National Grid Reference Redirect is a simple free service that takes your UK Ordnance Survey Grid Reference map location number, and then whisks you to the equivalent string of geo-coordinates on the large public mapping services such as Google Maps. Sadly it doesn’t yet work with the excellent OS-based footpathmaps.com or the historic maps.nls.uk.

Usage: make sure you use the six-number format, e.g. SJ882359. If you have a more precise eight number OS Grid Reference — such as SJ882?359? — then you’ll need to lop off the last ‘?’ number in each block of four, and then cross-reference with the same spot in the OS-based footpathmaps.com and maps.nls.uk to work out the precise spot.

We could really use a Web browser plugin that streamlines all this, and intelligently discriminates between six and eight OS digit map references. Or the big mapping services could just start being able to handle OS map references.

Are you regularly annoyed by Google Search’s spammy slide-in panel labelled “More Info”? It’s also known as the “Local Info” or “Info Panel” among marketeers.

I have no use for it whatsoever, and it’s just another whizzy and distinctly spammy distraction from proper search. It tends to appear when doing local searches, but I’m almost never searching for an eatery / hotel / venue ‘to book’. Instead I’m looking for pages that give long-range advance details about forthcoming events, such as conferences, events which are set to happen locally over the coming months or even into next year. So I can feed them through into special-interest local Facebook groups. In which case Google’s panel becomes yet another annoying example of dumb auto-suggest getting it wrong.

How to block it? In AdBlock Plus, with the Element Hiding Helper installed, this slide-in panel can be blocked for Google Search UK with…

 google.co.uk###rhs.slideout

Presumably

 google.com###rhs.slideout

… etc, would also work.