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

Call me a stick in the mud...

[ackthpt]

Phoo. 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.

If they really wanted to simplify postal coding/addressing they'd do something first about these damn addresses for people in South Korea, and a few other countries, which are like a whole paragraph long! Ever have to fill out those little customs forms? Yeah, you know how fun that can be.

Idealists are more trouble to logistics than would be required to just take them out back and drown them it a bucket of water.

"Hey, isn't that a quarter in that bucket?"

Besides, strong initial resistance to this plan, there's probably some disingenuous patent and royalty speculation riding on this.

Hmm, maybe...

[FroMan]

Based on latitude and longitude, the NAC system can represent an area the size of a province using two alphanumeric characters. A "universal address" with six characters will narrow down a search to an area measuring one square kilometre. With 10 characters, it can represent a specific area measuring one square metre.

Wow, they want to reinvent latitude/longitude (sp?).

I have an idea, lets make this round thing and poke another round hole in the center. Then take this stick and put it through the hole. We'll call it a wheel.

Anyone with a globe can understand lat/long, why not fly with that if you think country codes and addresses don't work well enough. No sense in reinventing the wheel here.

Check Bit

[marklyon]

I'm thinking there is going to need to be a verification digit in there as well.

It'd be quite easy for me to accidentally get an invalid character in there, and without a quick way to verify the authenticity of the string, it's likely there will be a lot of misrouted shipments.

And removing any letters that have similar sounds to other letters would be a good idea. And o, so it's not confused with 0.

Re:Too complicated for 99% of mail

[Lee Horrocks]

Funny, other countries (like Canada) manage to use letters in their postal codes & have automated mail sorting equipment too...

Of course, to be fair, Canadian Postal codes don't use several letters, including IJO & Q.

My dream (Unique Post Codes)

[PhoenixOne]

I move around a lot. My dream would be to have a unique post code for each person. The post office could keep this number in a database and, if anybody wanted to reach you, they would just have to write your name and number and it would be sent to your current address. I would even pay to have this happen. I'm just tired of filling out forms and having people send me stuff at addresses that I haven't lived in for years...

just pick a standard address format

[73939133]

I think it would be sufficient if countries could adopt a common address format; what goes into it is less important. This could look like:

John Smith
country specific
country specific
US-CA-94111

Johann Schmidt
country specific
country specific
DE-11101B

Haruo Tanaka
country specific
country specific
JP-999X763

That is, the ZIP code is always at the bottom, and it begins with the two letter ISO country identifier. The stuff after the dash is country specific.

That way, each country can keep whatever codes they are using and that work for their local setup, but postal sorting equipment can be standardized.

GPS-based ZIP-codes, on the other hand, seem pretty pointless. If you really want to get a ZIP code from a location, a web site can translate GPS addresses into zip codes if you like.