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Child Item

National Postcodes to be introduced

G_R

From the RTÉ Website

RT&#201 wrote: »

The Government has approved the introduction of a national postal code. The Minister for Communications said tenders for the design and implementation of the system will be issued shortly.

Minister Ryan said he expects new postal codes with digits and letters to be introduced in 2011.

A Government commissioned report said codes would provide long term savings and demographic details for planning as well as benefitting emergency services.

An Post said it will be playing a key role in the move to postal codes which will involve coding 1.7 million addresses.

In 2005, the then Minister for Communications, Noel Dempsey, promised a new system by 2008. At the time An post questioned the need for postal codes and industry experts put the cost at €50 million

However, Mr Ryan today said the move would cost a fraction of the €50 million it was estimated to cost four years.

About time but 2011 seems like a long way off

could they not jus use an existing one like PONC or similar

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Calina

ukoda wrote: »

Do you not see ericode is here now and it won't be going anywhere

You mean like water charges are here and they won't be going anywhere?

Please, get a grip. The fact that an attempt is being made to impose something doesn't mean we're stuck with it forever. The sane, sensible and non-stupid thing might be to admit that in fact, Eircodes, as designed, are not adequate to the needs of a lot of people who were hoping to use them to aid deliveries and navigation.

ukoda wrote: »

Do you not see this whole argument is pointless

People are entitled to their opinion. Quite frankly, a position of "you're stuck with it and voicing your opinion is pointless" is childish in the extreme. The other point you might want to consider is that the poster in question appears to be fairly competent in his field.

ukoda wrote: »

Do you not see that eircode will be of huge benefit to a vast array of businesses and the general public

Personal view is that its use will only be aided by a physical sign attached to the gates with the bloody thing on it.

ukoda wrote: »

Do you not see that if you don't like eircode, you don't have to use it.

That's not inline with "it's here now, live with it".

We're stuck with it. Congratulations. I thought the country had moved on from yerrah it'll be grand.

It isn't grand but we're still stuck with it.

FishOnABike

ukoda wrote: »

Do you not see ericode is here now and it won't be going anywhere

Do you not see this whole argument is pointless

Do you not see that eircode will be of huge benefit to a vast array of businesses and the general public

Do you not see that if you don't like eircode, you don't have to use it.

Do you not see that a better designed code would be more benefit and provide more functionality to a greater array of businesses and the general public.

FishOnABike

oscarBravo wrote: »

And that's leaving aside the other problem with a geocode: if you want to use it to group and sort deliveries, you have to convert it to a latitude and longitude and then feed that information into a route optimisation system of some kind.

Rather than being a problem this is one of the strengths of a geocode based system. It imposes no predefined boundaries or routing constraints. Any operator can group locations whatever way they wish to suit their own logistics without the predefined constraints of routing areas which might not match their logistics needs.

oscarBravo wrote: »

There seems to be a vague belief that if you recursively divide the country into a grid of squares, then you can use those squares for sorting and sequencing of deliveries without reference to a road map.

This is a strawman. I indicated in a previous post how a geocode could be used to overlay a digital map to sort / route items taking geographic boundaries such as rivers, mountains etc. into account and use digital road maps to enable optimised dynamic routing.

oscarBravo wrote: »

So the geocode gets converted to a lat/long and fed into a further processing step. If only - oh, if only - there was some way to do that with Eircodes.

Nobody has asserted eircodes cannot be translated to lat/long. The difference is that with eircode the user is locked in to paying for eircode's ECAF and ECAD database products with a geocode it could be calculated for free if an open system had been selected.

ukoda

Aimead wrote: »

Are you seriously trying to insinuate that the routing keys are in any way comparable to the wealth of functionality that a geocode would bring? Wow. Just wow.
And why are you considering a location code distinct from a postal code? A geocode can perfectly fine as a postal code as has been hashed out, again and again, in this very thread.
So pointing out that a postal code cannot help with many deliveries is being disingenuous? Seriously? Good luck selling that one.
This claim wasn’t try the first time you made it and still isn’t true now. A simple parser to detect when a geocode is in which routing area is a very far cry from having “to suck it up and change their business model to suit”. I can only shake my head at just how ridiculous your claims are becoming.
You do realise that some sort of argumentation on your part is needed to support the premise that ‘An-Post cannot work with a geocode’. I’m still waiting for that one.

Why wouldn’t a geocode with sufficient accuracy help solve the particular scenario you describe? Am I missing something?

Good to know I’m up against a strawman.

I have answered in previous posts, comprehensively, every objection I have thus far seen levelled at using a geocode. If you would be so good as to either find fault with what I have written or point out a problem I didn’t address then feel free. Because, as it looks to me right now, I’m not the one doing the handwacing.
So let me see if I understand the logic here. If An Post were set on a system that suited them, and only them, and insisted that the system be designed to be as useless as possible to all other entities, the system should be approved because they might veto it? Am I understanding you correctly? Given what Eircode turned out to be the previous rhetoric isn’t so far astray.
This one really is a strawman. My claim, and to be frank this was reflected in the submissions I read during the consultation process, was that a geocode would give functionality, would be interoperable with existing systems and would serve a wide range of uses across disparate industries as a piece of national infrastructure.

That functionality was thrown out the window for reasons that, at least as far as this thread is concerned, don’t stand up against a monocle of scrutiny.

Any chance for some evidence supporting that assertion?
Do you not see how, if the geocode was an algorithmic conversion from say GPS, that process becomes piss easy? How you could do it without the need for specialised software (I’d be able to do in excel with waypointing for example)?

Do you not also see how, with reference to the comparison with UK postcodes a few pages back, you can infer a substantial amount of information by visual inspection alone?

Do you also see how, by being unable to locate unindexed locations, Eircode functionality is dramatically reduced?

Fun thought experiment. Had a geocode been used then Google Maps would have had support for it the day it launched. That sort of interoperability is crippled with the use of pseudorandom digits. But geocodes are apparently bad and we must take, as an article of faith, that An Post is incapable of using a geocode.

Do you not see ericode is here now and it won't be going anywhere

Do you not see this whole argument is pointless

Do you not see that eircode will be of huge benefit to a vast array of businesses and the general public

Do you not see that if you don't like eircode, you don't have to use it.

Aimead

oscarBravo wrote: »

Actually, that question is disingenuous: it implies that none of the functionality of a geocode is present in an Eircode.

Are you seriously trying to insinuate that the routing keys are in any way comparable to the wealth of functionality that a geocode would bring? Wow. Just wow.

…but that doesn't change the fact that it's a postal code, not a location code.

And why are you considering a location code distinct from a postal code? A geocode can perfectly fine as a postal code as has been hashed out, again and again, in this very thread.

That doesn't mean that Eircodes are an eVotingesque disaster, just because they can't be used for email delivery. That question is the very definition of disingenuous.

So pointing out that a postal code cannot help with many deliveries is being disingenuous? Seriously? Good luck selling that one.

…but if Eircodes weren't a good match for An Post's business model, they'd just have to suck it up and change their business model to suit.

This claim wasn’t try the first time you made it and still isn’t true now. A simple parser to detect when a geocode is in which routing area is a very far cry from having “to suck it up and change their business model to suit”. I can only shake my head at just how ridiculous your claims are becoming.

Only in Ireland could people possibly get their knickers in a twist over the idea that a postcode system would be designed to facilitate the national postal service.

You do realise that some sort of argumentation on your part is needed to support the premise that ‘An-Post cannot work with a geocode’. I’m still waiting for that one.

SpaceTime wrote: »

Actually, no postal code could solve it because it's not a sorting or routing problem.

Why wouldn’t a geocode with sufficient accuracy help solve the particular scenario you describe? Am I missing something?

oscarBravo wrote: »

…. I'm arguing with the assertion that it's completely useless.

Good to know I’m up against a strawman.

oscarBravo wrote: »

You could have coded small areas into the code, and run into the problems that were hand-waved away earlier with doing so….

I have answered in previous posts, comprehensively, every objection I have thus far seen levelled at using a geocode. If you would be so good as to either find fault with what I have written or point out a problem I didn’t address then feel free. Because, as it looks to me right now, I’m not the one doing the handwacing.

You could have coded it as an algorithmic geocode, and run into the problem that An Post would have vetoed it.

So let me see if I understand the logic here. If An Post were set on a system that suited them, and only them, and insisted that the system be designed to be as useless as possible to all other entities, the system should be approved because they might veto it? Am I understanding you correctly? Given what Eircode turned out to be the previous rhetoric isn’t so far astray.

….the assertion that there was the possibility to design a code that would have worked perfectly for all applications.

This one really is a strawman. My claim, and to be frank this was reflected in the submissions I read during the consultation process, was that a geocode would give functionality, would be interoperable with existing systems and would serve a wide range of uses across disparate industries as a piece of national infrastructure.

That functionality was thrown out the window for reasons that, at least as far as this thread is concerned, don’t stand up against a monocle of scrutiny.

oscarBravo wrote: »

If your starting point for the design of a postal system is that it should actively work against the interests of the universal service provider for postal delivery, we'll agree to differ.

Any chance for some evidence supporting that assertion?

And that's leaving aside the other problem with a geocode: if you want to use it to group and sort deliveries, you have to convert it to a latitude and longitude and then feed that information into a route optimisation system of some kind.

Do you not see how, if the geocode was an algorithmic conversion from say GPS, that process becomes piss easy? How you could do it without the need for specialised software (I’d be able to do in excel with waypointing for example)?

Do you not also see how, with reference to the comparison with UK postcodes a few pages back, you can infer a substantial amount of information by visual inspection alone?

Do you also see how, by being unable to locate unindexed locations, Eircode functionality is dramatically reduced?

Fun thought experiment. Had a geocode been used then Google Maps would have had support for it the day it launched. That sort of interoperability is crippled with the use of pseudorandom digits. But geocodes are apparently bad and we must take, as an article of faith, that An Post is incapable of using a geocode.

ukoda

Didn't these guys pass a motion to scrap eircode...

https://twitter.com/waterfordcounci/status/627031331298480128

Sam Russell

Does anyone know why Eircode uses a subset of 139 post towns when An Post has over 2,000 such towns? Also, why the delivery districts the routing codes refer to are not contiguous and also so shapeless?

If the routing keys were more numerous and so the districts were smaller, then a lot of criticism would be less strident.

oscarBravo

Bayberry wrote: »

You're the one making the assertions - "the problem that An Post would have vetoed it".

That's a policy issue - and given that one of the reasons for introducing a postcode in the first place was to address open-market issues, it's a policy issue that should have been nailed from the very beginning.

If your starting point for the design of a postal system is that it should actively work against the interests of the universal service provider for postal delivery, we'll agree to differ.

And that's leaving aside the other problem with a geocode: if you want to use it to group and sort deliveries, you have to convert it to a latitude and longitude and then feed that information into a route optimisation system of some kind. There seems to be a vague belief that if you recursively divide the country into a grid of squares, then you can use those squares for sorting and sequencing of deliveries without reference to a road map.

So the geocode gets converted to a lat/long and fed into a further processing step. If only - oh, if only - there was some way to do that with Eircodes.

SpaceTime

Carawaystick wrote: »

If the postman can't check whether the housename on the house matches the housename on the envelope match, I suspect he will be unable to check a numbering system matches.

I'd say there's far more of a chance of accuracy.

Try delivery to an area you're not 100% familar with as a new postman where there are possibly hundreds of houses all close together, all with names and in some cases totally illogical numbers that aren't always displayed.

We even have people doing the name & street thing without any house name !!

So items for "Mrs Murphy" end up at one of 8 other Mrs Murphys

I honestly don't think this is excusable or justifiable - it's shanty town address systems in a developed urban area in Western Europe.

The root cause of this is a legacy of incompetence in how local government and planning was done.

Any competent local authority system would have numbered buildings at planning stage and retrospectively numbered older builds as urban areas developed.

You're looking at a century or more of just nobody being bothered and treating urban areas like rural areas.

I actually get the sense sometimes that an element of Irish administration actually dislikes urbanity and tries to make it look and seem rural.

It's worrying that people can't even see the need for a basic system!

Bayberry

diomed wrote: »

Is there a list of area codes and areas anywhere (the first three digits of the eircode).?

Apparently, that's "commercially sensitive information", not to be released to the likes of you and me!

The information is being crowdsourced herehttp://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057461829.

Bayberry

oscarBravo wrote: »

You could have coded small areas into the code, and run into the problems that were hand-waved away earlier with doing so, as well as still not pleasing Aimead because it doesn't identify every tree in the country. You could have coded it as an algorithmic geocode, and run into the problem that An Post would have vetoed it.

This is what I'm talking about: the assertion that we could have had a better code by solely focusing on whatever aspect of it is important to whomever happens to be complaining about it at the time; the assertion that there was the possibility to design a code that would have worked perfectly for all applications.

You're the one making the assertions - "the problem that An Post would have vetoed it".

That's a policy issue - and given that one of the reasons for introducing a postcode in the first place was to address open-market issues, it's a policy issue that should have been nailed from the very beginning.

It also ignores the fact that An Posts legacy impositions only affect the routing key part of the code - if anything, the random aspect of the 2nd part of the eircode is actually a hindrance to An Post, as neatly outlined in the example above.

It's also ironic that the people who take the attitude "feckit, it'll do" are castigating others for being "typical Irish begrudgers".

diomed

It looks like An Post designed Eircodes to hinder every other organisation.
Am I a cynical old guy?

Sam Russell

Carawaystick wrote: »

If the postman can't check whether the housename on the house matches the housename on the envelope match, I suspect he will be unable to check a numbering system matches.

Well, a postman has the letters sorted into numeric order (most people can do that without prior knowledge) but how do you sort either random house names or random postcodes into order?

You can't!

Trouwe Ier

oscarBravo wrote: »

I strongly sympathise with the desire to have properly-numbered houses on properly-named streets. In Denmark, every road has a name - even rural roads - and every house has a number, and every house has a postal service-approved mailbox at a postal service-approved external location, and every mailbox has the names of the mail recipients, and if any of these things are not the case, the mail just doesn't get delivered, end of.

But this isn't Denmark, and we're not Danish.

In Denmark, people pay for water. They don't cross the street until there's a green man at the signal. They write to the government when they move home, and the government in turn tells the utility companies what their new address is, and informs them who their new GP will be, and which school their children will be attending.

Why do we keep getting Irish solutions? Because we keep creating Irish problems.

I agree with the vast majority of the above but I would state that I lived in Cos. Antrim and Down for a while. Rural roads were named. There were clearly legible road name plates at headlight height (even the bi-lingual ones in South Down were clearly legible) and houses were numbered on rural roads. This wasn't Nordic (or even Nordie) nous: merely common sense. However, Fermanagh rebelled against this logic!

SpaceTime wrote: »

We've even managed to do it in brand new, huge business parks like Sandyford!

Loads of businesses in Sandyford give you an address like

Microsoft
The Atrium Building
Sandyford Industrial Estate
Dublin 18

That's not actually an address, it's a vague description of the fact that you are in one of several hundred buildings in a huge industrial estate.

You need a house number / building number and street name to find anything in any kind of reasonable manner.

We have a situation here which is actually something that commonly faces developing world countries and slums.
I'm not being melodramatic or Ireland bashing here either, it's a major issue that has been resolved in slums and shantytowns where people don't have addresses by using code systems like Eircode (although usually with structure) to deliver to delivery points./[/url]

Agree fully with that. There are similar examples in industrial estates and "business parks" all over the republic. Not great for coming to business meetings. The North Circular Road in Limerick is an absolute disgrace in this regard too. Hundreds upon hundreds of individually named houses with some renamed after change of ownership and some names similar to those of other names on the same road.

diomed wrote: »

The eirocde.ie website is very bland and uninformative.
Is there a list of area codes and areas anywhere (the first three digits of the eircode).?

Try Ossian Smith's web blog on the topic. He is a Green Party Councillor in Dún Laoíghaire Rathdown.

diomed

The eirocde.ie website is very bland and uninformative.
Is there a list of area codes and areas anywhere (the first three digits of the eircode).?

oscarBravo

Bayberry wrote: »

How about the blithe assertion that we could have avoided these problems by putting enough structure into the code that these problems don't arise in the first place?

You could have coded small areas into the code, and run into the problems that were hand-waved away earlier with doing so, as well as still not pleasing Aimead because it doesn't identify every tree in the country. You could have coded it as an algorithmic geocode, and run into the problem that An Post would have vetoed it.

This is what I'm talking about: the assertion that we could have had a better code by solely focusing on whatever aspect of it is important to whomever happens to be complaining about it at the time; the assertion that there was the possibility to design a code that would have worked perfectly for all applications.

It's like the reflexive criticism by the GOP of the nuclear deal with Iran. When asked what deal should have been arrived at, they say "a better one". Well, gee. Thanks for the insight.

Carawaystick

SpaceTime wrote: »

Because there's an individual house name on each envelope, and because of the sheer volume of mail (it's an urban route) the postman gets confused.

I don't think it's actually fair to even blame the postman. It's just a stupid and very broken system caused by decades of nobody taking charge of addressing.

If the postman can't check whether the housename on the house matches the housename on the envelope match, I suspect he will be unable to check a numbering system matches.

Bayberry

oscarBravo wrote: »

I'm also arguing with the blithe assertions that we could easily have avoided all these problems by pretending we're not Irish,

How about the blithe assertion that we could have avoided these problems by putting enough structure into the code that these problems don't arise in the first place?

That's where the comparison to Irish Water and eVoting come in - we could have a better system, but "decisions were made" that mean we have a sub-optimal solution.

The truely Irish aspect of this is that we use the passive voice "decisions were made", and there is nobody responsible for, or held accountable for such decisions.

We had a once off opportunity to get the dogs bollocks of a system, but we ended up with the dogs dinner. And if you're not just a little bit disappointed about that, then you're part of the problem.

oscarBravo

Bayberry wrote: »

In what universe will 4 character random codes will be any more useful to a postman than meaningful house names?

In a universe where the postman learns from experience which random code applies to which house. If mail is being mis-delivered on a street where every house has a name, then either the envelopes don't have the house name displayed on them or the houses don't.

Look, I'm not claiming that Eircode is a panacea for all our problems; I'm arguing with the assertion that it's completely useless. I'm also arguing with the blithe assertions that we could easily have avoided all these problems by pretending we're not Irish, which worked really well when we tried to get people to pay for the water they use.

SpaceTime

We've even managed to do it in brand new, huge business parks like Sandyford!

Loads of businesses in Sandyford give you an address like

Microsoft
The Atrium Building
Sandyford Industrial Estate
Dublin 18

That's not actually an address, it's a vague description of the fact that you are in one of several hundred buildings in a huge industrial estate.

You need a house number / building number and street name to find anything in any kind of reasonable manner.

We have a situation here which is actually something that commonly faces developing world countries and slums.
I'm not being melodramatic or Ireland bashing here either, it's a major issue that has been resolved in slums and shantytowns where people don't have addresses by using code systems like Eircode (although usually with structure) to deliver to delivery points.

Basically what Ireland has rolled out is similar to what has been done in slums in the developing world.
Take a look at this project:

See any similarities?

http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/blog/slums-postal-address-key-opportunity/

Bayberry

SpaceTime wrote: »

The postman gets confused between the 120+ house names on the street and just misdelivers items fairly frequently.

oscarBravo wrote: »

Sounds like a pain in the ass, but why won't Eircodes solve this?

In what universe will 4 character random codes will be any more useful to a postman than meaningful house names?

SpaceTime

The problem occurs in a lot of Irish urban areas for two reasons:

1) Where houses were developed over the decades as one-offs. This happens in quite a few areas. There were no numbers and the sites were sold off over anything up to a couple of centuries and nobody numbered anything.

That's ended up creating a situation where you've hundreds of houses in some areas without any numbering.

The cause of that was nobody ever seems to have had a policy for actually numbering anything. An Post or the City Council (or the old Corporations and P&T) just never bothered to do anything about it and allowed this mess to grow up.

2) Where snobbery has caused people to stop using numbers. In this case, An Post should simply leave the mail for collection in the post office as it's deliberately undermining an existing functional system.

If you want to keep a house name, there's no reason why you can't just append a street number

Joe Blogs
'Boardsieville'
12 Main Street
Fake City

---

Ireland can do things very systematically when it wants to, the issue I think is that you're looking at the two most chaotic relics of Irish public service:

The Post Office and local government.

There is a bit of a weird "Ah sure everyone knows" kind of attitude in Ireland though, even in big urban areas like Dublin and Cork.

For example: In Dublin, there's often absolutely no direction signage for suburbs / areas because "ah sure you all know where Raheny or Stillorgan is"

In most countries, you'd have direction signs for them and also a clear indication of where the suburb starts with a "Stillorgan" marked on the main roads into the area, and "Stillorgan" crossed out when you left again.

We're historically really bad at signage and treat everything form the point of view of someone who lives in the locality.

I honestly think it's part of the island / parochial mentality that exists in Ireland rather a lot more than we care to admit.

oscarBravo

I strongly sympathise with the desire to have properly-numbered houses on properly-named streets. In Denmark, every road has a name - even rural roads - and every house has a number, and every house has a postal service-approved mailbox at a postal service-approved external location, and every mailbox has the names of the mail recipients, and if any of these things are not the case, the mail just doesn't get delivered, end of.

But this isn't Denmark, and we're not Danish.

In Denmark, people pay for water. They don't cross the street until there's a green man at the signal. They write to the government when they move home, and the government in turn tells the utility companies what their new address is, and informs them who their new GP will be, and which school their children will be attending.

Why do we keep getting Irish solutions? Because we keep creating Irish problems.

SpaceTime

oscarBravo wrote: »

Sounds like a pain in the ass, but why won't Eircodes solve this?

Because there's an individual house name on each envelope, and because of the sheer volume of mail (it's an urban route) the postman gets confused.

I don't see how having a non-sequential code on the end of each letter will make anything any better than house names (which we already have).

The problem is he isn't able to easily recognise which letter goes to which house as there's no system.

Eircode's grand if it was to distinguish 3 or 4 houses on some rural road somewhere, but there could easily be 120-200 named houses on this route, all next to eachother all built as on-offs over the decades.

I can't really see how eircode would make any difference, as it doesn't provide him with any ability to locally sort the mail for the route so that it's easily ordered and delivered.

It's grand for one-off courier deliveries, or really rural areas, but in an urban area it's next to impossible for someone to decipher codes like that while walking along the street with hundreds of items of mail.

At least most of the house names are actually displayed on the gates, but not all are.

In a sane system, those houses would all be numbered and the postman could easily identify which one was which.

If our usual guy is off sick, or on holidays the whole thing goes crazy and we end up getting maybe half the letters through the letterbox for the wrong house some morning.

It's absolutely unacceptable.

Our problem isn't lack of directions to the house, or lack of a structured address or unique address. It's lack of a logical sequence that the postman can actually follow to deliver mail based on what's written on the envelope.

An Post have no issue sorting to our area.

House Name
Street
Bigger Street
Suburb
Cork

The mail is pre-delivered to a locked box on the street where the postman picks it up in the morning and that's the point where the difficulty arrises for us and this will not solve it.

Actually, no postal code could solve it because it's not a sorting or routing problem.

The issue is the addressing is complete chaos at a local level and a concept of 19th century rural addressing which is suitable for a few houses has been applied in a dense urban area with hundreds of houses.

I don't think it's actually fair to even blame the postman. It's just a stupid and very broken system caused by decades of nobody taking charge of addressing.

oscarBravo

SpaceTime wrote: »

Well, for example in my area, about 10% of my post is continuously mixed up because there are no numbers.

We've missed penalty point notifications (ended up in court case), bank cards, certificates, bills, medical appointments etc.

The postman gets confused between the 120+ house names on the street and just misdelivers items fairly frequently.

The neighbours aren't very neighbourly and won't redeliver them.

One neighbour actually told me she just puts them in the bin now because she couldn't be bothered dealing with them. I asked her if she had any of my post and that's the answer I got!

Sounds like a pain in the ass, but why won't Eircodes solve this?

SpaceTime

oscarBravo wrote: »

Why?

Well, for example in my area, about 10% of my post is continuously mixed up because there are no numbers.

We've missed penalty point notifications (ended up in court case where the judge actually argued the point and claimed that the person involved with lying!), bank cards, certificates, bills, medical appointments etc.

I had TWO driving licences not show up and the NDLS were actually starting to doubt me at that stage.

The postman gets confused between the 120+ house names on the street and just misdelivers items fairly frequently.

The neighbours aren't very neighbourly and won't redeliver them.

One neighbour actually told me she just puts them in the bin now because she couldn't be bothered dealing with them. I asked her if she had any of my post and that's the answer I got!

She said one or two items occasionally is one thing, but she wasn't going to be making trips to the postbox or walking down the street with someone else's post.

The end result is I can't trust that my postal service works. I have no idea if items posted will get to me and I have to get all important items delivered to work or to parcel motel.

In 2015, in a developed country, that is absolutely insane.

MBSnr

sesswhat wrote: »

You can resize your desktop browser window and the Directions button will appear below a certain width value.

Thanks! I also noticed (others may have too) that with a few clicks you can get the GPS location from the Google maps desktop sent to your android device for navigation.

1. Eircode Finder - resize window to get directions link (Turn off adblockplus as it blocks the buttons)

2. Click directions and you'll get the red pointer on the map - but there's no means of sending it to the device (like you can with place names).

3. So right click the map just right next to red pointer and select 'What's here?' A box appears in google maps top left - says unnamed road or road name/area. Click the name (not the GPS numbers!) and there listed is the 'Send to device' link.

4. Choose your device from the drop down menu (They are sometimes named differently than you expect).

oscarBravo

SpaceTime wrote: »

The one thing it doesn't fix and no postcode could fix is the lack of house numbering.

That absolutely still needs to be dealt with.

Why?

SpaceTime

The one thing it doesn't fix and no postcode could fix is the lack of house numbering.

That absolutely still needs to be dealt with.

I can't see why An Post can't simply be mandated to just number buildings 1,2,3,4..

It's not rocket science!

It needs to be done where there are no numbers at all or chaotic crazy ad hoc numbering where it makes no sense.

oscarBravo

Aimead wrote: »

With all due respect, but isn’t it somewhat disingenuous to refer to the huge array of functionality that a geocode brings by default in the manner you have above?

Actually, that question is disingenuous: it implies that none of the functionality of a geocode is present in an Eircode.

Look at how wide-ranging the use for GPS is for example. Trying to insinuate that this massive range of functionality is, somehow, a few unusual use-cases is a litte bit dishonest imo.

Phone numbers and email addresses have wide-ranging uses too.

You're basically arguing as if Eircode was just supposed to be a location code, and complaining that it's not a better location code. It wasn't designed to be a "locate anything" code; it was designed to be a postal code. It happens to be able to precisely locate postal addresses, because that's what it was designed to do, as a solution to our vast non-unique address problem, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a postal code, not a location code.

So, no: Eircodes don't do everything that geocodes can do. They can't do everything that email addresses can do either. That doesn't mean that Eircodes are an eVotingesque disaster, just because they can't be used for email delivery.

Can you tell us all what disadvantage An Post would have had with a geocode? Is them mapping a geocode to their routing areas too insurmountable?

That question is the very definition of disingenuous.

You're basically saying that Eircodes aren't a good match for your business model, therefore they're a disaster; but if Eircodes weren't a good match for An Post's business model, they'd just have to suck it up and change their business model to suit.

Let’s be blunt here – Eircode is entirely based on An Post’s system. Why is that such a good thing given a simple parser would have done the conversion from a geocode? I was under the impression this was supposed to be a national postcode and not ‘An PostCode’.

Only in Ireland could people possibly get their knickers in a twist over the idea that a postcode system would be designed to facilitate the national postal service.

"We need to design a postcode. What are the main priorities?"

"Well, first and foremost we need to design it in such a way that it makes life as difficult as possible for the national postal service. That ought to facilitate rapid adoption."