Anachronism in 2009?

 Anachronism: (noun) an artifact that belongs to another time

Another stack of YellowPages

 The Auckland 2009  Yellow Pages was delivered last week. In an age of extreme-green sensibilities, this is a monumental waste of trees. How long before we look at such a photo and laugh at the quaintness of it all?

Yellow Skype

Skype has partnered with Yellow Pages NZ to add all the Yellow listings into the Skype directory and, at least for the 3 month trial, allow free calls through Skype to any Yellow results.

It is an interesting promotion but I struggle to see the real value for Yellow.

• The biggest benefit for me as a user is that now I could search the Yellow directory without having to look at their (often nasty) results pages.
• The cost saving seems irrelevant as most people have free local calling already, even if that does mean the extra hassle of dialing a number instead of clicking a button, and we all know New Zealander’s are notoriously cheap.  
• Yellow advertisers and non advertisers results look the same. Advertisers are at the top but will this really drive advertising revenue? (which must be sinking like a stone as the generations who uses printed directories fade away)

This partnership makes the Skype directory infinitely better as the last time I tried it months (a year?) ago the results were dismally useless. Well done Skype but maybe I miss the significance for Yellow.

 

Chris Keall writes in the NBR

Forget Skype and Finda. A major Google Maps alliance, especially with some nifty location-awareness built-in or, say, a Yellow layer pre-installed on Vodafone’s coming Magic Google phone, would be the sort of big-bang move Yellow needs to remind people it exists.

Wait, you mean something kinda like the Zenbu iPhone app that came out last August??

 

Blair Glubb, Director of Digital Media at Yellow, says in the NZ Herald

The future for us is actually taking the information we’ve got and pushing it out via a whole bunch of channels.

which is very similar to something I regularly say

Zenbu is about taking the information visible to you as you walk down the street and making it available to you whereever and whenever you need it.

but that’s about where the similarities end….

Yellow Pages. Staff 500+. Revenue $293,000,000. Listings 250,000 (my best guess). 

Zenbu. Staff 0.5 (plus a dedicated community!). Revenue $5,000. Listings 67,000 (and growing!)

Who are you gonna put your money on?

Those LGOIMA/OIA Requests

Ed Korkery has started up a blog to record the workings of Official Information Act requests. I have done a guest post based on our experiences with getting the Environmental Health licensed premises data off all the councils, fun, fun, fun.

Gotta keep an eye on big brother too right!

Donation Drive for New Server

With the impressive growth of 770% in the last year we are now looking to upgrade our server hardware.

Zenbu is a free service created by and for the New Zealand community. Without the support of the people who add and edit information tirelessly the service would not be as great as it is. Some people may not have the time or inclination for data entry but would like to support Zenbu so now we have created a Zenbu donations page where you can put your money where your mouth is and help the Zenbu cause.

We’re starting with a drive to save for a new server to keep the Zenbu website nice and snappy. If you value the Zenbu service, website or iPhone application please consider a donation, for whatever amount.

It only takes a minute and you can pledge with any major credit card or a PayPal account.

Thanks in advance to everyone who helps out and we hope to bring you another year of 700%  growth (at least)!

Sam Giffney
Chief Data Bloke
Zenbu.
Find Everything.

Feburary 2009 on Zenbu

3461 edits from 86 users in February. The biggest push came from local councils whose Official Information Act replies continue to limp in.

Auckland City, Napier, Wanganui, Thames-Coromandel, Kapiti Coast & Clutha all supplied information on every food premise, hairdresser, funeral director and camping ground in their region. This is a big boost in information for the regional areas and helps ensure that you will be able to find everything on Zenbu whereever you are.

Blog followers will note that Napier was one of the councils who initially refused the request citing the Privacy Act. The Ombudsman ruled in our favour that this was public information and, some 4 months after the initial request, they coughed up. The other recalcitrant council, Ruapehu District,  is yet to reply to the 2nd Ombudsman order to comply. 

And we won’t even mention the 25 councils who, by not deigning to reply at all, have implicitly refused the initial request. Local government, fail.

The big committers for February are

zenbu 2879
hexzed 187
burgla 86
PGNZ 78
Linzi 21
vrod_rider 19
profsnsc 17
garyt 11
hoogy 11
GaryMck 9
PGrueber 8

but of course thank you to everyone who helped out.

Traffic to the site continues to grow at least 10% a month. Google Analytics tells me that year on year growth for visits is 770% – woooo! Keep it coming New Zealand.