Postcode Data, Jeff Van Campen

Earnest Marples have had their postcode data service closed by legal action from Royal Mail. Whatever the morality, this is having an affect on sites such as Jobcentre ProPlus and The Straight Choice. Jeff encourages the group to sign a petition to the Prime Minister to make this data free to not-for-profit organisations.

He also takes issue with the postal service charging for information in the first place as, at around £4000, it effectively puts a tax on innovation, pricing smaller developers out. Royal Mail’s copyright doesn’t appear to be in any danger of expiring since it’s protected by Crown Copyright. See more at Jeff’s blog.

Location Based Games, Ben Dodson

Ben’s been playing with GPS based gaming on the iPhone. Two major apps in this area were released recently for the UK, Gowalla and Foursquare. They’re both available on Android and iPhone. Because they’re location based he’s been going out to parts of the capital that he wouldn’t normally. Games that cause exercise! He’s also been working with the developers at Gowalla and made an iPhone web app that uses UIUIKit. This is an HTML and CSS framework that allows you to easily build custom web apps. Using this was simple and it took Ben half an hour to make a web app. His app also takes advantage of the geolocation data support in Safari mobile on the iPhone using HTML5.