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Up

John Sample — Mon, 15 May 2006 09:54:00 GMT

Its back up. http://www.johnsample.com/reversegeo/

Here's what happened:

We were having quite a few people over Saturday for a party and when I went to make sure my MAME machine was still working I found out the motherboard was dead. I had a spare machine, but it was lacking a power supply since the week before I had given it to my brother.

Unfortunately it was 9 pm when I found out and all the computer stores were closed, so in a moment of mad scientist style hacking I wired the power supply of my main computer to the spare one without actually taking it out of the case. Picture jump starting a car, the cases were basically on top of each other with wires and drives snaked between them.

I was able to get the arcade computer to the point where all I would have to do is put in power the next day, however, somewhere in the process the chip fan power cable got knocked off of my main computer and the chip melted in the early morning.
That left me with 3 dead machines. Saturday morning before everyone came over I replaced the mobo+chip in my main computer and got power to the MAME machine, so all is well with the world at the moment.

Toast

John Sample — Sat, 13 May 2006 06:08:00 GMT

Through a freak accident I managed to fry 3 computers last night.

The demo db won't function and the downloads won't be available until I restore the boxes.

State of the Zips

John Sample — Tue, 02 May 2006 10:16:00 GMT

I've started working on the geocoding project again. There was some down time while we adjusted to having a newborn around and time was short.

FIPS has made some changes that will make distributing an installer virtually impossible. Mainly, the USPS had them remove zip code information from their publications. I've had to come up with another source of info at great expense, so I will probably only be able to distribute the db in pre built form unless another solution arises. This also means I'll need to start charging for it to make up some of the cost.

I know there were some people who had trouble downloading the zipped up db in the past. The problem is fixed now but the location has changed. If I sent you the download info and you were never able to retrieve it shoot me a line.

One of the coolest new features I'm working on at the moment is suggestions for misspelled streets and cities.

Temporary Source

John Sample — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 20:26:00 GMT

Getting subversion up and running for source control is proving more difficult than I thought when it comes to access control.
Everything is in VSS which would be perfect but running over the web isn't really possible.

In the meantime here is half of project. Two things are missing:

1. The database installer
2. The CrLab MySQL dll
3. AddressParse DLL source (Created in a separate program, I'll post details later.)
I'm waiting for a response from CrLab on whether I can include their dll. If I can't its an easy swtich back to the MySQL provided connector.
The installer is in no shape to be released at the moment so in the interim I'm going to give a download link through email. The compressed MySQL db is 2.5 gigs so you can understand why I can't post a link here. If you want a copy before the installer is up email me and I will give you a link if my bandwidth at home can take it.

The code is a maze of spaghetti in massive flux while moving to the spatial index, have some patience while reading it until everything is flushed out.

And without further ado:
~~http://www.johnsample.com/misc/geo3/geocode.zip~~

On the source

John Sample — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 14:43:00 GMT

Ok, I've been talking about releasing the source for a while now so let me explain the delay and recruit suggestions on how to proceed.

First of all, thanks for the all the email. I stopped responding for a bit there and I hope to do better in the future.

Second, I'm torn on how to release the source. If you have seen the background of the project so far you'll discover this started as a pet project after I couldn't find any viable source for reverse geocoding information. The installer was a nice touch, but keeping up with both the evolving census data and actual improvements to the program has gotten out of hand. Right now the installer has been (obviously) rendered useless until I can revamp it.

Part of the lack of communication was due to an episode with a user who needed help. It was a long, drawn out, frustrating email exchange which eventually netted a working system. I later found out the user was the employee of a LARGE global consulting firm and they were putting it on a client's system. (Hehe, whoever the client is got ripped off.)
I love GPL zealots, but frankly I'm not one of them as my mortgage gets paid by designing software.

Before I release the source I'd like to find a way to license it so that it can be used by small developers/low commercial/nonprofit but also balance the need for compensation for commercial use. I'm not looking for the “give it away and make money in support” model here because I really don't have the time and it would probably violate my employment terms.

What I'm looking for:
1. Allow non commercial use.
2. No reselling, repackaging, commercial use without permission, although this doesn't necessarily mean any purchase is involved.

Ideally I'd like to form some sort of co-op where contributors could benefit from commercial use.

Anyway, any ideas on how to license this thing to protect the time investment it requires?

Demo Update

John Sample — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 20:21:00 GMT

I added forward geocoding to the demo. Its weakest point at the moment is resolving cities and address to zip codes and vice versa. It will get better with time.
I'm close to beta at this point.

Since there is no installer I'm going to let a few people download the database to try out.
I'll make an announcement soon, I'd like to collect feedback on the demo first.

http://www.johnsample.com/reversegeo/default.aspx

Fixed

John Sample — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 11:50:00 GMT

The new database has been loaded.

The results should be correct now:

http://www.johnsample.com/reversegeo/default.aspx

Bug

John Sample — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:40:00 GMT

I foung a giant bug in the way names were being loaded.

I'm rebuilding the database, hopefully this will eliminate the repetetive street name issue.

Demo Update

John Sample — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 08:55:00 GMT

I updated the demo to include highways.

The formatting is going to be weird, you'll see -1 --1 on the screen if there are no addresses on that particular road.

I also updated it to use the second edition data which is much more accurate than the original data I was using.

I'll put up a forward geocoding demo soon:

http://www.johnsample.com/reversegeo/default.aspx

Reverse Geocoding Demo

John Sample — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 10:12:00 GMT

I put up a little demo.

This version will only reverse geocode streets that are addressable, meaning you need to click on streets that have actual buildings on them.
Most highways have no addresses so don't be surprised if you click on an interstate and get no resuts. I also have the search distance set very low and it will only return a range of addresses, it won't guess the exact number yet.

The demo is querying the database on my home machine which has very limited power and bandwidth so it may be up and down.

http://www.johnsample.com/reversegeo/default.aspx