jonathan.rawle.org

Last week I noticed that the appearance of my Google search results had changed. There was a new column down the left side with links for Images, Groups, News, etc. and alongside each one there was a green bar-chart, presumably to indicate the number of search results for each type of search. There were some other minor changes to the interface. This is one of the many screenshots of the new interface that can be found on the web at the moment:

But I use two different computers, and the I didn’t see the new interface when I used the other one. I remembered that when Google last changed their interface, a couple of years ago, the same thing happened. They choose people at random to try the new interface by putting cookies into their browsers. No doubt they then monitor the blogosphere to see what people’s reactions to the new look are.

So I decided to delete Google’s cookies to revert to the old interface. Then I discovered that some people have been using the new interface since at least January, and there are plenty of sites with instructions of how to manually add the cookie and try the new interface. I carried out this procedure to see if I could get the new interface back.

This is when I discovered a new twist: I now have the left-hand column of links, but there are no green bars. There are other subtle differences, such as the “Search History” link visible in the screenshot above is missing. I definitely had the green bars before, and now I regret not trying the Search History out while I had the chance. This is a screenshot of my browser window:

Is the method of inserting the cookie by hand somehow faulty so that the new search interface isn’t complete? Or have Google decided to drop some features and are now testing a cut-down version? If anyone has any recent experience of the new interface, please leave a comment to let me know!

Yahoo! have released their first music download in MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) copy protection. This means the track can be played on any hardware device, or played using the software and operating system of your choice.

The track in question is A Public Affair by Jessica Simpson. What is most surprising is that the record label is none other than Sony BMG, which had a lot of bad press last year after selling CDs that used virus-like techniques to hide copy protection software on people’s Windows PCs.

Yahoo! say they have “been publicly trying to convince record labels that they should be selling MP3s for a while now”, and that “DRM doesn’t add any value for the artist.” Sentiments I’m sure many music fans would agree with.

But before we get too excited, the track they are offering is customised, with a chosen name inserted into the lyrics. There are hundreds of names to choose from on the website. The track also costs $1.99 instead of the more usual $0.99: Yahoo! say this is paying for the personalisation, not for the lack of DRM.

However, isn’t the personalisation in reality a form of DRM, and an effective one at that? If someone buys the version of the song with the name “Aaron”, it’s not so appealing for anyone who was hoping to hear “Zena”. While not as restrictive as proper DRM, it still places limits on the number of people would want an illicit copy. Whether Sony BMG would be willing to allow their standard, non-personalised songs to be released in this format is another matter.

So will we see further DRM-free downloads from Yahoo? Only time will tell.

I have added a few new photos of Leicester, showing some of the current regeneration work that’s going on in the city.

Featured projects include the Shires extension, the Performing Arts Centre and St George’s Tower. I plan to add to the gallery from time to time, to include more projects from different parts of the city.

Recently, I read about two newly-launched web-based services that help to match people up with others for their mutual benefit. One, studentswaps.com, was for students going away to university to live in the home of another family in a swap system, with the aim of saving money on accommodation costs. The other, localmothers.co.uk, was for parents to find other parents in the local area with whom they could leave their children, instead of using a registered childminder.

I won’t comment on the merits or otherwise of these particular sites. What struck me is that, while it is currently free to register with them, they both plan to charge in the near future: around £10 for studentswaps, and £14.99 for localmothers.

Now, these sites were both set up to help, by people who themselves required the service in the first place. Yet it seems that, rather than wanting to help others by providing a useful service, the founders wish to turn their websites into money-making enterprises.

I’m quite aware that having a website hosted costs money, and that the cost increases with traffic. But this could easily be offset by incorporating advertising on the pages, which only takes a few minutes to set up. As the number of visitors to the site increases, so does the pay-per-click revenue. You don’t need many paying members at £15 a time to pay for web hosting, so that can’t entirely be the motive behind introducing payment.

The trouble with requiring payment to join this sort of website is that it has a significant effect on the number of active members. So while on a free site it might be possible to find a selection of suitable rooms or willing babysitters, once payment is required the choice will be extremely limited, and quite possibly there will be no other local members at all. Worse still is when the site introduces two levels of membership, free and “premium”, with only the latter able actually to contact anyone. They advertise having thousands of members, but the number of active members is actually quite small, and one has to wade through hundreds of pages of people who will never pay money to the site before finding anyone who is contactable.

It’s important to remember, unlike paying for an “offline” service, these online services don’t actually do anything for you other than provide somewhere to post an advertisement. To find someone with whom you can do a swap, you have to do the searching for yourself. Nor are advertisers vetted in any way before joining the site – in fact, most sites carry a disclaimer that they are used at the user’s own risk. In fact, this type of website would be entirely unnecessary if more people were a bit more savvy when it came to search engines. Anyone posting in their blog to say they are looking for a room in Leicester is within minutes included in Google Blog Search or Technorati. Then all the other person has to do is to search using suitable keywords, sort by date, and they find what they are looking for. Unfortunately, most people would never think to do this. If they are looking for a room swap, they think they have to use a room swapping site.

Ultimately, anyone setting up one of these services should think carefully before charging. After all, which are the most popular – and profitable – services? Google, Yahoo!, MySpace. The latter is a site that’s been in the news a lot lately. It has millions of users, and last year was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation for $580m. The significant thing is that all of these websites offer almost all their services for free, supported by advertising. If the services had to be paid for, the sites would not be nearly as big or successful. Unfortunately, people are always going to look for ways to make money, and it’s to the loss of the whole community that specialised sites won’t reach their full potential because of charging for their services.

I’ve noticed that a lot of visitors are reaching my site by searching for information on UK postcodes. So I might as well say something about them, and link to some sites I find useful.

The system of postcodes in the UK is (almost?) unique as a postcode pinpoints a small number of addresses – usually a street, or part of a street (for example the odd numbers). Properties receiving a lot of mail will have their own postcode. So in theory, your letter will get through if you write just the postcode and house number, although this may make life difficult for the postman who will have to remember which street it is for.

Postcodes were introduced between 1959 and 1974. Before then, mail was addressed using a postal town and county name. The latter ensured addresses were fairly unambiguous, although there are still some instances of multiple towns in a county having the same name. Postcode areas are determined by distance from sorting offices and do not follow county boundaries at all – in fact, they also cross the boundaries between England, Wales and Scotland.

The format of a postcode is X[X]n  dXX, where X is a letter, n is a number 0–99 and d is a single digit 0–9. The code may begin with one or two letters. Some places (parts of London) use the format X[X]dX  dXX. Using letters of the alphabet in place of digits increases the number of postcodes available – an advantage over the zip codes used in many countries.

Postal areas

The first one or two letters represents the postal area. It is usually an abbreviation for the largest town or city in the area. For example, “B” for Birmingham or “LE” for Leicester. Usually the first letter of the code is the initial letter of the town, and the second letter (if there is one) is another letter in the name of the town. There are some exceptions. Central London uses points of the compass: E, EC, SW, SE, W, WC, N, NW. “L” is actually the code for Liverpool. There are also a number of other codes that don’t quite match the names of the towns:

AL

St Albans. Ignoring the “Saint”.

DG

Dumfries. This probably stands for the name of the council area, Dumfries and Galloway, but that wasn’t created until 1975. The authorities must have had the name in mind long before then. Interestingly, “DF” is unused.

FY

Blackpool. Actually stands for the nearby place, Fylde.

HP

Hemel Hempstead. Does it just stand for Hempstead? Why not “HH”, which is unused?

IG

Ilford. Why not “IL” or “IF”? Perhaps it’s to incorporate nearby Chigwell. Or perhaps they hit the same wrong typewriter key as for Dumfries.

SM

Sutton. Could be blamed on a typo if “SN” wasn’t taken by Swindon. Maybe they decided to go for an adjacent code, although “SU” is untaken.

SP

Salisbury. Perhaps “Salisbury Plain”?

TD

Berwick-Upon-Tweed. Or “Tweedside”.

TS

Middlesborough. Or “Teeside”.

Wikipedia has the full list of postal areas.

The remainder of the postcode

After the initial letter(s) comes a number representing the postal district. There can be up to 100 of these in a town as 0 is used. Often, 99 (and other high numbers) is used as the postcode for PO boxes.

After the postal district there is a space, which must be included for a correctly-formatted postcode. After the space are three characters which together represent the street, part of street, property or business.

The main post office in the town often has a postcode of the format XX1 1AA. One oddity is the postcode for Girobank, which was formerly part of the Post Office but is now owned by a commercial bank. This postcode is GIR 0AA – the equivalent of a personalised car number plate. It would be nice if the bank was located in Glasgow, but it isn’t.

There is lots more detail about postcodes at Wikipedia.

Finding a postcode or address

Royal Mail maintain a big database mapping postcodes to addresses. This is sold as a commercial product to companies, who use is as a quick way of entering addresses. If you’ve ever been asked for your house number and postcode, this is the reason.

There are several sites allowing the public to look up the postcode for an address or vice versa. They normally place a limit on the number of searches a user can make in a single day – obviously they don’t want companies using the database for free instead of paying for it! Royal Mail offer their own interface allowing 12 searches per day. But I prefer the service offered by AFD Software. Their interface allows more intelligent searches for addresses, will add the county name, and provides extra information about properties or businesses it finds. AFD allow 8 searches per day, so there’s 20 in total already…

Unfortunately, the address database isn’t perfect. I know at least one address where the entry in the database gives a misformatted street name. And because so many people use this instead of entering the address as given by the customer, most letters arrive with the address formatted wrongly.

That’s my brief introduction to postcodes. If you have any questions, comments, etc. please, as always, leave a comment.