[http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/tech/openpostcode]
On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 12:44:09PM +0000, Kate L Pugh wrote:
On Mon 27 Oct 2003, David Cantrell david@cantrell.org.uk wrote:
On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 10:43:34AM +0000, Kate L Pugh wrote:
What are you planning to do with the data?
Right now? Not a lot. With enough data, it would enable people to do things like list all the FOOs within N distance of place M, given the addresses of M and the FOOs.
OK, but the problem with the data attribution (see below) would need to be solved before I'd consider relying on this for any application I was involved with writing.
See also Openguides and its content, where you have no way of knowing whether it's cut n' pasted from $payware_restaurant_review_site or copied from a book.
The real reason I did this is because people talked about it [...] but no-one DID anything.
People who have thought about this kind of thing fairly carefully include blech, jerakeen and Chris Heathcote. I'd recommend you have a chat to at least one of those people ...
[CCed]
I don't see that it requires much thought really. It's a very simple database. There's no *sensible* reason for it to be considered naughty.
PS - I'm sure you know this, but postcodes do change.
Yup. Thankfully they don't change often, or by much, and in comparison to the number of codes, the number of changes is infinitesimal. ie, for the purposes of figuring out where your nearest pub is, we don't have to care.