As you all hopefully know by now, ParkatmyHouse is available in 7 different countries. We can hardly believe it either. Cultural differences aside, the differences in the way we write addresses and postal codes can be a frustrating problem when catering for multiple audiences.

US Zipcodes are easy to remember and recognise, especially 90210 (for Beverley Hills) - which we can check for by looking for 5 consecutive numbers.

UK Postcodes have a slightly more complex structure. A typical postcode will look something like this `SE1 4BN` but to check that a postcode has been entered correctly we have to use something ugly looking like `/^[A-Z][A-Z]?[0-9][A-Z0-9]?(?:\s*[0-9][ABDEFGHJLNPQRSTUWXYZ]{2})?$/i`

You can probably work out what the above jargon is doing if you look at it closely.

Canada have something just as ugly `/^[ABCEGHJKLMNPRSTVXY][0-9][A-Z](?:\s*[0-9][A-Z][0-9])?$/i`

Fortunately, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands have simple 4 digit postal code systems. Curiously though, Ireland is yet to adopt a post code system which begs the question `How do the postman know where to take the mail?`

In addition to checking the accuracy of an entered postcode we also need to know the exact coordinates of each postcode in these countries. A problem solved thanks to a fantastic service called Geonames who have provided us with nearly all the postal code data we could ask for.

The idea of the GeoNames project is to aggregate national and local data and combine it into one global open source project. Their main goal is to provide useful data and web services.

If you have a map based project or require any geographic data including population statistics, head over to www.geonames.org and take a look around.

Is there anyone out there who hasn’t heard of Facebook?

Well the clever billionaires over in Silicon Valley have launched a number of new features over the past few months and best of all… they are all free! All types of businesses can now create a dedicated `fan page`, an application to create a Facebook version of their own website or some new clever advertising methods to drive targeted traffic back to their site.

So we didn’t miss the boat, we have created a small ParkatmyHouse.com application (http://apps.facebook.com/parking/) which allows you to search through all of our parking spaces direct from Facebook.

If you do have a play with it, we’d really like to know what features you would like to see added to the application.

Do you like our cute logo? Do you want to show your public support for what we are trying to do? I’m sure the answer was at least yes to the logo question and therefore we have set up a special Facebook page where you can become a ‘Fan of ParkatmyHouse.com‘.

Please write us messages, send us love and generally let us know how we are doing!

A new website specialising in information and resources for the Edinburgh Festival has just launched. They have a mixture of reviews and details about all the events that will be taking place including the fringe, film and book festivals.

Best of all (and yes, you knew it was coming) they have used our map widget to provide real time parking availability in and around the festival area. (http://www.edinburghfestival.org/parking-in-edinburgh-map-rent-space/)

This is a great way to utilise our widgets to provide additional information to visitors to your website, blog or any online resource.
If anyone else has utilised our widgets, please let us know and your site might get a mention too!

Allen Stern from Center Networks created a very informative video guide on our service earlier on in the year. Click on the play button below to view the video.