seriousarsonist wrote:Hopefully they'll be properly geocoded

So Pip: do you know how UK postcodes get searched by Waze? Is there an import process or something like that? Hopefully we can get Irish postcodes^WEircodes searchable by Waze too...

++David \ davidg666

seriousarsonist wrote:I'd guess that google has at one time purchased the PAF database (now managed by OFCOM) and I'm pretty sure it isn't geocoded, so they've probably also purchased the OS cross reference database. Both of these contain a lot of errors, the geocoded reference database pin points (roughly) the averaged centre of the postal address, hence why google gets it so wonderfully wrong at times.

So if Google do something similar for Ireland (presumably to make their own maps work properly) when the Eircode locations become available, then Waze should pick them up too, as long as Waze is still using Google for searching.

seriousarsonist wrote:I'd agree with internally adding postcodes, it would be a massive cost and a huge job without any real benefit to users. They only cover around 29 million delivery points and we'd have to add all the building numbers manually anyway. Allowing google search to find the address from the postcode and house number would be much more preferable.

It's not clear yet from the Eircode site whether or how they'll be making the coordinates of each of the 2.2 million codes available - and whether they'll be charging for them too. If they were readily available, it'd be nice if Waze could bulk-import them (and keep them up-to-date as new ones are added...). That said, I wonder if Waze (as an organisation) would be bothered with a relatively small country.

Do we know what they do with other locations? I can get it to search for a UK postcode fine (from the app, not Live Map) (I used BT2 8HQ) but not (for example) for an Australian one (I tried "2913, Australia")

We haven't done a whole lot in Ireland with manually entering house numbers (with the exception of a few dedicated individuals), so although it might be handy to allow Eircodes to be added to the editor too (there's one per address, so they're much finer-grained than UK postcodes) just like house numbers, I can't imagine Waze will allow this either - and entering 2.2 million 7-character codes by hand is unlikely to happen.

++David

seriousarsonist wrote:As for other countries, I've no idea if they will even have similar or if waze/google has purchased their databases.

I just checked for Germany - you can enter a German post code and Waze will take you there. However, I think they cover a fairly large area (about the size of a large town) so using just a postcode for navigation isn't that useful. I haven't checked any other countries.

I notice Google Maps shows the areas of various entities (such as postcodes and even Irish townlands) and even shows their boundaries, so I assume they're as interested as getting as much useful data into their maps as possible. Useful for Waze anyway, as long as they continue to use Google for address searching, although with house numbers and so on (and if we ever get counties...) Waze may end up using its own resources more for address searching.

++David

helvete666 wrote:Anyone else seeing navigation to Postal Codes can now be done for the Irish post codes, Google/Waze must have got access to the database, checked on Apple Maps and they do not

Yeah, I tried it once and it worked alright.

I presume it's a useful side effect of searching Google for addresses that Waze doesn't have - Google Maps also shows the location of Eircode codes (I won't call them postcodes...)

++David

thats right, German post codes are similar to US Zip Codes. Bigger cities will usually have a number of Zip Codes.

Probably because most other countries have actual names for all of their streets and each house/building would have a number

The first part of your Eircode (the Routing Key) will most likely be the same as the one for the houses around you.

The second part (Unique Identifier) will be different and unique to your home or premises. It will not be in sequence. This is to avoid the situation where a new building is created between two existing ones, and the code sequence would be broken, requiring all Eircodes in the area to be changed. This would be very disruptive.

While having a code with some in-built structure seems more intuitive, building and maintaining such a system would involve extensive geographic surveys to build it and subsequently, to maintain it – incurring more costs.
A structured unique identifier code would need to have more characters to make it future proof, thus making is harder to remember.

The flexible structure chosen for Eircode means it is future-proofed with no concerns over future capacity.

Or at least they hope that'll be the idea

Anyone else seeing navigation to Postal Codes can now be done for the Irish post codes, Google/Waze must have got access to the database, checked on Apple Maps and they do not

seriousarsonist wrote:As far as I know waze just pulls the postcodes from google, which can lead to some rather strange results. Not sure if they have any intention of integrating them at the moment

That's correct. There's some sort of process cycle by which the postcode geopoints make it from Royal Mail to Google, over which we have no control. Waze gets the geopoints from Google at time of search.

I'm in 2 minds as to whether it would be good to have postcodes directly in Waze. It would be easier to add new ones and deal with the occasional routing problem caused by a postcode location not matching well with properties in that postcode. On the other hand, there would probably be a rush of individual editors "tweaking" postcode locations to exactly match their home/preferred destination.