Geek stuff: UK Postcode database

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lazarus corporation
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I was reading on The Guardian website about the UK Free Our Data campaign. One aim is to break the Royal Mail's stranglehold on the database that maps postcodes to latitude/longitude co-ordinates by creating a public domain one which is filled in by people plotting their post code on a map.

The Royal Mail currently charge thousands of pounds a year to companies wanting to use this information on a website, which puts it out of reach of geeks like me!

http://www.npemap.org.uk/ is one website which is attempting to do this (as is http://www.freethepostcode.org) - just find the approximate location of your house (and your place of work, and your relative's houses...) on the map and type in your postcode, and the free public database gets a little bit bigger and more accurate.

I should add that Scottish addresses are poorly represented at the moment so you MacHeartlanders should get to work!
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James Blast
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We use The Royal Mail to deliver our council newspaper (160,000 households) and their contract specs. are draconian.
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EvilBastard
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I don't know if it helps you with finding locations from postcodes, but the lovely people at Google Urf can match postcodes in the US and the UK (at least it works for the 2 addresses I tried in London and Leeds) and take you to a satellite view, with longs, lats and evelations. Granted, in Leeds they were a couple of houses off, and the wrong side of the street, but close enough.

**EDIT** For example, this is where they think the Reptile House is located
Last edited by EvilBastard on 02 Nov 2006, 20:23, edited 1 time in total.
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lazarus corporation
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EvilBastard wrote:I don't know if it helps you with finding locations from postcodes, but the lovely people at Google Urf can match postcodes in the US and the UK (at least it works for the 2 addresses I tried in London and Leeds) and take you to a satellite view, with longs, lats and evelations. Granted, in Leeds they were a couple of houses off, and the wrong side of the street, but close enough.
Google have got a license from the Post Office (they can afford it!) to use the UK Postcode database with their Google Earth/Local/Maps applications, but that locks you into using Google (or one of the other mapping websites) for all your mapping applications.

I've used GoogleMaps for Ajax applications and it's good, but if the database was free then any web developer could write their own application from scratch.
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EvilBastard
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lazarus corporation wrote:Google have got a license from the Post Office (they can afford it!) to use the UK Postcode database with their Google Earth/Local/Maps applications, but that locks you into using Google (or one of the other mapping websites) for all your mapping applications.

I've used GoogleMaps for Ajax applications and it's good, but if the database was free then any web developer could write their own application from scratch.
Ah, ok - wasn't sure if you were using it on a one-off basis or if you wanted to code something that could go look them up.
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