Richard, An "embuggerance" - sorry it's a sort of made up word. Let's pass over the literal meaning of the verb 'bugger' and move on to its more common usage in UK English. Something is described as a 'bit of a bugger' when it is a problem. Or something might bugger up what you are doing. As in mess it up, or snarl it up. An embuggerance sort of translates to something that is a bit awkward or inconvenient perhaps. Maybe describing it as a bit of a pain is more international. - Liam -----Original Message----- From: gps-talkusers-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:gps-talkusers-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard Myers Sent: 10 March 2005 11:50 To: gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [gps-talkusers] Re: Post codes and zip codes Hello, Liam, Are you still here? I hope so. In Japan, where I live now, and in the US, where I have a second home, as far as I know, the post code does not identify single dwellings. Map Quest is a free service on the Internet with versatile expandable map sections of the US in great detail and a little less detail in the rest of the world. Map Quest will give you a post code, normally called "Zip plus 4". If you enter Map Quest with the number address and street and town or city, you get a pinpoint location of the address with all adjoining streets and some points of interest, like parks and post offices. So far, that does not help GPS very much because GPS uses earth coordinates (latitude and longitude) to define locations. Garmin has a set of maps covering the entire US on a single CD. These maps also have street names, towns, and the like, but they do not contain street address information for houses or buildings. You could use Map Quest to get the physical location of the address, then the lat-lon coordinates of the same point for your GPS. Kind of clumsy, but it would work for trip planning. The reason I am describing this is the difference in price. The only price is for the Garmin map set, and I think it is about $67, you will have to check with Garmin on that. That is for the entire US. I have seen the map sets for the BN GPS for sale at the price of $250 per state. That is $12,500 for the entire US, including Alaska and Hawaii. A little difference in price, one affordable, one not, at least on my budget. Now, what in the world is an "embuggerance"? You gotta explain that. Dick Myers From: "liam" <liam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Reply-To: gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To: <gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [gps-talkusers] Re: Post codes and zip codes Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 22:04:40 -0000 Richard, I understand that in the UK we might use post codes more than in the states. A post code in the UK will identify a house rather than just a general area. For us the use of a post code saves a lot of keyboard work. It's the norm to be able to search on a post code for both PDA based systems and car based systems. I don't understand your comment below about map quest. I don't want to look up a postal code I want to be able to jump to the address associated with that code. I'm hoping that you are not suggesting that systems should be set up to make the life of programmer's easier? I take Mike's point that it would need some restructuring of the data set or the indexes for referencing the data. I suspect what we have here though is a cultural point that in the UK we use post codes a lot and see the lack of them as a genuine embuggerance. - Liam -----Original Message----- From: gps-talkusers-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:gps-talkusers-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard Myers Sent: 06 January 2005 02:02 To: gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [gps-talkusers] Re: Post codes and zip codes Looking at this from a GPS programmer's point of view, post codes (zip codes) do not help ther GPS system to find a location. If you want Zip codes, go to MapQuest. From: "liam" <liam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Reply-To: gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To: <gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [gps-talkusers] Post codes and zip codes Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2005 09:11:33 -0000 Mike, This is where I show my lack of world knowledge. Isn't a post code the same as a zip code? Or can the zip code be calculated in some way? I'm puzzled as to why the use of post codes should be so difficult given that it appears to be standard, for the systems being sold in the UK at at the moment. Is the post code not held within the map data set? Regards - Liam (8):[(8) (8):[(8)