GeoDjango and the UK postcode database. Excellent introduction to GeoDjango using the recently leaked UK postcode database. Obviously, you should only follow the steps in this tutorial using the officially licensed database, available for a mere £1,700.
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1,700 GPB to get access to postal codes? WHY?
Anyways, I agree: Fantastic introduction. I've been wanting to play with GeoDjango for some time now, and this is what got me over the edge.
I wish there were more real-estate sites embracing geo-features.. E.g. the largest site for renting/purchasing homes in Norway, FINN (="find" in English), should allow me to filter based on central locations. I want to be able to say: "Show me apartments within [5,10,15,20,30,60] minutes walking distance from [The Norwegian Castle, Oslo Central Station, etc..].
GeoDjango would make this as easy as pie.
Yes, it's a wondeful article about using GeoDjango!
london - 1st October 2009 08:24 - #
Just a quick point, why should the database be free or have been leaked? It must cost some money to be maintained, why should that burden fall on the UK tax payer rather than on those who will make use of the database?
Ben,
There is one cost to maintaining the DB, while the fees collected from usage licensing vary depending on the market.
I dunno how UK copyright works, but in my mind, an authoritative data source is better than piecemeal knockoffs, and the government shouldn't profit my enforcing a monopoly on accurate data.
Jeremy Dunck - 1st October 2009 15:22 - #
The burden already falls on the UK taxpayer - the money spent speculatively mapping Britain, arguing in Parliament, drawing up postal code boundaries is entirely assumed by the public. We are essentially being charged twice.
lamby - 1st October 2009 17:48 - #
Henrik, I guess geographical data would be useful in avoiding estate agent mislabelling (Torshov as Grünerløkka, for example, in urban areas like Oslo) - you could just see everything on a map and get rid of the hierarchical searching that became popular a few years back (which forces you to check in multiple areas to catch boundary cases and stray properties). Seeing usability innovation in that sector is, however, a very remote possibility, in my opinion.
Ben, others have pointed out the "essential utility" aspect of a postcode database and that such stuff is part of the plumbing of a modern society that gets paid for by the taxpayer already. Although I can see how difficult it is to put a precise monetary value on such stuff, I don't see why public/privileged institutions should get to "double dip", even if it does make justifying hiring people slightly easier when confronted with civil servants looking for budgets to cut.
When such institutions charge for stuff (or control it obsessively like the BBC's commercial management), it's like making the patron of a cultural event queue up and pay for their own entrance ticket - it looks like penny-pinching. Indeed, the whole "pretend it's a market" ideology, which seems to go hand in hand with helping one's friends form little private monopolies, is actually thinly veiled corruption - something which sadly gets drowned out by superficial idiocy when an election comes around and people have the opportunity to recognise it and to do something about it.
Paul Boddie - 1st October 2009 22:57 - #
Amen, Paul!
huxley - 2nd October 2009 12:02 - #