One URL for every postal address: Zopto and our work
Luistxo Fernandez
2006/06/14 21:33
I'm at the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose. We come to see how things move around here... There are many similar sites to Tagzania, and we wanted to test the atmosphere. One of the contenders that has risen in the realm of social apps is the New Zealand company named Projectx Technology who have launched Zoomin.co.nz and Zoomin.com.au in NZ and Australia.
One of the features of Zoomin is the nice URLs they get. Check this in Australia:
http://zoomin.com.au/australia/wa/perth/east+perth/hay+street/310/
Postal addressess equal URLs. Nice concept. Now they've extended it to the US with a thing named Zopto, and beginning with California they have things like:
http://preview.zopto.com/ca/orange/irvine/boise/
http://preview.zopto.com/ca/san+francisco/san+francisco/market+street/10/
Well, we just made for a customer a very similar thing. Independent from Tagzania, fully, and we just didn't have any say in the main GIS at B5m, the mapping app of a Basque region, but we did manage to create a very nice postal directory: one URL per every address in the region of Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Country, a relatively small area of 0.5 million people, where there are 80.000 final web addresses.
So, this is the home level:
http://b5m.gipuzkoa.net/kaletegia
and this is a certain city, with its street list:
http://b5m.gipuzkoa.net/kaletegia/tolosa and let's jump to streets beggining with S...
We choose a street, Urkizu Auzoa:
http://b5m.gipuzkoa.net/kaletegia/tolosa/urkizu_auzoa
There it is, the list of buildings there, also arrangable by house names, as this happens to be a rural area with traditional households.
And, of course, the final address of any given house has its URL:
http://b5m.gipuzkoa.net/kaletegia/eibar/bidebarrieta/042
Not only works with postal addresses, but with rivers, mountains, and other elements, as roads, and exact kilometer points in roads:
http://b5m.gipuzkoa.net/kaletegia/errepidea/n-634/
http://b5m.gipuzkoa.net/kaletegia/errepidea/n-634/31
A couple of screenshots: one from a street, and the other one, a whole kilometer in road N-634
One of the features of Zoomin is the nice URLs they get. Check this in Australia:
http://zoomin.com.au/australia/wa/perth/east+perth/hay+street/310/
Postal addressess equal URLs. Nice concept. Now they've extended it to the US with a thing named Zopto, and beginning with California they have things like:
http://preview.zopto.com/ca/orange/irvine/boise/
http://preview.zopto.com/ca/san+francisco/san+francisco/market+street/10/
Well, we just made for a customer a very similar thing. Independent from Tagzania, fully, and we just didn't have any say in the main GIS at B5m, the mapping app of a Basque region, but we did manage to create a very nice postal directory: one URL per every address in the region of Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Country, a relatively small area of 0.5 million people, where there are 80.000 final web addresses.
So, this is the home level:
http://b5m.gipuzkoa.net/kaletegia
and this is a certain city, with its street list:
http://b5m.gipuzkoa.net/kaletegia/tolosa and let's jump to streets beggining with S...
We choose a street, Urkizu Auzoa:
http://b5m.gipuzkoa.net/kaletegia/tolosa/urkizu_auzoa
There it is, the list of buildings there, also arrangable by house names, as this happens to be a rural area with traditional households.
And, of course, the final address of any given house has its URL:
http://b5m.gipuzkoa.net/kaletegia/eibar/bidebarrieta/042
Not only works with postal addresses, but with rivers, mountains, and other elements, as roads, and exact kilometer points in roads:
http://b5m.gipuzkoa.net/kaletegia/errepidea/n-634/
http://b5m.gipuzkoa.net/kaletegia/errepidea/n-634/31
A couple of screenshots: one from a street, and the other one, a whole kilometer in road N-634
