7 ms·

I think trying to make geo URLs nicer is a noble effort, but this approach takes a far too naive world view. Addresses are messy. In most parts of the world (e

I think trying to make geo URLs nicer is a noble effort, but this approach takes a far too naive world view. Addresses are messy. In most parts of the world (even the "western world"), addresses are hopelessly ambiguous and much of the world cannot nearly as nicely be divided into a neatly hierarchical addressing system as this example suggests. Real-world addresses are ambiguous, confusing and messy. Pretty much the opposites of qualities that make for a good URL scheme. How do you deal with multiple places with the same name, or one place that is known by many names? Disambiguation pages and 304 redirects to a single canonical name (which might piss a lot of people off if it's a disputed area)? Most civilised parts of the world have developed more precise, less ambiguous addressing systems over time, using post codes and other systematic approaches, but even those are not always watertight, often volatile and only work for places where some body issued them (good luck in the desert or ocean). Geocoding is hard, and reverse geocoding (from a place to a name) is even harder, but fortunately we already have a clear, concise and unambiguous way to address places on earth: the Geographic Coordinate System. Every place on earth can be addressed using a simple latitude/longitude coordinate pair. It's not pretty or user friendly, but at least it's fool-proof. Why not take a much simpler approach, similar to how many blogging platforms generate pretty urls from post titles? The URL in the example could then be: https://maps.example.com/37.769944,-122.422264/199-Valencia-St-San-Francisco Or just as conveniently: https://maps.example.com/37.769944,-122.422264/Zeitgeist-Bar This way, multiple URLs can exist for different entities in the same geographic space. Multiple places with the same name are also much less of a problem this way: https://maps.example.com/51.528642,-0.101599/High-Street vs https://maps.example.com/51.528642,-0.101599/High-Street For a real-word mapping service, there would probably be a need to specify a zoomlevel or bounding box, but those could be provided as URL parameters. Ironically, this is very close to how the URLs in Google Maps currently look. Not as nice, but at least it's actually feasible and future-proof.

Terretta 14y ago
> In most parts of the world (even the "western world"), addresses are hopelessly ambiguous And yet, astonishingly, you get your mail. If the mail can find its way to the right point, so can this type of URL. Your counter examples are interesting but not what this example is showing: a nice URL for a physical mailing address. Presumably one would fall back to lat/lon if one is trying to do something other than find an address. > just as conveniently Contrary to the OPs example, having to look up lat/lon first in order to pinpoint an address on a map seems not convenient at all.
- smackfu 14y ago
  I'm not sure mail is a good point for comparison, since it's essentially using just ZIP to get it to a local post office, at which point it is sorted by humans.
  - checker 14y ago
    It depends on how big your post office is. Some have machines that use OCR to sort letters into the order that the carrier runs his/her route. They grab the bundle and go.
  - kamjam 14y ago
    Also, in the UK and in Canada we use postcodes, which will pinpoint you down to a precise street.
  - saalweachter 14y ago
    ZIP codes are also deceptive lies: ZIP code maps doesn't exist. The Post Office just has a list of addresses which belong to each ZIP code (which essentially means, which post office delivers mail to which address). They provide these lists of address to third-party mapping companies, who draw up maps of what a ZIP code hypothetically looks like based on the set of addresses. The post office, however, is constantly moving addresses between ZIP codes, as they update their postal routes to make them more effective.
    - smackfu 14y ago
      Does a single ZIP code map to a single post office, or does the sorting before that need to read the address to figure out the post office?
      - saalweachter 14y ago
        To a first approximation, ZIP codes are post offices. My understanding is that sorting starts with the postal codes, but I'm not clear exactly how much sorting happens where. For instance, the first three digits of the post code denotes a regional central processing facility. When 123xx has mail for 456xx, do they sort it before or after sending it to 456xx? Does the central facility for 123xx sort the mail for 12345, or just send it all to the post office? I could see it going either way.
deelowe 14y ago
My thoughts exactly. In many foreign countries, the "street address" for a particular location is literally just a name. For example, in Costa Rica, the address for a house we stayed in was something like "The Blue House." No number and no street name. I'm sure if one were to try hard enough, they could find issues with this scheme in the US as well.
- Terretta 14y ago
  This is a famous issue, with reams of research around navigation tools based on landmarks. Comments directly from Google: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/go-thataway-google-maps-india-learns-to.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/go-thataway-google-ma... The idea of a human usable URL would be that they'd compose the hierarchy of address URL using local addressing standards and end up with a pin at the right spot. My understanding is this is one eventual goal of Street View database: to be able to use image recognition (street names, street numbers, buildings, landmarks, etc) to more correctly locate pins. http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/37648.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...
  - eurleif 14y ago
    >My understanding is this is one eventual goal of Street View database: to be able to use image recognition (street names, street numbers, buildings, landmarks, etc) to more correctly locate pins. They're now using reCAPTCHA to assist with that: http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/29/google-now-using-recaptcha-to-decode-street-view-addresses/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/29/google-now-using-recaptcha-...
  - micheljansen 14y ago
    Fascinating! I really think geocoding has a long way to go. Google is doing a pretty good job at it (as opposed to Apple for example), but there is still a long way to go. Reverse geocoding will always remain a bit more tricky though, as some places just have multiple names. You never know which one is going to offend which people.

Terretta 14y ago

> In most parts of the world (even the "western world"), addresses are hopelessly ambiguous And yet, astonishingly, you get your mail. If the mail can find its way to the right point, so can this type of URL. Your counter examples are interesting but not what this example is showing: a nice URL for a physical mailing address. Presumably one would fall back to lat/lon if one is trying to do something other than find an address. > just as conveniently Contrary to the OPs example, having to look up lat/lon first in order to pinpoint an address on a map seems not convenient at all.

smackfu 14y ago
I'm not sure mail is a good point for comparison, since it's essentially using just ZIP to get it to a local post office, at which point it is sorted by humans.
- checker 14y ago
  It depends on how big your post office is. Some have machines that use OCR to sort letters into the order that the carrier runs his/her route. They grab the bundle and go.
- kamjam 14y ago
  Also, in the UK and in Canada we use postcodes, which will pinpoint you down to a precise street.
- saalweachter 14y ago
  ZIP codes are also deceptive lies: ZIP code maps doesn't exist. The Post Office just has a list of addresses which belong to each ZIP code (which essentially means, which post office delivers mail to which address). They provide these lists of address to third-party mapping companies, who draw up maps of what a ZIP code hypothetically looks like based on the set of addresses. The post office, however, is constantly moving addresses between ZIP codes, as they update their postal routes to make them more effective.
  - smackfu 14y ago
    Does a single ZIP code map to a single post office, or does the sorting before that need to read the address to figure out the post office?
    - saalweachter 14y ago
      To a first approximation, ZIP codes are post offices. My understanding is that sorting starts with the postal codes, but I'm not clear exactly how much sorting happens where. For instance, the first three digits of the post code denotes a regional central processing facility. When 123xx has mail for 456xx, do they sort it before or after sending it to 456xx? Does the central facility for 123xx sort the mail for 12345, or just send it all to the post office? I could see it going either way.

deelowe 14y ago

My thoughts exactly. In many foreign countries, the "street address" for a particular location is literally just a name. For example, in Costa Rica, the address for a house we stayed in was something like "The Blue House." No number and no street name. I'm sure if one were to try hard enough, they could find issues with this scheme in the US as well.

Terretta 14y ago
This is a famous issue, with reams of research around navigation tools based on landmarks. Comments directly from Google: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/go-thataway-google-maps-india-learns-to.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/go-thataway-google-ma... The idea of a human usable URL would be that they'd compose the hierarchy of address URL using local addressing standards and end up with a pin at the right spot. My understanding is this is one eventual goal of Street View database: to be able to use image recognition (street names, street numbers, buildings, landmarks, etc) to more correctly locate pins. http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/37648.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...
- eurleif 14y ago
  >My understanding is this is one eventual goal of Street View database: to be able to use image recognition (street names, street numbers, buildings, landmarks, etc) to more correctly locate pins. They're now using reCAPTCHA to assist with that: http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/29/google-now-using-recaptcha-to-decode-street-view-addresses/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/29/google-now-using-recaptcha-...
- micheljansen 14y ago
  Fascinating! I really think geocoding has a long way to go. Google is doing a pretty good job at it (as opposed to Apple for example), but there is still a long way to go. Reverse geocoding will always remain a bit more tricky though, as some places just have multiple names. You never know which one is going to offend which people.