Re: [backstage] Postcoder
On 16/11/06, Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've got a couple of hundred full UK postcodes that I want to convert to lat/long values. And I thought to myself 1/ Postcoder would be the perfect tool to do that with and 2/ when I was working on Postcoder earlier this year there was lots of talk about releasing the API as part of Backstage. But there were licensing problems. So I just thought I'd ask if those licensing problems were any nearer to being solved and whether the Postcoder API was any closer to being made public. Or, failing that, what other tools do people use to convert postcodes to lat/long? It seems to me that the Google Maps GeoCoder object doesn't understand UK postcodes. www.nearby.org.uk does brazillions of coordinate conversions and has REST and SOAP APIs at http://www.nearby.org.uk/api/convert-help.php Peter -- Peter Bowyer Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Postcoder
Quoting Peter Bowyer [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On 16/11/06, Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've got a couple of hundred full UK postcodes that I want to convert to lat/long values. And I thought to myself 1/ Postcoder would be the perfect tool to do that with and 2/ when I was working on Postcoder earlier this year there was lots of talk about releasing the API as part of Backstage. But there were licensing problems. So I just thought I'd ask if those licensing problems were any nearer to being solved and whether the Postcoder API was any closer to being made public. Or, failing that, what other tools do people use to convert postcodes to lat/long? It seems to me that the Google Maps GeoCoder object doesn't understand UK postcodes. www.nearby.org.uk does brazillions of coordinate conversions and has REST and SOAP APIs at http://www.nearby.org.uk/api/convert-help.php Oooh. That looks very useful. Thanks. Who needs the BBC :) Dave... -- site: http://dave.org.uk/ blog: http://blog.dave.org.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Postcoder
It is possible to make the conversion through Google, but I doubt
it's really within the rules.
Purely as a thought-experiment (cough), a wee ruby script that you
might be able to use.
#!/usr/local/bin/ruby
#
# Example
# ./pofinder G38DN
# 55.866061 -4.273608
#
require 'rubygems'
require 'mechanize'
agent = WWW::Mechanize.new
postcode = ARGV[0]
begin
gmap_url = http://maps.google.com/maps?q=+postcode.gsub(' ', +)
gmap = agent.get(gmap_url).root.to_s;
rescue
puts Cannot derive coordinates for that postcode
end
if matches = /lat:\s*(-?[0-9\.]+),\s*lng:\s*(-?[0-9\.]+)/.match(gmap)
latitude = matches[1]
longitude = matches[2]
printf(%s %s\n, latitude, longitude)
end
On 16 Nov 2006, at 23:00, Dave Cross wrote:
I've got a couple of hundred full UK postcodes that I want to
convert to lat/long values. And I thought to myself 1/ Postcoder
would be the perfect tool to do that with and 2/ when I was working
on Postcoder earlier this year there was lots of talk about
releasing the API as part
of Backstage. But there were licensing problems.
So I just thought I'd ask if those licensing problems were any
nearer to being solved and whether the Postcoder API was any closer
to being made public.
Or, failing that, what other tools do people use to convert
postcodes to lat/long? It seems to me that the Google Maps GeoCoder
object doesn't understand UK postcodes.
Cheers,
Dave...
-
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RE: [backstage] Backstage Tag Cloud T-shirt designs
It would be great if we could personalise the T-shirts but then we would need to raise the licence fee :) Maybe someone might consider adding the tag cloud idea to threadless.com? Cheers Ian Forrester || backstage.bbc.co.uk || x83965 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert Kerry Sent: 16 November 2006 17:49 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Backstage Tag Cloud T-shirt designs Looks good, very geek sheek. Can I have evilgreenmonkey as part of my cloud? It's a great conversation starter :o) Rob On 16/11/06, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ok all good point, how about this - http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/images/ideas/backstage%20cloud%20tshir t%20v6.jpg Ian Forrester || backstage.bbc.co.uk || x83965 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matthew Somerville Sent: 16 November 2006 16:06 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Backstage Tag Cloud T-shirt designs Ian Forrester wrote: Let me know what you think, I like v4, without any sort of underlining. Then I looked a bit closer, and I like v4 even more because it has developers and community, both of which appear to be missing from v2 and v3. :) ATB, Matthew http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/images/ideas/backstage%20cloud%20tsh ir t%20v2.jpg http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/images/ideas/backstage%20cloud%20tsh ir t%20v3.jpg http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/images/ideas/backstage%20cloud%20tsh ir t%20v4.jpg http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/images/ideas/backstage%20cloud%20tsh ir t%20v5.jpg - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Postcoder
Purely as a thought-experiment (cough), a wee ruby script that you
might be able to adapt.
#!/usr/local/bin/ruby
#
# Example
# ./pofinder G38DN
# 55.866061 -4.273608
#
require 'rubygems'
require 'mechanize'
agent = WWW::Mechanize.new
postcode = ARGV[0]
begin
gmap_url = http://maps.google.com/maps?q=+postcode.gsub(' ', +)
gmap = agent.get(gmap_url).root.to_s;
rescue
puts Cannot derive coordinates for that postcode
end
if matches = /lat:\s*(-?[0-9\.]+),\s*lng:\s*(-?[0-9\.]+)/.match(gmap)
latitude = matches[1]
longitude = matches[2]
printf(%s %s\n, latitude, longitude)
end
On 16 Nov 2006, at 23:00, Dave Cross wrote:
I've got a couple of hundred full UK postcodes that I want to
convert to lat/long values. And I thought to myself 1/ Postcoder
would be the perfect tool to do that with and 2/ when I was working
on Postcoder earlier this year there was lots of talk about
releasing the API as part
of Backstage. But there were licensing problems.
So I just thought I'd ask if those licensing problems were any
nearer to being solved and whether the Postcoder API was any closer
to being made public.
Or, failing that, what other tools do people use to convert
postcodes to lat/long? It seems to me that the Google Maps GeoCoder
object doesn't understand UK postcodes.
Cheers,
Dave...
-
Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe,
please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/
mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-
archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
-
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RE: [backstage] Backstage Tag Cloud T-shirt designs
Hi Jonathan a pity to exclude the individuals other than BBC, but perhaps that's what you get paid for... still google, yahoo and secondlife get a look in, can't say why though... --- Well in the usual BBC way, I don't see a problem with including Yahoo, Google, etc on the T-shirt. It's the kind of thing that only the BBC would be daring enough to do :) And they all make up the complex ecosystem we work in. I guess also, it would make a very interesting talking point. Not as much as evilgreenmonkey of course. ;) suggest background be same colour as tshirt, are they black? with a less well defined 'edge' --- Yep the T-shirt colour is Black at the moment. I was thinking of having special edition dark grey T-shirts too. So maybe I should mock those up too. clouds rarely look so much like bricks. for reference a BBC cloud looks almost like this: http://www.peepo.co.uk/peepo2/svg/cloud.svg Yep very true, I'll space them out once I know the limits on type size and space on the T-shirt. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Web API issue with Radio Four?
Hi Andrew, Thanks - World Service is working for me, as are all the unicast streams returned by the API. Pete. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:owner- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew McParland Sent: 17 November 2006 12:42 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Web API issue with Radio Four? Hi Pete, I've updated the streams - all seem to be working, apart from World Service at the moment. So multi-cast is more reliable? Perhaps its time for me to go back to the multi-cast modem - though I thought that was all 'trial' as well. The multicast stuff is still a trial, it's more we're trying to show people what you can do with it, like the AJAX application combining the API and the streams [1]. Also, as well as the live content we've tried multicasting and carouselling the TV-Anytime data. Being cheeky - is there anything that is reliable - other than html scraping? I just hate scraping stuff, but I do see that in all your sample widgets'n'things they seem to use radio streams gleaned from the web site (e.g. the wmp streams) rather than from any API/public listing. The benefit of being on the inside I suppose. I may be on the inside, but it's a rather large organisation, so it doesn't mean I have access to everything. http://www.dave.org.uk/streams/ seems like a useful resource... Andrew BBC Research [1] http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/services/api/examples/ajax/doc.html On Thu, Nov 16, 2006 at 04:00:29PM -, Pete Cole wrote: Hi Andrew, When I get a chance I'll update the streams. If you could, I'll be grateful - the widget competition winner is a rather useless without them and whilst it may not be overloading your servers I know there are (were) a few people using it regularly. Due to us mainly using the data and multicast streams, we haven't tracked the changes in the unicast streams. So multi-cast is more reliable? Perhaps its time for me to go back to the multi-cast modem - though I thought that was all 'trial' as well. Being cheeky - is there anything that is reliable - other than html scraping? I just hate scraping stuff, but I do see that in all your sample widgets'n'things they seem to use radio streams gleaned from the web site (e.g. the wmp streams) rather than from any API/public listing. The benefit of being on the inside I suppose. Thanks Pete. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:owner- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew McParland Sent: 16 November 2006 13:44 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Web API issue with Radio Four? Hi Pete, Indeed. Is there any sign of this service moving from prototype/beta to something more/less? Good question. I've talked to a few people a month or so ago about a properly supported public facing API to our schedule data. The summary is that there is a desire to do it, but there is no definite timescale (yet). On the particular issue of streams it fascinates me that there seem to be so many - I presume the feeds listed by the API are somehow different from the main site feeds (Radio 1 has been down for quite a while now). This is easier. The API was set up a while ago and we entered the streams as they stood at the time. Due to us mainly using the data and multicast streams, we haven't tracked the changes in the unicast streams. Sorry. So do let us know when you find things going wrong, we're not always aware of them. When I get a chance I'll update the streams. Cheers, Andrew BBC Research On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 02:46:27PM -, Pete Cole wrote: Hi Andrew, This is the fun with experimental prototypes, eh? On the particular issue of streams it fascinates me that there seem to be so many - I presume the feeds listed by the API are somehow different from the main site feeds (Radio 1 has been down for quite a while now). Pete. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew McParland Sent: 15 November 2006 10:44 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Web API issue with Radio Four? Hi Pete, You're right, the problem with the API (and backstage TV-Anytime files) missing certain days of Radio 4 has now been fixed. Thanks for the report on the streams, there does seem to be a problem - I'll investigate. This is the fun with experimental prototypes, eh? Andrew BBC Research On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 02:49:52PM -, Pete Cole wrote: Hi, This (Radio Four listing) problem seems to have gone away, but some of the real audio streams listed by the API don't seem to work
