2009-09-09
Thoughts On Short Location References
Yesterday, I posted Tom Taylor’s pithy comment:
Postcodes are short URLs for space
Tristan Ferne replied on Twitter:
in Japan the phone number is code for physical location and contact link
I’d already started pondering the nation-specific nature of such short identifiers for place. The UK is actually fairly well blessed in this respect: as well as postcodes, there are OS grid references (although they’re somewhat less common and, I’d argue, harder to dereference).
In the US, by contrast, ZIP codes cover a quite large area. There are ZIP 5+4 codes that have a resolution more like that of a full UK postcode, but I don’t think they’re in anything like such wide usage. This perhaps explains why US services have always been well-blessed with address lookups: they’re far more necessary.
With my English-centricity, I don’t really know what the situation is outside those two countries. Tristan’s note is definitely making me wonder if it’s worth researching further. Somehow I suspect both France and Germany have good, granular postal addressing systems that can be repurposed for online usage.
Any more for any more?
