I actually have a database lying around somewhere will all possibilities. Quite a high number.
Cheers Ray On Jan 22, 2008 7:46 PM, Gervase Markham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Someone's probably already thought of this, but... > > Presumably it would be possible to programmatically generate all > possible postcodes. The space wouldn't be all that large, because we > know all the prefixes now as freethepostcode and npemap.org.uk have > collected them. > > Then, in a similar fashion to the NameFinder Postcode Lookup: > http://www.frankieandshadow.com/osm/ > you could Google for each one, and parse the resulting pages for > something looking like an address. > > Then, for each hit where you found one, in Mechanical Turk fashion, you > could present willing volunteers with: > > - The generated postcode > - The possible address text you found > - The OpenStreetMap map for the area > > and tell them that if it does look like a valid address, and if they can > see the named road, to click on it - or, if not, click "Reject". You > would then store that as a location for that postcode, marked with > something which says "this isn't completely verified, and may be a bit > vague, but it's a lot better than nothing". > > I think you could do about 300 of these an hour (1 every 10 seconds or > so). This would generate a reasonably-accurate postcode database with > much wider coverage fairly quickly. Given that each postcode would be > taken from a different web page, there's a good chance there'd be no > encumbering legal issues. > > Of course, the postcode data may well be CC-BY-SA. So it doesn't obviate > the need for freethepostcode and npemap. But it would quickly get OSM to > a stage where it could do fairly comprehensive postcode lookup. > > Another, better, source of addresses for this process would be mailing > lists borrowed from sympathetic mail order companies. Clearly, they > could only let you have addresses they had permission to give you, but > that might be a fair few. > > Gerv > > > _______________________________________________ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk > -- Ray Booysen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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