[CivicAccess-discuss] postal code --> riding

[Christopher D. Ritter]

I wonder if this might be of any help?

http://www.geonames.org/

On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Daniel Haran <chebuctonian at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 9:57 AM, Jennifer Bell <jenniferlianne at yahoo.ca>
> 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?
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-- 
Christopher D. Ritter
User Experience Designer
christopherritter at gmail.com

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