Re: postal code --> riding
Posted by
Christopher D. Ritter on
Sep 13, 2008; 3:54pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/postal-code-riding-tp1211p1216.html
I wonder if this might be of any help?
http://www.geonames.org/On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Daniel Haran
<[hidden email]> wrote:
On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 9:57 AM, Jennifer Bell <
[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> It seems the API I mentioned before for postal code to riding lookups may charge fees for use of their API... Which is fair enough, since they paid for it.
Which is why that approach is limited in the long-term (not saying
it's a bad idea, especially if it raises awareness about the need for
fundamental change here).
> This gave me an idea: one way of getting past the (astounding) postal code to riding $3K cost is to create a paralell data set by collecting input from users.
>
> A website could say: You are the first person from that postal code to use our site. Please use one of these services [list] to look up your riding, and enter the name below. (There would also have to be a mechanism for reporting incorrect ridings.) The resulting data set would then be owned by the website who could re-distribute it as they choose (eg. for free).
>
> Does anyone see any problems with this? Has it been tried before?
Problems? Yes. Postal codes that change all the damned time, and over
800k of them.
There are other ways to hack around the problem - the address
verification data from Canada Post is cheaper than the postal code ->
EDID file. Since we have EDID polygons, we could probably hack around
it (though probably fall afoul of their copyright terms for that,
unless it were somehow decoupled ;)
What's the status of lobbying on this issue? It is high time we took
it if they haven't answered our calls. I would scrape it if someone
were to use it.
Daniel.
PS: Is anyone else annoyed we're *still* talking about this file?
--
Christopher D. Ritter
User Experience Designer
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