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Show HN: Ridiculously cheap bulk geocoding

geocod.io

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Re: Show HN: Ridiculously cheap bulk geocoding

#61

Post by ColinWright »

thecodemonkey wrote: post #37
ColinWright wrote: post #36

Is it possible to delete an account? I created one before discovering it was US only.

Sure! Just send us an email at support@geocod.io and I'll remove your account right away.

An admirably quick response, both to my question here, and to the email I sent.

People, this is a lesson. If you post a "Show HN" then be ready to respond to people's questions and comments. Posting and then going silent for hours is not a good message to send to people who you want using your service. It says you haven't thought enough about your level of service.

Kudos to GeoCod.io.

Re: Show HN: Ridiculously cheap bulk geocoding

#62

Post by Jemaclus »

Love it. I'll keep using my current service for now (SmartyStreets), but I'll let you know two things I noticed:

1) Most services will accept shortcuts for names, like "SF" for San Francisco or NYC for New York, but in both cases, I got error messages instead of geocodes.

2) Addresses that aren't "properly" formatted (i.e., without commas or something) often return very incorrect information. Here's an example:

2680 NW 8th Pl, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33311 - returns correct info

2680 NW 8th Pl Fort Lauderdale FL 33311 - returns incorrect info (see suffix, formatted_address)

For what it's worth, SmartyStreets mangles even the first address that you got correct, but on the other hand, they're very good at correctly returning data for improperly formatted addresses like the second one.

Anyway, good luck. Great tool.

Re: Show HN: Ridiculously cheap bulk geocoding

#63

Post by jawns »

appleflaxen wrote: post #59

Your pricing page is not as clear as it could be. When people read "$0.001 each" they sometimes understand it to be one thousandth of a cent rather than one thousandth of a dollar . Even though you are completely correct/accurate, people find it confusing (1). Wouldn't it be clearer to say "1 cent fore every ten uses" (or "10 calls for a cent" or "a tenth of a penny per call")? Admittedly, your audience is semi-techn…

Maybe it's because I'm semi-technical, but "$0.001 each" is clearer to me than "1 cent for every 10 uses." I mean, I recognize that they're synonymous, but the former clicks in my mind faster than the latter.

So, if, as you admit, the service's audience is semi-technical, and if the average semi-technical person's brain works like me (big assumption, I know), I would argue that they should stick with $0.001.

Re: Show HN: Ridiculously cheap bulk geocoding

#64

Post by thecodemonkey »

Jemaclus wrote: post #62

Love it. I'll keep using my current service for now (SmartyStreets), but I'll let you know two things I noticed: 1) Most services will accept shortcuts for names, like "SF" for San Francisco or NYC for New York, but in both cases, I got error messages instead of geocodes. 2) Addresses that aren't "properly" formatted (i.e., without commas or something) often return very incorrect information. Here's an example: 2680…

Thanks for the feedback! We don't currently support shorthands for city names - only states. But this is definitely something that's on the todo list now.

Our address parser will try to pick up the address even if isn't formatted correctly with commas, but it obviously won't work in all cases. Address parsing is indeed a very complex problem.

Re: Show HN: Ridiculously cheap bulk geocoding

#66

Post by pkh80 »

thecodemonkey wrote: post #14
lzhou wrote: post #6

For an API, you can also try http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim/ (which is kinda free -- and uses OpenStreetMap data). The biggest problem we've had is changing non well-formed addresses / ambiguous addresses into canonical addresses with lat/lng. Google Maps wins on that front.

We obviously can't beat Google in that case :) That's also why it's priced to be way more affordable. It does however happen that Geocodio is more accurate than Google Maps - try for example "8895 Highway 29 South, 30646" (Address of a CVS store) on Google Maps and Geocodio.

Cherry picking one example does not make you more accurate than Google Maps. TIGER has some giant holes in it, and is based on block faces not building footprints like Google Maps. In most cases Google Maps will be much more accurate and comprehensive.

Re: Show HN: Ridiculously cheap bulk geocoding

#67

Post by pkh80 »

TIGER (dataset that this is based on) has some giant holes in it, and is based on block faces not building footprints like Google Maps. Its also U.S. only... why not base on OSM, which should include TIGER as well as all the other contributions.

Re: Show HN: Ridiculously cheap bulk geocoding

#68

Post by ericd »

Neat! If you can get your address parsing up to Google's level or anywhere close, you should do quite well.

For others looking for a solution you can play with yourself, here's a VM image with a pretty good geocoder you can set up yourself (iffy address parsing, though): http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org

Re: Show HN: Ridiculously cheap bulk geocoding

#69

Post by cmaggard »

appleflaxen wrote: post #59

Your pricing page is not as clear as it could be. When people read "$0.001 each" they sometimes understand it to be one thousandth of a cent rather than one thousandth of a dollar . Even though you are completely correct/accurate, people find it confusing (1). Wouldn't it be clearer to say "1 cent fore every ten uses" (or "10 calls for a cent" or "a tenth of a penny per call")? Admittedly, your audience is semi-techn…

The part I was unclear about, actually, is whether or not one is charged for the first 2500 if one were to hit that threshold.

Re: Show HN: Ridiculously cheap bulk geocoding

#70

Post by pkh80 »

ericd wrote: post #68

Neat! If you can get your address parsing up to Google's level or anywhere close, you should do quite well. For others looking for a solution you can play with yourself, here's a VM image with a pretty good geocoder you can set up yourself (iffy address parsing, though): http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org

Parsing isn't the hard part, its the source data, which if you do the math on what Google has done (drive around the world taking 360 video and LIDAR of streets) is literally billions of dollars worth of work.

TIGER is a pretty bad starting point, geocoding based on block faces is really inaccurate if you want to zoom in to the street level. And its U.S. only.

OSM Nominatim should be a better place to start.

I'd love to see open sourced Street View data collection / processing as part of the OSM project. Then there is a chance to compete with Google.

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