*applauds*

I like it, but it doesn't do much outside very urban areas, does it?

talk to you later.

It *really* needs a street .

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John H

Streets in medium-sized towns (for example buncrana, co. donegal) don't seem to be covered.

It's more-or-less there, alright; on one hand, this search:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=53.581,-6.1094(Thomas+Hand+St.,%20Skerries)

gives the right lat/long and rough location, but Google doesn't have the data to display it.

nice hack!

Terrific hack John. I've now used it to plot the most popular pubs in Limerick for addition to the Open Irish Directory. You can browse the OPML file here.

Great Hack John - it is a pity Google Maps isn't accurate enough (or have enough data) to deliver a correct end-result (not for Rushbrook, Cobh anyway!).

I requested North Frederick St. and was given South Frederick St!

Great hack - will you be making the code available?

It works beautifully for Dublin addresses in most cases. I suspect Lycos would cripple their end if they notice lots of automated requests, but have you considered feeding it a list of streets from the electoral register and generating your own little GeoDirectory?

Yes, it does the same for North Earl Street/South Earl Street etc.

To get north or south earl street, you need to put the north/south bit at the end. For example "earl street north". The search on Map24 (the map technology people behind the Lycos maps) also allow a postcode but John probably omitted it because we don't have postcodes here. It does have one use, namely you can put the Dublin postal region. So a search for 'Earl Street' with a postcode of 1, will give North, and with a postcode of 8 will give the south one. It does require you to know South Earl Street is in Dublin 8, not Dublin 2. So maybe John could add in an optional postcode field?

Things get a bit more complicated once you leave the city limits. You have to put the city to be one of 'Fingal' 'Dun Laoghaire' or 'South Dublin' - depending on which council area the place is in.

Even if John does add in a postcode field, you're a bit scuppered if the two places are in a non postal district. For example Convent Road, Blackrock and Convent Road, Dalkey.

Great work! Is it in violation of lycos' Terms of Use though? As a backup (if it is) you could try the gazetteer API from the folks at mySociety. I'm using it for a (work in progress!!) project here: EU Pollution Nearby

GAZE is good, though I already have all its non-UK contents in a database here. It'll be a good idea to merge the two sets eventually, but for now the gazetteer data does absolutely nothing useful for the kind of work we're doing.

Although... Gaze's use of the population density numbers I will eventually be using. We can take a X&Y pair from this (or Geodirectory, you never know, I might win Euromillions), then use the density numbers of the nearest point which *is* in the gazetteer to determine how wide to cast the net called 'near you'.

As they explain over at Mysociety, 'near' in Dublin is one postal district away. Out in Connemara it might be 20 miles.

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John H