Eircode - its implemetation (merged)

hans aus dtschl

GJG wrote: »

Except that wasn't what was said.



The claim was made that no business would want or bother with a website postcode branch finder. I provided examples of businesses using it in various other countries, and said that there is no reason to believe that the same won't happen in Ireland.

With respect, I was paraphrasing you rather than quoting you. I found your language was inflammatory/condescending, irrespective of who it was aimed at.

Nobody claimed that no business would want or bother with a postcode branch finder.
The exact phrase was "I don't think that you can get potential customers to key in that sort of information, when you're at first-contact (trying to win the potential customers). "
I'll happily stand over that comment. When I visit a website for the first time, I don't automatically think of giving it information. For a big-name well-known brand it's less of an issue, or not an issue at all. For small companies whose brand isn't known, whose website isn't known, it might prove more difficult. Particularly at Eircode rollout stage. When Eircode is more established it will be much easier. Let's not discuss that right now.

marmurr1916

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

With respect, I was paraphrasing you rather than quoting you. I found your language was inflammatory/condescending, irrespective of who it was aimed at.

Nobody claimed that no business would want or bother with a postcode branch finder.
The exact phrase was "I don't think that you can get potential customers to key in that sort of information, when you're at first-contact (trying to win the potential customers). "
I'll happily stand over that comment. When I visit a website for the first time, I don't automatically think of giving it information. For a big-name well-known brand it's less of an issue, or not an issue at all. For small companies whose brand isn't known, whose website isn't known, it might prove more difficult. Particularly at Eircode rollout stage. When Eircode is more established it will be much easier. Let's not discuss that right now.

Do you only buy from websites of well-established brands or companies? Or do you sometimes buy from small companies whose brand isn't known? I do both and I've no problem entering my credit card or debit card details into the latters' websites, along with all the other contact information that they request to process my order.

Neither do any of the customers who place orders through my website. That's because they can see that my website has security measures, they know that their card details will only be stored temporarily and only for the purpose of processing the transaction and they're confident that I won't have access to those card details after the transaction is complete.

The fact is that much e-commerce is done through the websites of small companies with unknown brands and millions of people use their websites every day without any problems as a result.

Either you're the kind of person who needs to see a well-known company or brand name to trust a website or you're the kind of person who'll trust a small company's website even if you've never heard of them before.

I don't know which type of person is in the majority when it comes to using commercial websites but I know I don't have any complaints about the level of business I got through my own websites, none of which have ever sold well-known branded products and none of which have belonged to well-known companies.

I'm pretty sure that any small business that sells stuff online has much the same experience, unless it's a complete disaster of a business!

If people are willing to trust the website of small businesses with their card details and their contact details I genuinely don't think that kind of person (the kind who is comfortable using the website of a small business to buy products or services) is going to be bothered about giving their Eircode to the kind of small business that they regularly give their card and contact details to.

BoatMad

xband wrote: »

The example given way back up the thread was about a business that just wanted to simply list the areas it served in a static format.

If you're say doing house painting, you're not going to want or need to be verifying and checking postcodes on a website to see if you serve that area.

That's all that was being said! The idea of postcode database look ups every time you want to figure anything out about an address is a huge limitation of eircode and it will mean it's not going to be as useful as typical postcode systems .

Why , do computers get tired accessing databases or something ?

plodder

I don't think online use of credit cards is relevant to this discussion:

a) you don't have much alternative if you want to buy stuff online.

b) consumers are quite well protected anyway, via insurance and charge-backs etc.

Sam Russell

Mod: Can we get back to discussing implementation of Eircode please.

When are Google, Garmin and TomTom joining the party?

hans aus dtschl

BoatMad wrote: »

Why , do computers get tired accessing databases or something ?

Thanks for making my point for me!

Sorry Sam, back on topic, does anyone know of any online mapping system using eircode yet, other than Eircode themselves?

BoatMad

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

Thanks for making my point for me!

Sorry Sam, back on topic, does anyone know of any online mapping system using eircode yet, other than Eircode themselves?

Google maps in 2016 sometime. Garmin also. Several third party logistics companies will have Eircode integrated in 2016

ukoda

http://www.truckstopsrouting.com/mapmechanics-launches-truckstops-ireland/


I may have posted this before, but it's well worth a read

gctest50

An Post DeliveryBox application form uses it

http://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/MainContent/Personal+Customers/Managing+Mail/Parcel+delivery+services/DeliveryBox.htm

chewed

Why don't Garmin or Google have a statement about implementing Eircode? The fact that there's none, leads me to believe that this won't happen in 2016.

BoatMad

chewed wrote: »

Why don't Garmin or Google have a statement about implementing Eircode? The fact that there's none, leads me to believe that this won't happen in 2016.

read back through the threads, they both have made statements . I know for a fact myself ( I'm in this business) that both Garmin and Google are working in solutions, as to the implementation dates that different, neither see it " as a big thing"

ukoda

chewed wrote: »

Why don't Garmin or Google have a statement about implementing Eircode? The fact that there's none, leads me to believe that this won't happen in 2016.

Garmin made a public statement on twitter:

https://twitter.com/Garmin/status/630818330941763584

BoatMad

this is interesting

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zrmXDfjvem7g.k2eSAnvagEdQ&hl=en_US

BoatMad

this is interesting

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zrmXDfjvem7g.k2eSAnvagEdQ&hl=en_US

BoatMad

25 January

Minister for Communications Alex White has said agreements with companies including Google and Satnav to recognise the Eircode systems are complete and he expects that "licences will be signed off on in next few weeks".

BoatMad

25 January

Minister for Communications Alex White has said agreements with companies including Google and Satnav to recognise the Eircode systems are complete and he expects that "licences will be signed off on in next few weeks".

threeiron

BoatMad wrote: »

this is interesting

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zrmXDfjvem7g.k2eSAnvagEdQ&hl=en_US

Yes, hard to understand why an official map was not made available.

plodder

BoatMad wrote: »

this is interesting

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zrmXDfjvem7g.k2eSAnvagEdQ&hl=en_US

That isn't associated with google. Anyone can create a map like that with any points of interest

my3cents

plodder wrote: »

That isn't associated with google. Anyone can create a map like that with any points of interest

I didn't notice anyone suggest it was associated with google? I certainly found it interesting and thanked the poster and bookmarked the page.

plodder

my3cents wrote: »

I didn't notice anyone suggest it was associated with google?

Neither did I, but some might have assumed it was something to do with google, given we had just been talking about google's adoption of Eircode.

It was an early attempt at a (crowd sourced) routing key map, which considering they didn't have access to the data, meant it would never be as useful as a proper routing key map.

Sorry Sam, back on topic, does anyone know of any online mapping system using eircode yet, other than Eircode themselves?

I guess the answer to that question is No. There aren't any online mapping systems yet, using Eircode, other than Eircode themselves. At least none that are open to the public.

GJG

threeiron wrote: »

Yes, hard to understand why an official map was not made available.

http://www.gamma.ie/sites/default/files/RKDraft.pdf

moyners

plodder wrote: »

Neither did I, but some might have assumed it was something to do with google, given we had just been talking about google's adoption of Eircode.

It was an early attempt at a (crowd sourced) routing key map, which considering they didn't have access to the data, meant it would never be as useful as a proper routing key map.

I guess the answer to that question is No. There aren't any online mapping systems yet, using Eircode, other than Eircode themselves. At least none that are open to the public.

Somewhat related but you can use Eircode on Ordnance Survey's Geohive mapping site. http://www.geohive.ie

Red Alert

Eircode would have been much less ridiculous if they had actually provided meaningful and well-defined geographic areas as routing keys. The whole implementation seems to have been designed so that the routing keys had little-to-no meaning. Even an 8-character postcode with AAAA PPPP with area followed by property would have made more sense, since the area could be used on its own in general discussion, e.g. house prices.

gctest50

Red Alert wrote: »

......... Even an 8-character postcode with AAAA PPPP with area followed by property would have made more sense, since the area could be used on its own in general discussion, e.g. house prices.

it was designed to avoid that bundle of joy

threeiron

GJG wrote: »

http://www.gamma.ie/sites/default/files/RKDraft.pdf

Thanks but I didn't think that Gamma were part of the PMLH or an agency of DCENR? I think there should be an official map, that can be browsed interactively, on the Eircode website. Eircode Finder works well but that is a bottom-up approach where you start with an address. A top-down starting with a map would complement it and maybe even facilitate usage!

Sam Russell

It is interesting to look at a few routing key areas.

P51, V94, V42, H91, V95, X35, C15, A84, A42, A45.

P51 is the strangest of all since it is divided into two areas by P61.

Some I have picked because they are so large and others because they are so small.

There can be no logical explanation for these choices.

BoatMad

Red Alert wrote: »

Eircode would have been much less ridiculous if they had actually provided meaningful and well-defined geographic areas as routing keys. The whole implementation seems to have been designed so that the routing keys had little-to-no meaning. Even an 8-character postcode with AAAA PPPP with area followed by property would have made more sense, since the area could be used on its own in general discussion, e.g. house prices.

I see great advantage to a system that has no meaning outside a database lookup. The fact is that any computer system can easily resolve eircodes to geo locations and go on to produce geo-orientated statistics.

designing a machine oriented code that humans can directly interpret , is 1970s technology in an increasing online world

personally I want my eircode to mean nothing to the casual observer

TheChizler

Is it just me or are the routing keys usage by customers a bit of a red herring? I can't really see the benefit of looking at a code and looking up what the routing key outline looks like? You just need to know what yours is and the larger area around you. You'd get a better idea by looking up the address itself. Or when the small areas are linked in and a suitable interface available to customers these would be much more useful.

Going off topic and back to the design, if I dare, I imagine the routing keys were chosen to correspond to sorting areas because the country was too big to have no routing key (and have the same number of characters for the unique part), and having thousands of routing keys would affect the memorability of the design. The existing sorting areas had a nice number of keys as a compromise and with the added advantage of having the data already available for quick rollout once they start allocating codes.

Is there any update on the small areas and applications being developed?

BoatMad

TheChizler wrote: »

Is it just me or are the routing keys usage by customers a bit of a red herring? I can't really see the benefit of looking at a code and looking up what the routing key outline looks like? You just need to know what yours is and the larger area around you. You'd get a better idea by looking up the address itself. Or when the small areas are linked in and a suitable interface available to customers these would be much more useful.

Going off topic and back to the design, if I dare, I imagine the routing keys were chosen to correspond to sorting areas because the country was too big to have no routing key (and have the same number of characters for the unique part), and having thousands of routing keys would affect the memorability of the design. The existing sorting areas had a nice number of keys as a compromise and with the added advantage of having the data already available for quick rollout once they start allocating codes.

Is there any update on the small areas and applications being developed?

what people forget is the design brief behind Eircode. Eircode is not a geo locater code. Eircode is a postal code, that means its merely a hash key into An Post/OSI Geodirectory, which is solely an address database of addresses that can accept mail. The sort key corresponds to the existing GeoDirectories sort areas, which them selves correspond to AN Posts sort areas.

gizmo555

BoatMad wrote: »

Eircode is a postal code . . .

If it's a postal code, why isn't An Post using it to sort and deliver post?