Sidestepping the whole necessary policy and law debate here, HTML 5 has a geolocation API which lets the JavaScript application get the user's location automatically. It's also part of Google Gears, which many people have installed. It works on iPhone, for example, so you can get the user's location from a simple web app without having to write a native app.
This is interesting because: 1. Increasingly you'll be able to get the user's location without explicitly asking them for their postcode. 2. If the user's browser supports geolocation *and* you ask them for their postcode as part of a seemingly natural interaction then you can easily crowdsource a postcode/geocode database as part of another application without having to get people to go to FreeThePostcode. This could be done on FixMyStreet which presumably uses a licenced database. Over time it could build its own replacement database perfectly legally without reusing any of the licenced data. -- Adrian Short Campaigning for councils to have RSS feeds by Christmas http://www.mashthestate.org.uk/ http://adrianshort.co.uk/ http://twitter.com/adrianshort _______________________________________________ Mailing list [email protected] Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public
