Before

This was originally posted by myself on 5 June 2019; it is another Diary as part of mapping Nottingham’s Creative Quarter, this time musing on Points of Interest (PoI) as part of mapping for OSM.

One of many reasons for entering PoIs in the map is that Nominatum (the search facility within OSM) uses PoI to find results including (amongst other items) postcodes. I discovered this when I could not find the Covid-19 Jabbing-centre in the OSM map, yet confirmed afterwards that I had entered the correct postcode.

A conversation with the lady at AST Auto Centre

I could not be certain either from my original visit nor from our Bing imagery whether some central buildings were occupied by the Ashley St. Auto Centre (below) or by a business on the opposite side of the block on Handel Street, so phoned the number on the business card that the lady at AST had given me on 17 May. This was 4 June so I did not expect her to remember me but she did, and mentioned the little leaflet that I had given her.

I quickly sorted the original reason for the call (AST occupies those buildings), but as soon as I mentioned OSM she immediately responded about the number of enquiries that the business gets via Google maps (I had never mentioned Google). I brightly informed her that the updated mapping should be available within the next hour.

SEO == “Search Engine Optimisation”

(this is almost always a euphemism for “SPAM”)

In a former life as a website owner & operator I spent my time fighting to keep spam out of my site forums + trying to keep the site firmly within Google’s gaze. Whilst many spammers are profoundly stupid, it was not lost on me that there is some fierce intelligence at play behind the entire spam business, else they would have long ago dissolved into the void. I was not too proud to learn from these experts where I could find it, at the same time as I did my best to kill them dead on my site. I attempt to put all the SEO intelligence that I have gathered into practical application with these diary posts, as one example, making them as attractive as possible firstly to the human readers but also to the bots operated by the Search-Engines. If both find them attractive then OSM wins again.

I was very interested in the response from the lady at AST. It was the first time that I had had such positive feedback on the idea of OSM, and it seemed a good endorsement of both the promotional leaflets (well done to Andy Allan) and also of OSM.

I’ve spent 30-odd years of my life as a professional salesman, and therefore it often colours my approach to things. With OSM it was immediately obvious that the map is a boon for every business — what a marketing opportunity! I therefore work tirelessly to promote every business that I meet during my surveys. (For newer mappers: in OSM-speak these businesses are called ‘PoI’, which is to say “Points of Interest”) I collect Business Cards/Compliment Slips/Brochures whilst mapping so that back at home all of the business’s most important contact information can be put up on the map. If the OSM map is an easily-referenced source of information for most businesses, then it will become very interesting for the common customer, which is good for customers, good for businesses, and good for OSM. The kind of virtuous circle that we need.

Public Service Information:– Business Cards, Compliment Slips, Brochures

For the benefit of younger mappers, since I’ve often had young folks telling me that they do not know what I’m talking about when I’ve asked for one of these items:–

Business Cards

These are dead trees processed into stiff paper (ask your teachers if you are unfamiliar with the idea of paper) and then printed with the business, personal name of the business owners + address & contact numbers. They are intended to be given to other people during personal meetings to facilitate marketing promotion of the business. Please approach your health professional if you have been triggered by the idea of a one-on-one personal meeting, but this is actually quite normal during business life.

Compliment Slips

These are dead trees processed into (typically) a ⅓ of an A4 sheet of paper (ask your teachers if you are unfamiliar with the idea of paper) and then pre-printed — normally on just one side — with the name, address & other contact details of the business. They are intended to be placed into the same envelope as a letter. Ask your teachers if you are unfamiliar with the idea of an envelope or a postal-letter.

Brochures/Booklets

These are dead trees processed into (typically) a series of A5 sheets of paper (ask your teachers if you are unfamiliar with the idea of paper) and folded (brochures) or bound (booklets) after pre-printing with information about the business & it’s activities.

A final item, often overlooked it seems to me by others, is that these Diaries are a very good method to put up URLs in the map that can be indexed by the SEs.

Update 21 June 2022

Mapillary has changed it’s download URLs & therefore all links within my diaries that used a Mapillary download URL in the old format are broken (the Mapilliary map URLs, which show a photo within the context of an OSM map, have also changed and are redirected via a HTTP/1.1 302 Found, but the download URL hostname no longer exists and gives a “No address associated with hostname” DNS error). I’m slowly going through to update them. The new URLs are terrifyingly long, but show OK on my screen (and I hope also on yours).

Update 7 July 2022

I discovered just now that the Mapillary photo on this page was broken yet again, as are others that I updated on other diary pages. Loaded into a web-page by itself the download-URL gave the error: url is timed out. It seems that Mapillary has decided that these freely-donated photographs can only be used for it’s benefit.