National Postcodes to be introduced

ukoda

Fred Swanson wrote: »

Oh dear!

Not confirmed. But it appears that he has

Trouwe Ier

niallboylan4fm 5:45pm via Twitter for iPhone
@AlexWhiteTD very few are agreeing with your outrageous spending of public money on #eircode . They said E-Voting made life easier too.

Where did Mr. Boylan get this figure from? He is being retweeted virally.

Also, how much research has he done on the topic?

plodder

ukoda wrote: »

Not confirmed. But it appears that he has

where are you seeing this?

ukoda

plodder wrote: »

where are you seeing this?

A user on Twitter, I'm not going to give their username tho! If you go on Twitter and search eircode you'll find it, although there's a lot of eircode traffic so might take a bit on scrolling, from looking at his tweet he has bypassed the 15 per day rule (which is easy anyway) and looks like he's some code to trawl the API and pull back chunks of of database

FishOnABike

seamus wrote: »

And unfortunately they took two cludgy systems and lumped them together.

What's clear is that they have a system which marries up 3 pieces of information:

1. An address
2. A randomly-assigned eircode
3. GPS co-ordinates

There's no reason why 2 & 3 need to be separate pieces of information. The system should have allowed that given any eircode, someone could apply a simple calculation to obtain GPS co-ordinates.

At present 2 & 3 bear no relationship to eachother except an entry in a database.

Or even, as others have mentioned previously, an openly-available grid system could be used instead of GPS, if we wanted to keep it nationally-specific.

Thus, with any eircode, anyone could find a location. If a farmer wanted to give their fields each their own eircode, they could. And it wouldn't require approval from a separate body to do so. We had a prime opportunity here where we weren't hamstrung by having an older archaic set of postcodes. We had a blank page which we could use to develop post codes which worked with modern mapping and navigation. And we messed it up.

Issues around address verification and fraud are separate and specific. Eircode or another company could still provide a system of matching actual addresses to eircodes.

Eircode fulfills its design goals perfectly. It was designed by a commercial company in such a way as to unnecessarily tie volume users into costly agreements for access / purchase / updating / licensing of post code data.

I've done some random checking of eircodes / postcodes to get an idea of the routing area size. I've found places 30km apart more or less N-S or E-W of each other with the same routing area code.

So without having to pay for access to the eircode database an address could be anywhere within an irregularly shaped 900 square km 'routing area'.

Calling it a routing area is itself a misnomer as two addresses metres apart could be in different routing areas while two addresses in the same routing area could be 30km apart and the neither eircode might have any relationship to how a particular user might organise deliveries to both addresses.

How often will updates be made available to users who have bought copies of the database and at what cost? Updates will be needed on an ongoing basis to add newly built addresses. In between updates, the data a volume user has paid for will be useless for identifying where a new address is. Updates will have to be very frequent and / or access to the live central database would be needed to cross reference new addresses' eircodes and locations.

Embedding the location of an address in the assigned eircode / post code would have simplified or eliminated the above issues. Any one of a number of proprietary or open two way transforms between gps/grid and assigned code would have been a better solution for end users. Only users who needed to verify the canonical eircode / post code (e.g. online shopping fraud prevention) would have had to refer to the database.

As it is we appear to have a sub-optimal user solution that is an optimal provider solution in terms of customer lock in and revenue generation.

plodder

ukoda wrote: »

A user on Twitter, I'm not going to give their username tho! If you go on Twitter and search eircode you'll find it, although there's a lot of eircode traffic so might take a bit on scrolling, from looking at his tweet he has bypassed the 15 per day rule (which is easy anyway) and looks like he's some code to trawl the API and pull back chunks of of database

That would be surprising (or maybe not) if they allowed you to trawl without knowing either the address or the code. Even more so (or maybe not) if they allow someone to trawl 2.2 million records without being noticed.

ukoda

plodder wrote: »

That would be surprising (or maybe not) if they allowed you to trawl without knowing either the address or the code. Even more so (or maybe not) if they allow someone to trawl 2.2 million records without being noticed.

It might not be true so take it with a pinch of salt. But using cookies to restrict usage to 15 is pretty poor way of doing it, any 10 year old with a computer could figure out how to bypass it!

plodder

ukoda wrote: »

It might not be true so take it with a pinch of salt. But using cookies to restrict usage to 15 is pretty poor way of doing it, any 10 year old with a computer could figure out how to bypass it!

Actually, I wouldn't hold that against them really. There is no really reliable way to do it without needing accounts and logins etc, which would destroy the usefulness of it for casual use.

ukoda

plodder wrote: »

Actually, I wouldn't hold that against them really. There is no really reliable way to do it without needing accounts and logins etc, which would destroy the usefulness of it for casual use.

They could do it on IP address like all the other companies do and it works far better than cookies, although there's ways around it, but harder to do it. But they probably didn't want to put too much effort into it anyway, as it was bound to get out sooner or later

plodder

ukoda wrote: »

They could do it on IP address like all the other companies do and it works far better than cookies, although there's ways around it, but harder to do it. But they probably didn't want to put too much effort into it anyway, as it was bound to get out sooner or later

Limiting by IP address would cause problems for people looking up from work. Everyone in the same workplace would be working off the same allocation.

ukoda

plodder wrote: »

Limiting by IP address would cause problems for people looking up from work. Everyone in the same workplace would be working off the same allocation.

Well that depends on their IP set up, it would be unusual for a company to all operate from 1 IP address, unless it was very small

JohnC.

rye1967 wrote: »

So if you give your POSTAL (An Post) address to a DELIVERY company then they could put your sofa on the wrong, ie WATERFORD delivery route

In my experience, couriers always deliver stuff to me while coming from Waterford heading west out the N24 anyway.

FishOnABike

plodder wrote: »

Limiting by IP address would cause problems for people looking up from work. Everyone in the same workplace would be working off the same allocation.

Similarly for any home / small business users. Typically ISPs would not have unique public internet facing IP addresses for each broadband customer. There would be a 1 - N mapping of ISP public internet facing IP addresses to ISP customer IP addresses the same as the external IP address of your home router is translated into several internal IP addresses on your home network.

plodder

FishOnABike wrote: »

Similarly for any home / small business users. Typically ISPs would not have unique public internet facing IP addresses for each broadband customer. There would be a 1 - N mapping of ISP public internet facing IP addresses to ISP customer IP addresses the same as the external IP address of your home router is translated into several internal IP addresses on your home network.

Indeed, not all ISPs give you a public IP address in the first place. I'm fairly sure Eircom do, but I know others that don't.

TheChizler

Legit users of the database aren't going to go through unofficial channels to get it anyway. Considering it's been included in data protection laws.

Bayberry

Sam Russell wrote: »

Those with non-unique addresses but with a house name can check their Eircode easily, but those without will have to pick it out from a map. Solution - everyone must have a name or number on their house. Simples.

Sam, you seem to be labouring under the impression that there are hundreds of thousands of people who have a problem with their current non-unique addresses, and that you can solve this problem by forcing them to pick a house name.

But that's not the way those people see it. They don't have a problem with their non-unique addresses, and there's nothing preventing them using a house name if they want, and most of them don't bother, because the only delivery person who would see it often enough to remember it is the postman, and he already does a good enough job without a house name.

The Dr Fuzzensteins of the world can't be helped with a system of house names, because Garmin will never map house names and neither will anyone else except for historical use.

ukoda

1 million hits on Eircode Finder at 6.15 today per the DCENR Twitter account.

a65b2cd

TheBustedFlush wrote: »

The biggest flaw in the whole Eircode system is the set of coordinates that they are using. In many instances, they point to the right building, but in a fair number of cases they don't.

This is an advantage of Eircode: the coordinates can be corrected without amending the Eircode. GoCode and Loc8 will benefit from these corrections provided GeoDirectory are willing to check and correct.

Jack180570

Sam Russell wrote: »

Unfortunately the RTE reporter knows very little and what he knows is wrong.

The RTE reporter is asking the right questions. ... really does show up Eircode for the rubbish, inaccurate system it is.... couldn't even get the location of Shannon Airport correct

Jack180570

ukoda wrote: »

1 million hits on Eircode Finder at 6.15 today per the DCENR Twitter account.

Oh yes.... people trying to figure out why their new Eircode has them relocated to a different county... what a joke. .. another €27m down the drain

TheBustedFlush

ukoda wrote: »

So according to a BBC article: eircode doesn't work with sat navs yet, but negotiations are ongoing with these companies to introduce it "within months"

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33510924


But at the end after they talk about the airport moving. Where did they get this from do we know?

We do.

Jack180570

seamus wrote: »

And unfortunately they took two cludgy systems and lumped them together.

What's clear is that they have a system which marries up 3 pieces of information:

1. An address
2. A randomly-assigned eircode
3. GPS co-ordinates

There's no reason why 2 & 3 need to be separate pieces of information. The system should have allowed that given any eircode, someone could apply a simple calculation to obtain GPS co-ordinates.

At present 2 & 3 bear no relationship to eachother except an entry in a database.

Or even, as others have mentioned previously, an openly-available grid system could be used instead of GPS, if we wanted to keep it nationally-specific.

Thus, with any eircode, anyone could find a location. If a farmer wanted to give their fields each their own eircode, they could. And it wouldn't require approval from a separate body to do so. We had a prime opportunity here where we weren't hamstrung by having an older archaic set of postcodes. We had a blank page which we could use to develop post codes which worked with modern mapping and navigation. And we messed it up.

Issues around address verification and fraud are separate and specific. Eircode or another company could still provide a system of matching actual addresses to eircodes.

Basically the Government could have chosen Loc8 Code instead of Eircode, and the other benefit would be that it would have cost them €0, zero.... but that would have required basis cop on...

Seth Brundle

Jack180570 wrote: »

Basically the Government could have chosen Loc8 Code instead of Eircode, and the other benefit would be that it would have cost them €0, zero.... but that would have required basis cop on...

No cost?
What about identifying and mapping each individual property?
What about notifying each property owner?
Just because there is no licence cost does not mean no cost!

ash777

Does each and every house/business have a unique code? What about apartments? And, is there any continunuity, i.e., would Number 8, Random Street's code have any similarity to Number 9's?

Victor

Bayberry wrote: »

nice non specific weasel words there

Accusing people of "weasel words" is quite inappropriate.

Moderator

ash777

ash777 wrote: »

Does each and every house/business have a unique code? What about apartments? And, is there any continunuity, i.e., would Number 8, Random Street's code have any similarity to Number 9's?

I checked one block of flats and sequential addresses have completely different postcodes.
But they all share the same routing code.

TheChizler

ash777 wrote: »

Does each and every house/business have a unique code? What about apartments? And, is there any continunuity, i.e., would Number 8, Random Street's code have any similarity to Number 9's?

Every property has a unique, non-sequential code. Sequential sounds like the obvious choice but what happens if you combine two properties or build one in between? It also makes it obvious the code is slightly wrong if you make a mistake in it as it would map to a totally different area.

homer911

secondattempt wrote: »

No because An Post refuse to use them. At least according to Brian Lucey today, postal workers won't use them...

Theoretically a sorting machine can sort all letters into the final delivery order based on the Eircode - this will make life easier for the postman who comes to your door

Jack180570

kbannon wrote: »

No cost?
What about identifying and mapping each individual property?
What about notifying each property owner?
Just because there is no licence cost does not mean no cost!

The state owns both An Post and Ordnance Survey who in turn own the Geodirectory so they have the staff and the Geodirectory.

The only piece missing was the system. Loc8 offered their system to the State for free. That why there would be no cost to the State.

threeiron

Interesting to see the use of Eircodes on their website contact addresses by the consortium. Only DCENR has added them!

DCENR: D02 X2852
Capita: No Eircodes displayed on website address
Bearing Point: No Eircodes displayed on website address
AutoAddress: No Eircodes displayed on website address
Department Taoiseach: No Eircodes displayed on website address