Universal Alphanumeric Postal Code Proposed

Meshach writes "An article in the Globe and Mail is discussing a possible change to the way postal codes are assigned over the world. NAC Geographic Products will be using Microsoft's MapPoint to power their Mobile Location-Based Services Network, which could change all postal codes in the world to a simpler, more universal format."

Comments

Complex Codes!

[krisp]

For example, NAC Geographic Products' address in Toronto would be 8CNB5 Q8Z4R.

Try remembering that one. I'm happy with five numbers. Atleast I can make some sort of memory device of that.

Re:Complex Codes!

[Hentai]

Not at all.

My city name is not conceptually grasped as seven characters; it is a single mimetic construct. Humans have a much easier time identifying with the name of a place than they do with a random string of letters and numbers. "Phoenix, Arizona" means something more than a physical location in space. It's a community. It's the warmth of the sun at my back. It's the image of Scottsdale, panning wide with dust-tan gravel and bounding jackrabbits. It's the two jutting masses of high-rises on either side of the I-10. It's six dozen hole-in-a-wall dance clubs. It's open skies, painfully blue and clear at six in the morning; it's raging thunderstorms on an August afternoon, with whole pepper trees sailing down the road at 50 miles an hour. My mind recalls all these things, and each of them reinforces the neural pathway that says "Phoenix". What do your ten letters and numbers mean, sir? What memories do they offer? What emotions do they evoke?

Yeah, that'll work

[ebh]

Simplification: Trinity College moves from Dublin 2 to Dublin 1BF45S8I0A.

Precision: Swap two digits and your letter to Grandma ends up Beyond Rangoon.

Availability: MS owns the postal system. Can't wait to see the EULA ("By licking this stamp...").

They've had this in the military for ages....

[los furtive]

...its called a 10 figure grid reference, and is accurate down to square meter.

Rubbish.

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

The purpose of a postal code is to provide an encoding system that allows the postal distribution network to route mail first between hubs, then down to a local sorting office, and finally into a postman's walk number.

The purpose is not to locate point X on a sphere, we already have a perfectly adequate global coordinate system for that.

Re:Call me a stick in the mud...

[FreeLinux]

Why not just use one of the GPS systems. The problem with oversimplifying like this (as idealists tend to do) is they rarely reflect the reality of actual routing, like, "Gee, it's only 12 miles 'as the crow flies'", yet the route in question winds all over the place.

The real answer is that GPS wouldn't make any money for NAC Geographic Products, whereas this proprietary system would, through licensing to various governments around the world.

But, the fact of the matter is that the U.S. Postal Service likes its system just fine and will not change it to someone elses liking. Kinda like the metric system. Even if the new system is better. The same is true for the Royal Mail. We already saw how quick England was to jump on the EC bandwagon and adopt the Euro. Indeed far too many countries will be unwilling to change for this system to go global.

I'd have to sayto NAC Geographic Products; nice try but, no money for you.

Re:GPS

[harrkev]

Why new postal codes at all? With cheap GPS, why not just start using longitude and latitude?

It gets better!

Let's say that you wanted to narrow things down to approximately 1-mile. 1-mile is approx 1 minute (1/60 of one degree) of longitude.

360 degrees * 60 minutes = 21600 different minutes on the face of the earth.

26 letters plus 10 numbers = 36! Subtract "confusables" (I, O, S, Z) -- 32 possible characters! 32^3 = 32768! The number of character combinations is greater than the number of minutes in one direction. It is a simple math exercise to create a base-32 numbering system and to enumerate all possible minute/second combinations.

Therefore, three characters can represent your latitude to the nearest mile (give or take), and another three characters for your longitude! A new universal six-digit zip code!

And all of this in 5 minutes with a simple calculator! What is the big deal? Devising a system such as this is trivial. Getting people to use it is the hard part.