of people who get the information they need from Zenbu, which is great when you live in a technology bubble and the majority of interaction with users is anonymous.

There was an excellent count of 2896 edits on the site from 97 unique users. The long tail of small editors just gets longer every month which is very cool, and the regular editors keep up the impressive work.
 
zenbu 1039
hexzed  766
peejayw 288
Glars 205
rc8 168
fuhsiang  88
freddo  41
GaryMck 35
burgla  31
stridey 17
MauriceWinn 16
reganl  12
chichi  11
bulkhead  11
HiggyRSQ  11
The-Organist  10

The councils continued to drip feed the food premise information with
Hamilton data coming from rc8
New Plymouth from zenbu
Invercargill from GaryMck (not in yet, processing now)
Whangarei from peejayw

Hexzed stands out as my user of the month for September. No bulk uploading contributed to his 766 edits, every single one was done by hand, putting in a ton of effort around the Paraparaumu area as well as adding/fixing up chain stores all around the country. Bravo.

 

Zenbu at #5 on the app store

The Zenbu iPhone application took off to high acclaim on Sep 6. I wasn’t really watching the first few weeks but did notice it at number 5 on the top free apps list for the NZ store on Sep 22, did anyone else see it higher? (Apple doesn’t provide any download count statistics amazingly) Version 2.0 will be out shortly and features a massively improved detail display and ‘nearest’ search functionality. Rad. Of course it will also feature the very latest dataset from www.zenbu.co.nz, so get updating…