Postcode Finder
- Created by
- Arek Drozda
- data.australia.gov.au datasets used
- Police Station Locations (VIC)
- Other datasets used
Australian Bureau of Statistics Postal Area and Suburb Boundaries
Australian Bureau of Statistics Census 2006 data (linked application)
Google Map API (maps and satellite imagery)
Google Map Geocoding Service (location search)
Postcode Finder is an online application for searching locations of Postal Areas and institutions of public interest in Australia. It allows to depict geographic extents of Postal Area and Suburb boundaries and points of interests on Google Map, and provides quick links to demographic statistics from 2006 Census of Population and Housing.
I’ve just taken a look at this, and I’m trying to figure out what this does which existing services don’t provide – which doesn’t seem to be much. This is not withstanding that the name given to it doesn’t really reflect what it does.
All it seems to do is provide a different interface to accessing the same data:
http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/ABSNavigation/prenav/LocationSearch?ReadForm&prenavtabname=Location%20Search&&&navmapdisplayed=true&textversion=false&collection=Census&period=2006&producttype=&method=&productlabel=&breadcrumb=L&topic=&
And if we look at the boundaries information for postal areas, a strict reading of the rules would indicate that because this dataset is not listed on data.australia.gov.au the entry would be ineligible anyway.
Mike, thanks for the comment.
This is first and foremost a tool for finding geographic location of Postal Areas in Australia. It allows you to locate the postcode either using text search option at the top of the page (true, nothing unique about that) or by clicking on the map (this is a unique feature). And it does what the title says – it finds postcodes. Points of interest (in this case Police Stations in Victoria) provide additional context.
It may not be perfect but I believe it is quite a unique service, delivering all the information on a single page. If you care to name those other “existing services” I will greatly appreciate. It will be a handy reference for future improvements of Postcode Finder.
Regarding your comment about “eligibility”, please review the following rules of this contest:
“… All mashup entries must also use at least one of the datasets provided for this contest, but you are free to mash them with other datasets….”
With due respect, isn’t “mashing up” all about reusing existing content in an alternative way?
Originality is a judging criterion in this contest, not a prerequisite to participate. However clumsy my demographic maps and data applications are, they are alternatives allowing quick access to a valuable and vast data resource from the ABS.
Regards
Arek
Well I happen to think its a very useful application. I remember back when I was at uni having a job stuffing envelopes doing mailouts to select regions. Having something like this really would have come in handy. I could have a geographic map up and click on surrounding suburbs to get their postcodes. I’m a visual person so this is far more interesting for me to use than a straight database returning text outputs. Well done.