Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?

#51

Post by wmboy » Tue, Apr 10, 2012, 9:21 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #45

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be USA-only or not. It seems to ask for 'country', so I assume it's aimed at the whole world. And here's where reality disagrees with your simple organisation. * First "zip code" is mostly an American term, "post code" is used in other anglosphere countries. * Not all countries have "everyone is in a city" model, this seems to happen in the USA, where 'city' is often an administrat…

Yeah this doesn't work at all if you live outside USA. The post code for Auckland CBD (in New Zealand) is 1010.

So if I try http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/?zip=1010

It gives: {"country": "US", "state": "MA", "city": "BRIMFIELD"}

Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?

#52

Post by gm » Tue, Apr 10, 2012, 9:24 PM UTC

tedyoung wrote: post #17

I just love it when people create projects to solve problems that have already been solved before. 5 minutes of web searching would have told you: * The USPS already has this information * ZIP codes are not precise enough to provide a single city/town result (in fact, many web sites already get this wrong). * ZIP+4 codes will give you block-level detail, but I doubt more than a few percent of people know what their +…

* Who cares if the USPS already has it? The app developer is the one seeking it.

* And USPS does not give the DB away for free.

* Your attitude sucks. And your 5 minutes of searching were not enough.

Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?

#53

Post by alttag » Tue, Apr 10, 2012, 9:28 PM UTC

talmand wrote: post #49

lubujackson wrote: post #27

My big pet peeve is when they ask you what type of credit card you're using, when that is easily determined by the first four digits of the CC number. Thankfully, more and more web sites are figuring this out.

I've never understood why that information is required at all in the first place. I can see the usefulness of showing which credit cards the site accepts but to force the visitor to choose one seems wasteful.

I think it's a round-about way of saying "We don't take (American Express|Discover|Diner's Card|whatever)" without actually saying it.

Modern processors accept just about everything nowadays, but this was less common even a few years ago.

Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?

#54

Post by alttag » Tue, Apr 10, 2012, 9:34 PM UTC

systemtrigger wrote: post #21

Very useful. Saves the user 2 to 3 steps. In rare instances where it returns the wrong city, they can modify the returned values. Probably want to skip ziptastic for non U.S. IP addresses.

Except then the zip would need to come before the city/state visually, which sounds awkward for most uses.

Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?

#55

Post by geuis » Tue, Apr 10, 2012, 9:38 PM UTC

I fucking love this. I know that it doesn't work for a lot of people outside of the US, but with some modification it can definitely work for certain countries and communities. Fork and individualize to your needs.

My partner and I are currently working on a startup where location is everything, and we're very much on top of trying to make it as fucking simple as possible to do the basic tasks. Don't annoy the people that might give you money, as it were.

This will be a very useful tool in our belt.

Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?

#56

Post by rscale » Tue, Apr 10, 2012, 9:41 PM UTC

I tried this many years ago, and it decreased conversion.

I'm not sure if this is still true, but apparently the surprise of a slightly unconventional form threw some people off, as it increased cart abandonment compared to a typical form.

If you're going to use this, please check to see if it actually provides a benefit to your users.

Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?

#57

Post by gbaygon » Tue, Apr 10, 2012, 10:02 PM UTC

When you query for an inexistent postal code (i.e. http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/?zip=101)

the page returns "404" as content but the response header is "200 OK".

That is inconvenient, and RESTfully wrong.

UPDATE: added pull request https://github.com/gbaygon/ziptastic/commit/7284cb2e4f863161...

Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?

#58

Post by debacle » Tue, Apr 10, 2012, 10:07 PM UTC

gbaygon wrote: post #57

When you query for an inexistent postal code (i.e. http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/?zip=101 ) the page returns "404" as content but the response header is "200 OK". That is inconvenient, and RESTfully wrong. UPDATE: added pull request https://github.com/gbaygon/ziptastic/commit/7284cb2e4f863161...

It has nothing to do with REST.

REST != HTTP

Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?

#59

Post by hax0r2112 » Tue, Apr 10, 2012, 10:11 PM UTC

uptown wrote: post #13

Their donate page isn't using SSL.

If you view-source, you will notice that they are using stripe.com. This is actually a clever trick in that the form is intercepted by javascript, securely transmitted to stripe for processing, then a token is returned to the calling web site with success codes, etc needed for future billing questions, refunds, etc. The issue is that we have (rightfully so) trained people to look for the lock icon, look for https, look for the green location bar, ... Stripe goes a long way in protecting the transaction and reduce the merchant's PCI-DSS scope (really important for small merchants and large alike...), but merchants must still convince their customers that the site the customer is interacting with is safe to deal with.

Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?

#60

Post by BryanB55 » Tue, Apr 10, 2012, 10:12 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #45

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be USA-only or not. It seems to ask for 'country', so I assume it's aimed at the whole world. And here's where reality disagrees with your simple organisation. * First "zip code" is mostly an American term, "post code" is used in other anglosphere countries. * Not all countries have "everyone is in a city" model, this seems to happen in the USA, where 'city' is often an administrat…

Despite the mentioned problems with this method I still think it is a great start and should be implemented more often. The U.S. GDP is three times larger than any other economy, there is no doubt that for a lot of sites, US addresses are the norm. Even if it is not 100% accurate it would still be nice to pre-populate fields and let the city be changed if it is incorrect.