[Geowanking] Store hours of operation database

[Michal Migurski]

> Here’s something I’m curious about, that has been a time and again 
> problem for so many people designing “yellow pages” or trying to use 
> such data. There’s no real store hours databases on the net since it 
> requires such a collaboration between customers and/or store owners to 
> provide accurate data to a “central” database. It’s a lot of work. One 
> of the companies I worked at, we tried to create such a database in 
> one of our products, but even with self-stamped and addressed 
> postcards sent out to a ton of local businesses, we got very little 
> response, even when we explained the benefits of providing their store 
> hours. It seemed to us that MOST store owners were lazy, and didn’t 
> like to put extra efforts in, or just couldn’t see any benefits.

It seems like a natural fit (to me) for an RDF syntax that stores could 
publish on their own sites, similar to the way that creative commons 
licenses are documented or how technorati's tag feature works. Whether 
it will seem advantageous to store owners to provide such information 
isn't obvious - if you didn't get a response from direct-mailed 
postcards, I bet there was a reason that owners didn't feel it was 
worth the time ("Why don't people just call?"). Any such database will 
need to be super-accurate: I had a really lame experience with 
Enterprise Rent-a-car recently, when I planned to drop off a vehicle on 
a date that their own website listed as regular-hours. The place wasn't 
open, I had to pay for an extra day, and I learned a valuable lesson 
about picking up the phone instead of trusting a website.

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michal migurski- mike at stamen.com
                  415.558.1610