Interesting post and interesting timing, as I published something today on a closely related theme: What makes good linked data?.

I was also recommending that people reuse existing identifiers where possible. I had an interesting comment from Richard Cyganiak putting forward a different view.

Bill

This post was mentioned on Twitter by iand: New blog post: More Than The Minimum http://bit.ly/21NeWn...

http://www.okkam.org

Okkam has more than 5M identifiers available for reuse today. It is designed to be arbitrarily scalable. Any named entity that appears in Wikipedia is in there already. You can add yours at will.

My OKKAM ID is

http://www.okkam.org/entity/ed5bdc09-ca66-4435-b48e-6df558315fa1

and I paste it at the bottom of every piece of e-mail I send out.

stefano

Sorry, your comment wasn’t up there while I was writing mine. You have something useful there, but I still believe something human readable is better. One of the key values of the current postcode system is that everyone can remember them.

Lighten up, the posting title is “wild alternative” so I just added another layer in the hope someone else might choose to build upon it, not ridicule.

Did I say remember the long one?

“… and a tiny URL, maybe to 2 decimal places?

pla.ce/12BS51_28-0_61″

Perhaps if we could have a go at listing the purpose and value of the present postcode system – we would have a better idea of what would be an improved and more useful version for the 21st century.

So, to add to the Pythonesque “ridiculousness” of the situation:

Purpose: To describe the most efficient postal workers walking route, for the amount of average letters and bills he or she can hold in his left hand till he or she returns to his or her parked bike or trolley to fill up his/her left hand again.

Purpose: to describe the centre point of the polygon which encompasses those properties, which could be a pond.

Sorry folks, needs to be human readable too. Remembering N16 6LD is much easier than 51.568, -0.067. [see that negative sign in there? That ain't particularly user friendly]

Also, postcodes are a hierarchy of spatial info: N – north london, n16 – a chunk of Hackney and Stoke Newington, N16 6 – a small chunk of North East Stoke Newington, n16 6ld – the corner of the street I used to live on. Actually very useful when aggregating data, and when looking at new addresses; if someone tells me they live in N1, I know they live in an area of North London around Islington.

I’m totally for an open postcode, but the idea of replacing it with a lat/lng is ridiculous.

Japanese postcodes work pretty well (free of copyright too): 745-0045
7 – prefecture, 745 – city, 745-0845 – street.