The other day I had to go through the entire list in the yellow pages to find a massage therapist because they were all unavailable. It was a sunday night, but still in the end I found someone to do the job.
So I am thinking that in the internet yellow pages you could have a little "OPEN" sign for service providers to let customers know that they are available at that moment.
Maybe have the option to program your working hours for a whole year which would indicate when the "OPEN" sign is turned on; and which you could change for when you are working after hours or on weekends. And for the customers, add a little rating feature and a notes area to annotate anything you want to remeber about a particular supplier.-- SmartyPants, Oct 24 2003 I tend to shop the Yellow Pages more frequently for Tree Trimmers, Stucco Men , and Tile Contractors than Off-Hour Masseuses. Being a forgetful sort with rather sporadic urgent needs, I was hoping for little check boxes that would remind me that I had already contacted these people and had determined (a) they provided a good service for a reasonable price; (b) they were good but had unreasonable prices or terms; (c) they were merely competent; (d) they seemed to provide a poor value, or were of questionable legitimacy; (f)they were the same fraudulent guys operating under a different name that I had taken to court last year.
But Massage Therapist or Contractor, the concept is analogous. I think it's a good idea, both for the internet, and the hands-on Yellow Pages. For the companies that I had already screened and found to be superior, knowing that they were immediately available would be an automatic sale.-- jurist, Oct 25 2003 I like it.
Do you think it would be based on pre-programmed business hours or would it read the status of their "OPEN" sign in real time or ?-- half, Oct 25 2003 I like this idea, it opens up a whole bunch of other ideas that would be great for internet yellowpages. I don't know if any of these ideas are baked for business pages, but I would like to see a "Rate this business" feature and/or a feedback feature like eBay or Epinions.com-- KLRico, Oct 25 2003 interactive yellow pages sounds like a good idea. you could do reviews of a business like at amazon books. but from sad experience i have to say beware of contractors who are available at a moment's notice. but massage therapists, well, that's another story...-- aquamarine, Oct 25 2003 By god, it's a another intensely useful idea on the halfbakery.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 25 2003 random, halfbakery