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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."
It will now be possible to have your snail mail crash on you. Imagine opening up your mailbox and getting a BSOD. And naturally Microsoft will sell your snail address to the spammers, so you'll get about 50 junk mails per day. And a robotic Spam Assassin is a lot more expensive than its free software counterpart. Who thought this was a good idea anyway - Bill Gates, or maybe some of the other spammers?
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Try remembering that one. I'm happy with five numbers. Atleast I can make some sort of memory device of that.
With Microsoft in control of the system, Finland will mysteriously disappear from all the routing systems...
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Why new postal codes at all? With cheap GPS, why not just start using longitude and latitude?
Which means that as a New Jersey resident, my postal code would be:
5h1+h0l3
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Nice thought... but its like the metric system. Who will want to change what they have known for many a lifetime.
I know my 60 year old dad who does carpentry will never learn the metric system, even though it would be easier, why would he, or the millions like him want to learn a new addressing scheme?
It's the war of the l33t-5cript kidd13s, and I fear they may be winning.
The only complaints I've seen about alphanumeric codes have been about the difficulty remembering them: I can't say they're much worse than US zip codes.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
From the poster:
From the article:
Um, is that encrypted? Simpler than what? An IPv6 address?
Oh, simpler for everyone except us those who aren't in the postal and geographic industries.
I suppose that will mean Santa Claus' Postal Code will change from the current form:
:(
H0H 0H0
And thats too bad
Is there something wrong with the current system? Why not let individual countries decide how they want to have their addresses represented?
For example, NAC Geographic Products' address in Toronto would be 8CNB5 Q8Z4R.
Granted, this is only one more digit than a "zip+4" here in the USA, but mixing letters in there is going to be a disaster for the postal service. Their OCR has a hard enough time with decoding zip codes. Now they have to figure out the difference between a Q and a zero. I hope this system is smart enough NOT to implement "O," "S," and "Z" as letters.
Besides, most mail is local. It's like dialing the country code and area code just to order a pizza.
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...").
thank god.... from a developer standpoint having to have 'n' different database table entries for all the countries you support is a pain in the ass...
I can't wait for Universal Location Codes v6.
With 1.8e4806 possible locations, it will be worth everyone memorizing a simple 2Meg file.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
Some of the software we have now is too stubborn to let you enter anything else than a 5-digit zip code.
Somebody will have to convert all these fields to normal strings...
(though I do hope whatever system is chosen won't make use of both "0" and "O", or both "1" and "l" - let's 1earn something from 0ur mistakes).
With 10 characters, it can represent a specific area measuring one square metre. The proposed 10-digit universal address could be used for both homes and businesses.
I don't even like people knowing what side of a street I'm on from my current postal code.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
mappoint.com?
I just tried it with my address and got this:
- Maps & Directions
You have reached a page that is experiencing problems or a location where a page does not exist.
Try again later or visit our home page at maps.msn.com or maps.msn.co.uk
Great choice in location service providers.
Microsoft rules.
Stop at #9 IRQL_NOT_GREATER_OR_EQUAL Lane. Look for the blue mailbox.
Let's not forget to use an "E" prefix, so that when we move to Mars or the Moon, then we can start using "M" and... oh... wait a second.
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.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Having Microsoft power an address system that would let the BSA, RIAA, MPAA (or others) pinpoint the computer with the "unauthorized" copies of software, MP3s or DVDs on it does not make me feel comfortable.
...., and is located at coordinates 7XCD5 3RE66."
...., and is located at coordinates 7XCD5 3RE66."
Can you imagine the chip that has a GPS receiver and that can translate into this adressing system?
CHIP: "Dear BSA - Computer Serial Number 123456789 has the following software
"Dear Ms. Rosen - Computer Serial Number 123456789 has the following MP3s
Etc.
John
"The plural of anecdote is not data."
...its called a 10 figure grid reference, and is accurate down to square meter.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
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.
Expect Microsoft to add hooks into your Address Book (so you can easily print envelopes with the correct zip code, of course). Then the next Outlook Macro virus with send junk paper mail to everyone in your address book. Once it is also integrated with eStamp, all hell will break loose. Your postal carrier will shoot you when he/she finds 1.3 million outgoing letters in your mailbox.
well... maybe some readers have never been to New Jersey, and now they've learned something!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
1 - Will the zipcode format change every odd years each time M$ feels like doing an upgrade ? with the current "non-universal" postal system, there are people who get mails and postcards delivered sometimes decades after they've been sent. Will posters senders get "can't resolve address" return mails if their postcards isn't delivered in time ?
2 - How much dya bet you'd have to use those longish cryptic zipcodes as registration keys in future Microsoft products ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
-- Mark Lyon http://www.marklyon.org
This will never get adopted, since it is both unworkable and unnecessary.
It's unworkable, because, in the case of U.S. Zip Codes, the current codes are tied to post offices and carrier routes, which don't necessarily subdivide neatly into equally-sized geographic areas. Tying postal codes to arbitrary geographic regions would be a step backwards.
But it's also unnecessary. Why force each postal system to adopt a uniform coding scheme? Why not let them keep their coding schemes and append a country code to the front.
This works for phone numbers: Each national phone system need not have the same number of digits in their phone numbers. They simply need a unique country code.
. . . or global? Are we sending letters to Alpha Centauri now?
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
The DMV? Sounds pretty silly to me. With electronic bill paying and e-mail, I figure in another year or two I'm going to rip my mailbox out of the ground and be done with it. When they change zip codes in relatively small areas to add a post office, it's a nightmare for all the businesses and individuals that have to inform all their contacts, re-print stationery, new signage... imaging the cost involved in doing it on a global scale. You could probably feed a small third-world country for a year on what it would cost UPS alone. If you're going to go to that trouble and expense, replace the system with something more efficient that will have a good ROI, instead of just tweaking what already works. Or better yet, just wait for technology to make it irrelevant - someone mentioned just using longitude and latitude - if you're going to use mapping software anyhow, why not do that and then you wouldn't even need the address anymore.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
...could change all postal codes in the world to a simpler, more universal format.
What's that sound?
It's the sound of millions of database application programmers screaming in agony.
The Normalization Monkey says, "Who's laughing now! Bwahahaha!"
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
"This letter can only be opened in Microsoft Windows-enabled homes"
Based on latitude and longitude, the NAC system can represent an area the size of a province using two alphanumeric characters.
That's a bummer for gypsies. Maybe there should be a service equivalent to dyndns for them, so they can upgrade their own postcodes themselves on the move ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Before we get completely bogged down by the ever-increasing number of often conflicting "standards", we need to adopt a "Standard Standard". That is to say, a standard which standardizes the standardization of standards. The first self-referential standard in this meta standard must say, of course, that "Standard Standard" is the standard standard standard. Anyone who implements this standard standard will immediately realize huge profits corresponding to the savings accrued by eliminating the standard duplication of standards which has become the standard.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Not to be picky, but who is going to choose where the "origin" or the "root" of this system lies? Do we really want to give Microsoft the honour of 0000AAAA or whatever? I could really do without being referenced with respect to their location.
Imagine the fun if someone could get into that system and readjust the root so the origin is at, oh I don't know, Calcutta. The world's whole mail would end up in the wrong place.
Also, what happens for blocks of flats (or, more generally, seperate entities which happen to overlap the same 1m^2 resolution of the addressing-space)?
Last but not least: when I go to the post-office to send a package, the cashier looks at the bottom line of the address and automatically knows which country I'm sending it to. Isn't that something worth preserving rather than making the poor fellow type in the relevant co-ordinates to an Internet-enabled Windows XP Geographic Edition PC, skirting his way past a couple of BSODs, and figuring out I'm sending the damned thing to all of 12 miles to the centre of town?
And don't forget that if your PC isn't Palladium-compatible, it won't be able to print addresses on envelopes!
"Place me in the company of those who seek Truth, but deliver me from those who believe to have found it."
Since 70% of the postal codes will be in the middle of the ocean, I can't wait to send out snail mail to random addresses. "Return to sender: no creature with opposable thumbs was available to sign for delivery. Try back in 3 billion years."
Actually, zip codes are still kinda new. They started when your dad was 20: July 1st, 1963, and not mandatory for 2nd & 3rd class mailers until 4 years later. So, it's been in use for only 40 of the post office's 228 years of existence.
Not to nitpick, but how could someone know something for "many a lifetime"? It's a cool idea, and I'd love to be able to implement it!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
People don't like codes. We like logical names. Few surf the net using IP numbers, most use litteral urls. If I write a letter, I want to be able to figure out the adress from what I know of the recipient.
The postal office on the other hand, would probably go for this as it would reduce the time and cost to handle a letter or a package. Even if it is by a second/letter, it will make a big difference. However, unless they seriously reduce the postage, I'm never gona spend time looking up weird codes, they'll have to do that themselves.
Now, all this is very interesting, but personally, I do hope that snailmail will go away and be (for most things) replaced by electronic mail, which is faster, cheaper, healthier for the environment and, used correctly, more secure too.
The last paragraph alludes to this scheme, with its 1 meter resolution, completely replacing a mailing address. But how would it handle PO Boxes, which can have a density of > 1 per sq. meter? Or how about a suite in an office building (where you might want the address to be a mail room, not your office's front door)?
Otherwise, sounds like a clever idea that I'm pretty sure will never take off, for reasons of varying 'legitimacy' (perhaps too hard to remember/resistance to change/the mark of the beast crowd).
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
That is a good point. However, more than 7 digits is unavoidable now. With alphanumerics (10 numerals + 26 roman letters - 4 confusable letters = 32):
32^7=3.4e10, aka 34 billion codes. And there are already 6 billion PEOPLE on the globe, and growing. Never mind locations. It just won't cut it.
10^10= 1e10, aka 10 billion, aka phone w/area code. Also won't cut it.
32^10=1.1e15. Plenty.
The trick is that the digits at the front will be easy to remember because they are more likely to be be repeated amongst the addresses you want to know, since you'll be conducting business locally for the most part.
Also, having more numerals than the regular 10 is unlikely to cause problems. Humans are much better at pattern matching and remembering than with sequences.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
How about the same for phone numbers also?
Anyone else like the idea of permanent (more or less) phone numbers that follow you no matter where you live? Some talk of doing that in the US to cut down on the quantity of phone numbers that are kept out of rotation everytime somebody moves and gets a replacement phone number.
How would you feel becoming obsolete?
Achille Talon
Hop!
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...
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
According to the article, each zip code will cover about 1 square km. This is almost useless
in the world's densest cities. 30,000 - 80,000 people/km^2 is quite common - New york's lower east side had 170k/km^2 in 1905; Cairo peak at 109k/km^2, and Hong Kong had almost 2 million people per square kilometer*!!
Hopefully, the system will be divisional based on local population density -- like zip codes are now . But if it is, then it will be neither simple (no GPS/zip translation), or it will be of variable length, and/or it will change over time as areas get denser and need redivision (like phone area codes)
* ok, that was a special case of 50k people living in a 0.03km^2 walled city.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
This is old news... to check compatibility between Outlook and the USPS, Microsoft started beta testing sending virii through snail mail a short while back.
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
Simply put, I do not want a microsoft product ruling my snail mail. Cool idea, but getting it past the postmaster general would be a neat trick. I do not know too much about the post in other countries, but in the US, the zip code works just fine. I do not forsee the time or budget of many coutries laboring to put into effect a whole new sorting system. There would be no more 90210!
Wouldn't it be expensive to re-make all the street signs? Instead of 123 Anywhere Drive there'd be 12AR13 coded blocks and that only really makes sense if everything is layed out in a grid... who wants to have a GPS map *required* just to find out how to get from point A to point B?
I can't believe no one has thought why this is doomed to fail. Not invented here? Won't be used here. Same for that silly French metric system.
If we always adopted new ways of doing things we wouldn't be typing at QWERTY-style keyboards anymore. Afterall, QWERTY was designed to slow down too-fast typists on a typewriter, none of us have to worry about hammers jamming on our computers. But the costs and annoyance of having to disrupt QWERTY's installed base is enough to justify not replacing the existing standard. Just because they built this doesn't mean anybody's gonna come.
What they have completely forgotten is that the current ZIP code system does not represent the actual lattitude/logitude position of the city or town, but instead the main routing office that the letter needs to get to, and then the sub-office it should be routed to from there to reach the route that this letter needs to be on. The +4 extention tells in which route it needs to be placed, and where the postman encounters the address within that route... Any relationship between ZIP Codes and GPS coordinates are purely coinsidental, and the numbers might seem completely random to an outsider, but it makes perfect since to the people who run the postal system. They've got no reason to break their already set up system to go to this... the ZIP code is more useful to them.
Come on... all NAC has really invented here is a base-36 expression of the same latitude and longitude numbers that we've been measuring in degrees, hours, minutes, and seconds, and they've come to the stunning conclusion that their system specifies the same location in fewer characters... duh. No stunning breakthrough here, just marketing hype.
1. Propose new addressing scheme.
2. ??????
3. Profit!
The original article says that the system is based on lattitude and longitude.
So, should you live in L.A. your code might be "xxxxx xxxxx", but AFTER the next earth quake, your code would change to "xyxxx xxxxx".
Not very practical if you ask me ;-)
So, it's obviously a genius idea to incorporate the two!
Do I smell an all new, sub-par pseudo monopoly?
Yay!
*A Life Without Compromise*
Ignoring all the other potential problems that have been pointed out, how does this system address P.O. Boxes, or high rise appartment buildings, both of which have multiple (Possibly hundreds) of distinct addresses in single 2-d square meter locations? It mentioned the potential for a z-axis indicator, but that would still not answer the problem of P.O. Boxes, especially if the post office was at the bottom of a high rise...
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
Like the other posters, I'm thinking, why use some proprietary system instead of universally-recognized latitude and longitude coordinates (with maybe an elevation, too)?
But I'm thinking that latitude and longitude might not be the most efficient way to tesselate the surface of a sphere. Think of all the useless precision you'll waste near the poles where nobody lives - the lattitude coordinates kept to within one second of arc or better will, near the poles, come down to microns of accuracy just to compensate for the need for azimuthal location precision of a meter or so near the Earth's equator.
Isn't there some way to divide the surface up like the patches on a football/soccerball/volleyball that would enable less waste of precision?
[Think of descending a graph where the assumed root node is the whole earth's surface and the major patches might be the pentagonal regions that form a dodecahedron, the next node some way of subdividing each pentagon further, etc.]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
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.
Make a right on 3HG6T and travel for about half a mile, then left at the Texaco station, a right onto 9Y7FG and then a quick left onto H7RWW, we're the yellow house on the left. Just look for the 6 ft sign on the house that says H7RWW BP9YT...
Although considering all the letters, most people might be talking with the military-like phonetic alphabet
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
A good system would have the following criteria:
a) It would avoid OCR errors and verbal transcription errors by not using any two alphanums that look or sound alike. So yes, B, C, D, E, G, P, T, V all mean the same thing (sound-alike), as do 0 and O, 1 and L, 5 and S and so on. Yes, that makes the strings a lot longer
b) Instead of trying to code GPS into this space, sell aliases. Let me pick any alias that maps to my address, and have companies escrow the mapping from them to GPS or street address. My address should be "Brad's House Here" or something like that.
c) When doing the above, each name must have characters added to it which perform an ECC function, so you can detect and correct any transposition or character totally wrong. For some that will mean they pick a nice string and add something random to it. Clever people will find words that meet the ECC test.
d) This way, if I move, my postal address stays the same. And I can register for a global do not mail list.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Frankly, I've always been in favor of each individual receiving their own postal code. Put on your Big Brother Blinders though, because said code would be updated in a federally operated database that would map your postal code to a mailing address. That way, all mail sent to you goes to your postal code. Need to move? Tell USPS and the update takes place within a day or so and no need to notify anyone who sends you anything.
In addition, rather than having to worry about someone being able to "find you" because you have to put your physical address in circulation, unless they have access to the USPSDB, they won't be able to map your postal code to your physical location.
Not as a challenge or anything, but I've yet to see a reason why such a system would be bad.
John Doe
15 Schlotzky Blvd
Mudville, AZ 12345
USA
Earth, Sol, Milky Way
Now THIS is universal. :) This shoud work for a while, until we have to start specifying which of the universes we really mean. Then, I guess, we'd have to add another line:
The-One-With-The-Evil-Spock
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
I mean, in countries like Japan (where I am atm) or China, that don't have street names or coherent organization of the codes, this could make life easier. At least maybe then the post guys will finally deliver my mail in my mail box, and not in some random foreigner resident's box that lives 3 blocks away...
now, on the matter of having miscrosoft managing all this... HELLLLOOOO ?! what about a postal code that can help tracing what software I bought and what computer I am using and other Big Brother kinda things while they are at it ?
I am all for a more standard way of labelling addresses, but it has to be done by an independant organization, not an omni-present company that would bombard me with spam about their new Windows XTreme.
Music is the language of the heart, the sound of the soul. -Joe Satriani
Pity the areas that get assigned the lousy addresses. "My address is ISUCK ROCKS." This could lead to instant craziness in real estate.
"LINUX SUCKS" -- Small plot of land in western Oklahoma purchased by an unknown company in Redmond.
"LINUX RULEZ" -- Nearby plot of land purchased by a short guy in a tuxedo.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
The postcode doesn't describe a geographic location so much as a route. The bits of the postcode variously describe the main sorting office, the postal area the mail should go to - which is effectively a mail van route - and then the final part of the postcode sorts in the order that a postman would walk it (piecewise, anyway). Individual postcodes here describe only a handful of premises, unlike in the states where I understand its more like 50 on average.
By doing it this way it becomes possible to sort mail efficiently for delivery using just the postcode.
Ignoring for the moment that UK GIS systems also use other references (UPRN, TOID, PAF ref, grid ref) it would seem that retooling for this new system is all cost and no benefit - except to the company selling that data.
Or alternatively - film the event and send it to jackass so we can all laugh histerically as you get publicly debagged by Miffed Welshmen/Irishmen or Scotts..
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