That title makes no sense.

When I lived in rural america I got a phone book, with white pages (residential) blue pages (goverment) and yellow pages (commercial), and it was quite useful. Now that I live a major metropolis (Dallas TX) I only get the yellow pages, no directory listings at all.

Phone book is good when there's no power.

I liked it when the phone book company calls to confirm if the obsolete monstrosity we never ordered showed up on our door step.

I usually reply with "Well, I put a large yellow book into the recycle bin last week, if that's what you're talking about."

I recycled our phone books. MrTheExit was horrified until he saw our ten-year-old Google up the number he was looking for.

@Mfalconieri: Actually it does. Giving somebody the "what for" is another way of saying you're reading them the riot act, giving them the straight skinny, the facts of the matter, the what's up, etc. etc.

"'give what for'; occ. 'what's what.' (With dative.) To beat, thrash; scold, reprimand: coll., the former C. 19-20, the latter C.20 and gen. jocular" ("Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English")

@Mfalconieri: [en.wiktionary.org]

@MissedTheExit: Same here. Goes from the doorstep to the recycle bin. Does not even enter my house, and I just dump the whole thing, bag and all in the bin.

I has internet-fu. Everything I need is right online.

@balthisar: There is always 411 in a phone number emergency.

Such a waste. My local post office always has a mountain of these things in the lobby that people don't want to take home.

They're useful if you live in a more rural area. I found when I lived in rural Wyoming that people would not necessarily be listed online, but they were still in the phone book.

However they are utterly useless in big metro areas. You should see the stacks of them in NYC apartment buildings - the deliverers usually can't get past the lobby, so they just dump them all there. And no one ever takes one so they just sit there collecting dust.

Not to mention it would take about a 20-pound phone book to be comprehensive in the NYC area...

Qwest is not Dex, the article linked does not say Qwest is paying bloggers, it says Dex is.

i get enough phone books on my porch every year to build a play fort out of them. i'm not really sure why - there's only one door, one mailbox & one driveway. still, every year, i end up with a half dozen or more all over my front yard.

i've tried getting them to stop before with no success. it's ok. i've learned to accept it. besides, i was thinking of adding an addition to the fort this year.

@jliptak: You are right, but also, from DexKnows.com:

Dex publishes the AT&T Real Yellow Pages in Illinois and NW Indiana, the EMBARQ™ Yellow Pages, and the Dex© Yellow Pages (as the official publisher of Qwest®).

I don't know what that means, exactly, but I don't think I was completely off base.

Phonebook?

Haven't used one since I got an iPhone.

What a waste of trees.

I'm going to use this post as a soapbox of annoyance against those Yellowbook ads. Are they that insecure that they can't advertise a service they offer and benefits over competitors?

If they actually showed someone using their service the reaction would be "Oh, like Google but with more ads."

www.bigyellow.com

I haven't used a phone book in probably 6 years.

But... it comes with free appetizers, discount oil changes, and 2 for 1 deals on everything from greens' fees to pizza.

I don't want them gone for good. The web is great and all, but it's always good to have a second source for info, even if it is as rudimentary as a phone book.

@darkrose: Next time, try to use it once before throwing it. It's a lot like building a log cabin with hand tools only less satisfying and without the exercise.

"Look at me, I can find a pizza place without witchcraft!"

The last time I got "spammed" with a new phone book, the "distributor" made the mistake of throwing it at my storm door while I was in my living room ... I ran outside, complained at him to take it back, but he continued to walk back to the van full of phone books .. I think it scared the 3 people who were feeding the phonebooks out of the back of the van when my copy flew unexpectedly back at them ... ;>

BTW, if the power is out, my internet is down .. if my internet is down, my vonage doesn't work .. so whether or not I have a physical phone book makes no difference. Worst case scenario is I look up a phone number via my cellphone .....

I know for a fact that the people who deliver phone books pile them up in certain places that they know do not need them. I used to work for a phone book company and they would pay delivery people by the book. We also used to get phone calls that there were whole bundles put in dumpsters.

@failurate: And should there ever be an electronic information melt down, without the phone book, how am I going to find someone to groom my dog, for half price?

I guess I'll have to take the other side of the argument. We only get two phone books per year, and find them useful - if only for the coupons of restaurants in town.

I'd prefer if they left out all of the non-commercial listings. I also see how it's a huge waste of resources, and would also prefer if the coupons were available online.

Phonebooks need to go poof... heck I just send a text to google for phone numbers these days.

Feh. At my apartment complex there are about 6 buildings I believe. At each building, at every yearly delivery of books, AT&T drops a freaking palette of books in the entryway. A few are taken, but most just sit there for a month. I doubt AT&T comes back to pick them up; I assume they end up in the dumpsters.

I not only get multiple phone books dumped by the mailbox, one of them also publishes a small auxiliary addendum to go with the large main book. I just don't see how anything past one large book would ever get looked at.

You know what else is annoying? Takeout menu spam.

Well since print media is dead, I use it to line the bottom of my bird's cage. So I actually do find them to be somewhat useful.

I just went to count the number of phonebooks currently sitting in the recycling area at my office. 13. And while I was away from my desk to count, another 2 arrived. I swear, if you turn your back for one minute, they spontaneously clone.

Driving a web-blogging is dangerous.

Phonebooks are especially useful when packing items for shipping, storage, etc.

I'm also stock piling them in my basement for the impending apocalypse. They will be a great heat source!

In Colorado the phone companies have said that the PUC (Public Utilities Commission) forces them to deliver phone books, not sure if it's true or not.

@KyleOrton: I run a private, internal users only library - but - one of the vendors I use has sold our information and I get weekly phone calls from YelloBook trying to get us to buy ad space. Every week I tell them to stop calling, we are a nonprofit, non-public entity and to take us off their list, and then we get called again...

So I will gladly join you on the soapbox, but on the stop be annoying about getting people to pay for your ads side.

@nicemarmot617: Yes. In a smaller metro area - 300,000 - I'm not totally anti-phone-book. It's pretty comprehensive, some smaller businesses aren't online, and it has menus for almost every restaurant in the city. But there are only TWO that serve the area and they come at the same time, so I can recycle the bad one, keep the good one, and not worry about it until next year.

What I actually find much more useful is a city services directory that city hall publishes and puts in the welcome basket and hands out at city hall. It has numbers for things like code enforcement, voter registration, animal control, animal shelter, trash pickup, water problems, electricity issues, etc. And it has some basic instructions that help save me time ("Call animal control for this kind of animal, but the pound for that kind of animal." "No trash pick-up on the following holidays" and that kind of thing.) That I keep very handy, it's often much faster than looking things up online, plus all the handy extra info. But it's probably no more than 40 pages.

While Mr. Kohler's goals are admirable, I suspect that what's truly holding him up is the First Amendment. While it's not impossible to draft a legal ordinance to control the problem, the inevitable lawsuit often drains city resources and causes legal headaches. The following cases are illustrative of the complications involved in prohibiting the dissemination of phonebooks and other circulars on private property:

Tillman v. American Distribution Services, 224 A.D.2d 79, 80 (N.Y. App. 1996)

New Jersey Citizen Action v. Edison Township et. al., 797 F.2d 1250, 1258-1259 (3d Cir. 1986)

Statesboro Publishing Co. v. city of Sylvania, 516 S.E.2d 296, 298 (Ga. 1999)

Ad World, Inc. v. Township of Doylestown, 672 F.2d 1136 (3d Cir. 1982)

Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147, 163 (1939)

Years ago, the local newspaper started dropping the daily newspaper off in my driveway. Unfortunately, we did not want the paper, and didn't read it, and the papers were starting to pile up. I consulted with an attorney friend, and came up with an unusual solution. I wrote a letter which I faxed and then sent certified mail to the paper which notified them that I was operating a business which was to recycle papers deposited in my driveway (offer) and for them to utilize my business services, all they had to do was to drop off identifiable papers with their company name on the papers (acceptance). The fee for this would be $5.00 per day, billable weekly. Failure to pay would result in legal action to collect, attorney's fees additional. Delinquent accounts 30 days past due would be refered to the local sheriff's department for theft of services. The contract was good boilerplate supplied by my attorney, and all I had to do was tweak minor verbiage. Wouldn't you know, that the day after I faxed it to the paper, the deliveries stopped.

@Hooray4Zoidberg: or the free variants like 800-GOOG-411, 800-FREE-411, etc. Why give the phone company their nickel and dime when you can dial a couple more numbers?

@MissedTheExit: And of course, the phone books update less often than Google. I've heard that about 0.75% of numbers go bad between when a phone book is compiled and whn it's delivered. And it's potentially much higher by the end of the year.

Well I for one don't need the phone books that arrive on my door step every few months. Along with putting an end to these books I would like to stop all the advertisements that get tossed on my driveway each week. Enough with the litter. I have to pick three or four of these up on any given weekend. And they have taken to appearing under the cover of darkness. Please tell me there is some way to make it stop.

I've seen worse. After Katrina, in Slidell LA, I saw phone books delivered to the slabs of all of the apartment complexes that had been completely wiped away. I really should have called the newspapers. I can see the headlien already: "I have nothing left, but at least I've got a phone book!"

@theutopian: I stopped using phonebooks before the iPhone was even a concept.

Phonebooks don't annoy me as much as those Supermarket Circulars that are tossed in front of my house. I get 3-4 a week and they go right in the trash (I refuse to take them out of the bag to recycle).

I especially enjoy collecting them after it rains..

Any tips on how to get those stopped?

The only use I'd get out of a phone book is if I used it for paper maché.

I called the cops on a delivery truck dropping phonebooks in my neghborhood.....they came out and made them pick up all the phone books. I don't really know if the cop knew the law on that or not, but the next day, the phone books were back again. I have also chased the delivery van down and handed them back the books they left me and told them not to litter on my property ever again. Bah....never works....I must get a dozen or so phone books a year. Quite a waste of money....

@Miguel Valdespino: Nickel and dime? Doesn't 411 cost like $2 now?

Phone books are one of the more useful dead-tree articles out there. I use mine all the time. It is usually more convenient than turning on and logging into my computer just to look up a phone number. People really need to use the right tool for the right job.

@CityGuySailing: Brilliant!

@TinkishDelight: Are you in need of any more? I just bought a house in MN and it's like the phone book people's hey-day when someone new moves in. I think in the two months we've been there, I've received 15 phonebooks (no joke.)

@failurate: In that situation, I'd find the nearest out-of-work web programmer and offer shareware versions of Duke Nukem in exchange for services (like dog washing).

@TinkishDelight: I used each sheet as a paper plate in college.

1. Make sandwich on page.
2. Eat sandwich.
3. Turn page.