URI for postal codes? http://www.ideaspace.net/users/wkearney/archives/entries/000451.html wkearney 2003-08-07T15:25:20-05:00 http://www.ideaspace.net/users/wkearney/archives/entries/000451.html en-us RDF 3 2003-08-07T15:25:20-05:00 What about making use of a URI for postal codes? Something like this:

<near rdf:resource="http//ideaspace.net/postal/us#20817"/>

The idea being that the leading portion of the URI, presumably backed by a schema, would be the indicator it's a postal system oriented bit of information. Then make use of the standard two (or three) letter country codes. The fragment is the actual code.

Note, I'm also suggesting a &;lt;near/> element type. An example using it might look like this:

<foaf:Person rdf:resource="http://www.ideaspace.net/users/wkearney/foaf.xrdf#wkearney99">
<near rdf:resource="http//ideaspace.net/postal/us#20817"/>
</foaf:Person/>

Here the markup is saying the foaf:Person for Bill is near US zipcode 20817. So if anything wanted to quickly find someone near a give place a query for the nearest postal code would bring up anything using the element. Note that using this wouldn't be restricted to just a person element. It'd probably be just as useful on groups, organizations, projects or any number of other things wanting to express location nearness information.

I could just as easily see this being useful for the airport codes as well.

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