In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

wheredat provides a geocoding and reverse geocoding interface (UI) through Bing maps. You setup an instance of the application and then embed it in an iframe on any other applications that use it. The client app passes an address or lonlat it needs geocoded and wheredat builds a map showing the location found allowing the user to move the point on the map to further refine the location. All this information is passed back to the client app so it can be used or stored there.  wheredat is extremely light weight and quick to load.

Demo Page: http://wheredat.adc4gis.com/example.html

Source Code: https://github.com/applieddataconsultants/wheredat

Via James I learned about Microsoft's launch of OpenGeocoder, a geocoding tool using bounding boxes for places. What's nice it that Microsoft gives back all resulting data to the public domain. There's a JSON API too.  

From the about: "What is this? OpenGeocoder is an experiment in creating and serving geocodable results. Places are turned in to bounding boxes. Large datasets, processing and geocoding software is skipped. Instead a simple mapping between strings and boxes is used. All data submitted is placed in the public domain for anyone to use.

How do I use OpenGeocoder? Search using the text box. If your result is not found you are given the ability to add it. Drag the rectangle corners around until the rectangle covers the place you searched for and then click 'Save'. Your data is placed in to the public domain for anyone to use."

Slashdot discusses a story named Google Outlines AI-Based Number Reading For Street View Photos.

Their summary: "A recent Google research paper [pdf] outlines how it might use AI to read digits in natural images — specifically Street View photos. The idea is to automatically extract the number of each house as captured by Street View and then use this to improve the geocoding data returned by Google. When you next ask for directions to a particular address the new data could be used to show you a street view looking directly at the house you specified."

We mentioned a few times in the past the reading and mapping of license plates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Streamline Postal And Courier Services With Global Postal Codes

November 15, 2011, Toronto, Canada, NAC Geographic Products Inc. announced the release of NAC Sorter - a software module for mail sorting systems to sort all mail automatically from world level to final household mail boxes, thanks to the power of the Universal Address (also called the Global Postal Code).

Though it has been a long time effort of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) to standardize mailing addresses for international mail, it has little success as traditional addresses evolved from history have deep roots in languages and cultures and are difficult to be translated into standard addresses in the UPU suggested formats, not to mention that 60% of the world population do not have addresses yet.These lead to limited automation in mail sorting and no postal and courier services to many households.

This situation now can be changed with the introduction of the Universal Address that can be used to globalize all addresses. The Universal Address is a highly efficient and human-friendly code mathematically equivalent to longitude/latitude coordinates and available at every location in the world, including locations of all houses, buildings and even temporary camps, and can be instantly obtained with a GPS device such as a smartphone or an online high resolution satellite image map such as NAC Locator. Here are some examples of the Universal Addresses:

NAC: JZ9G P9TP (Acropolis, Greece)
NAC: H5SX R497 (Arch of Triumph, Paris, France)
NAC: 9F3J L1PL (Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico)
NAC: GZM7 RKH3 (Buckingham Palace, UK)
NAC: 57WF NSBR (CACTUS Site, USA)
NAC: 8CHZ Q86C (CN Tower, Toronto, Canada)
NAC: J16W PZFH (Colosseum, Rome, Italy)
NAC: H5Q2 R48Q (Eiffel Tower, Paris, France)
NAC: SNZ PMK (Forbidden City, Beijing, China)
NAC: J3 RQ (Berlin, Germany)

Here NAC stands for Natural Area Code, a four character NAC represents a 30x24 square kilometer area like a city, a six character NAC represents roughly a square kilometer like a street block, an eight character one a 35x25 square meter area like a house and a ten character one is one square meter like a door anywhere on the earth. Since an eight or ten character NAC is able to uniquely specify a house or building anywhere in the world, it is also called a Universal Address.

Sorting mail based on the Universal Address is just a simple mathematical problem: finding the area containing the location of the Universal Address from a series of areas defined by the company according to its own transportation and delivery structure, which is independent from languages, cultures and the definition of the postal zones.

For countries with traditional addresses, the suggested globalized address is the traditional address embedded with the Universal Address, for example,

〒106-0031
日本国東京都港区西麻布3-16-30
NAC: VM9F NX8Q

Thus, it avoids the difficult translation of the address so that people used to the tranditional address can still use it as usual, while machines, tourists and people unfamiliar with the language and the traditional address can use the language-independent digital Universal Address as it has a distinct format and can be easily recognized no matter where it is embedded in the address block.

For countries without traditional addresses, the globalized address can be the Universal Address only or the place names plus the Universal Address such as:

سفارة كاليفورنيا
ربع الدبلوماسية
الرياض، المملكة العربية السعودية
NAC: LVK1 M3D7

Then, all homes in the world have their own globalized addresses. With the globalized addresses on mail and parcels,

1. all houdeholds, cottages and even temporary camps in the world can get postal and courier services delivered to their doors no matter whether they have traditional addresses or not as they can be uniquely specified by Universal Addresses.
2. all international mail and parcels can be automatically sorted as the Universal Addresses are worldwide valid.
3. all courier companies can sort and transport parcels according to their own needs without concerns in changes of postal codes due to the changes of postal services, thanks to the independency of the Universal Addresses from postal services.
4. mail and parcels in all countries, especially those without postal code systems or without address systems can be sorted automatically, thanks to the pure mathematic sorting algorithm of the Universal Addresses independent from languages and cultures.
5. postal and courier companies can extend the automation in mail sorting all the way to final mail boxes of individual houses, thanks to the unique Universal Addresses available to all households in the world.

"The release of NAC Sorter represents another milestone in the digital and globalization revolution, " said Dr. Xinhang Shen, president of NAC Geographic Products Inc., "Postal and courier companies now can automatically sort all mail and parcels at all levels with the same algorithm based on the same kind of codes no matter where they are and no matter where the mail and parcels are sent to, eliminating barriers from hundreds of different languages, traditions, postal code systems of the addresses."

Actually, Universal Addresses can be used for all location related applications (postal and couriers services, taxi services, emergency services, maps, navigation, local search, travel guides, geographic information systems, cadastre, land planning, management of roadside objects, etc) with significantly improved efficiency, interoperability and reliability. For example, if you use the Universal Address instead of the traditional address to specify the destination on a navigation system, you can save 80% of key input, avoid difficulty in inputting foreign characters if it is a foreign address, eliminate errors from the outdated, duplicated or missing address and extend the navigation to locations without traditional addresses.

Currently, NAC Sorter is delivered as an ActiveX control for Microsoft Windows based mail sorting software and has been released to two major manufacturers for the integration with their mail sorting systems. We also welcome other manufacturers of mail sorting systems to do the integration to speed up the revolution of the postal and courier services in the world. The software module can be downloaded here. For more information about NAC Sorter, please check http://www.nacgeo.com/nacsorter.asp.

About NAC Geographic Products Inc.
Incorporated in 1995 in Toronto, Canada, NAC Geographic Products Inc. is a world's leading company in geographic technologies and geo-services, developing GIS/GPS software products and providing APIs for real-time geo-services (geocoding addresses, reverse-geocoding, mapping, routing, etc.) for web applications and wireless location based services, etc.

CONTACT
Lixin Zhou
PR Manager
Tel: +1 416 496 6110
Email: lzhou@nacgeo.com
Web: www.nacgeo.com

Keywords
Mail Sorting, Postal Code, Postcode, Globap Postal Code, Universal Address, Natural Area Code, NAC, NAC Locator, Google Maps, Satellite Image Maps, Local Search, Navigation, Search Engine, Mapping, Street Address, Geocode, Geocoding, LBS, GPS, Location Based Service, Locating, Tracking, Searching, Wireless, Cellphone, Map Grid, Geography, Geographic Technology, Geographic Coordinates, Longitude, Latitude, Property Identifier, Emergency Service, 911

I used to share the most interesting - yes that's subjective - Directions Mag articles once every month or two. From now on, I'll try to integrate them in the pseudo-weekly "batch mode" edition instead. You'll then get those articles quicker. Here's the recent DM articles for the past month.

• Here's nine elements of geocoding accuracy and why it pays to be accurate 
• Shared a month ago, here's a review of MapInfo Professional Version 11.0, which was released last Summer
• Here's an aggregation of links, serving as a Recap of News from the 2011 GEOINT Symposium, held in Texas in October where 4,400 geospatial intelligence professionals convened, and here's an article on the growth predictions for geospatial intelligence
• Even if the tips aren't surprising, here's Five Ways to Make Your Geospatial Cover Letter and Resume Stand Out
• Here's a short article, but with a screenshot that explains it all, named Visualizing Crime - A “Data Rose” Blooms
• Here's an analysis of how geospatial companies are using Twitter
• Here's an Introduction to the Second International Workshop on 3D Cadastres
• Here's an article named Virtual City: a Cost-effective Approach to Information Sharing for More Secure Borders

Slashdot is discussing this story named Sub-Centimeter Positioning Coming To Mobile Phones.

Their summary: "SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), a technique invented by NASA, defines the concept of building a 3D-map of the environment and simultaneously computing the position within it. Based on SLAM, Swedish startup 13th Lab has implemented real-time sub-centimeter local 3D-positioning by using only the sensors, most importantly the camera, already present in most mobile devices (demo video). The technology will be made available as a software platform for developers (sign up for beta). A first application demonstrating the technology has just been released for the iPad2. The technology should be available on other devices with similar computational power soon."

[Editor's note: this submitted article dates from December 2010, but has not been mentioned before]

Here's an article on the inner-workings of geocoders in Dr. Dobbs magazine.

From the address standardization section of the article: "To get a reasonable coverage of possible address spelling rules, we will need to come up with approximately two hundred of them, each with a list of exceptions. Please note that rules dealing with abbreviations will have to go both ways — when to abbreviate and when not to abbreviate (for example, "Asbury Prk" should not be abbreviated, but spelled out as "Asbury Park"). The rules will need to deal with proper use of street types; street pre-directions and post-directions, such as "123 N 45th E"; formats for secondary designators, such as apartment and suite numbers; numeric, alpha-numeric and fractional house numbers, and on and on."

[Update: fixed link to article]

Yesterday, we announced the update and expansion of the parcel coverage available in our ParcelStream™ web service. Our ParcelStream™ customers now have access to over 110 million parcels and we plan to have 120 million parcels by the end of 2010. While many people already understand the value of parcel data, we thought this would be a good time to share some thoughts on parcel boundary data and just why we find it to be such a valuable data set.

To begin, let’s discuss what exactly parcel boundaries are, this will help us understand their importance. Parcel boundaries are the precise GIS coordinates of a piece of property. Overlaid on top of a satellite or aerial image, they show a mapped image of the exact boundaries of a lot. They allow a potential real estate buyer to "walk" the boundaries of a piece of property from an online map, seeing its proximity to streets and highways, distance from neighboring homes, and access to green space, streams and wooded areas.

Parcel boundaries do more than just provide a "bird's eye view" of a piece of property. Once the GIS coordinates of a property are loaded into a map-based platform, they can be combined with additional data sets like school districts, neighborhood demographics and other location information. Governments use parcel data to assess service areas, make predictions and respond to disasters.

Here's the recent Microsoft-related geonews.

• Bing Maps and Hotmail come together: "When you select “Maps and Places” [in an Hotmail message] a task pane opens that allows you to add new locations or interact with a set of previously defined locations."
• Part of the Bing Spatial Data API, Microsoft introduced batch geocoding and batch reverse-geocoding with Bing Maps.
• In addition to the Windows Phone, the Blackberry and iPhone, now there's Bing Maps on your Verizon Android device.
• For the developers amongst us, MS introduced PHP and VB .NET SDKs for Bing Maps Platform. There's also an entry on Bing Maps and MS Visual Studio LightSwitch.
• The official blog also mentioned Geo Fact Finder, "the application includes over fifteen distinct data themes that includes several dozen specific variables" for the U.S.