da: A smiling human with short hair, head tilted a bit to the right. It's black and white with a neutral background. You can't tell if the white in the hair is due to lighting, or maybe it's white hair! (lego)
da ([personal profile] da) wrote2006-03-03 07:48 pm
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Hey, that was my idea (PSA: canadians)

About 3 years ago I had the idea that google or a yellow pages company should automatically translate business phone-numbers into webpages.

yellowpages.ca has had the same idea, and I'm not even miffed they took my idea. The wrapper for my new phone-book describes their phone-number-to-webpage translation. It includes whatever graphical ad the company put in the yellow pages, as well as maps for finding the location. Nifty.

In a moment of geekery, I played with it and found not only does 416-504-7934.yp.ca work, but the 7-number version- 504.7934.yp.ca generally works too, on everything in the Canadian yellow pages.

This almost almost makes up for the fact that google doesn't index Canadian phone-numbers as well as it does American phone-numbers.

I don't know if this is new or not, but yp.ca does proximity searches as well. So, for example, I can now tell you there are 871 Tim Hortons within 200 km of me right now.

You don't know how reassured that makes me feel.