[OSM-talk] Free the postcode maps

[Andy Robinson]

In a cruder way this is what I am doing in Birmingham. The Base postal code
is on most street signs here too so I snap with the camera and when I name
the road the segment (or more likely way) gets tagged with the postal_code
key. I did look at getting a gps reference for the sign position but by car
or bike its not that practical to get to the sign for the gps and then move
away for the photo so now I just snap.

Cheers

Andy

Andy Robinson
Andy_J_Robinson at blueyonder.co.uk 

>-----Original Message-----
>From: talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org [mailto:talk-
>bounces at openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Ben Gimpert
>Sent: 05 July 2006 09:12
>To: talk at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Free the postcode maps
>
>On Tue,  4 Jul 06 @05:11pm, Tom Carden wrote:
>> On 04/07/06, Simon Hewison <simon at zymurgy.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >Talking of which, has anyone thought of asking our friends at eCourier
>if
>> >they can help? I mean, they probably already have the postcode of a
>pick-up
>> >and a delivery, and their GPS traces should pass those locations, with a
>> >stop of at least a minute.
>>
>> Yes, we asked them (and about street data that their users had
>> entered).  They said no :(
>>
>> Obviously I don't speak for eCourier here, but if I recall correctly
>> (without violating my NDA!) the problem was that they would probably
>> be violating the terms of their geocoder license. In essence they'd be
>> caching the location it gave them plus a bit of random noise added by
>> actually visiting the location... I know that sounds silly but that's
>> how it is. It's not totally out of the question, but they weren't
>> willing to risk it.
>
>This same meeting was the start of my yearnings for a spare 100k to
>bribe... err, "hire" a few couriers to carry a cheap digital camera for
>a week, snapping photos of the street sign nearest every delivery
>location.  (This gets around Mr. Sheldon's "office address vs. loading
>dock" address problem.)
>
>And then as a one-off job, we OCR these photos en' masse and use the GPS
>traces to get a coordinate for each street sign.  In much of London at
>least, each of these photos would contain full street name *and* the
>base postcode.  Yes, we'll get an astronomical error rate from bad
>lighting, fuzzy camera focus, laziness -- but I argue that courier
>redundancy could give us an excellent base for free London geocoding.
>
>We'd need buy-in from the courier's mother company, since their
>deliveries would be *slightly* slower that week.  (Hence, the bribe.)
>But most importantly, this process would leave aside the issue of
>potentially-infringing the geocoder.
>
>		Anyone an angel?
>		Ben
>
>
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