GeoGraphic

I noticed this morning that GPS Ireland are relaunching their PON codes as Loc8 codes: http://www.myloc8ion.com/

They have some heavy duty backers this time round – Bank Of Ireland for one. It’ll be interesting to see if BOI start putting the codes on their outbound post soon.

And then there’s a tweet from @ESRI_Ireland:

Which points out a second service, GO Code: http://www.gocode.ie/

Two in the one day, eh! What are the odds?

Update:  See the comment from Dermot McCrum below for more details of the GO Code

Differing back-ends on the two systems, of course.  There’s Garmin backing for Loc8, as you might expect from a GPS Company, it makes nice use of MapGenie too. GO Code is using Google Maps for display and routing, but are they underpinning this with GeoDirectory? I will have a closer look at both systems in the near future.

Eamonn Doyle of ESRI Ireland has weighed in with his own views on his blog here, which I agree with in the main – these systems have been developed in isolation from the current to-ing and fro-ing at Committee level in Government – where discussion is still ongoing despite tenders being called for (again).

Obviously there cannot be three Postcode systems in Ireland, one has to win out.  The backing of An Post is going to be crucial. and they’re known to be against the whole concept. At the moment I’m tempted to view the two competing systems launched yesterday as a ‘landgrab’ for attention from the public. The commercial backing which Loc8 has in place may prove to be the difference if that is indeed the case.

Would be nice if either of them was using OSM for mapping of course, but I suppose it’s just not complete enough in Rural areas. Both systems seem to be Algorithm based, so it should prove possible to generate boundaries based on the first 3/4/5 characters of the code which would be invaluable for research / analysis.