And They Said I Was Stupid - A Thought from 21,400 Feet in the Air
And They Said I Was Stupid—A Thought from 21,400 Feet in the Air
By Pat Flynn on April 29, 2014
I’m currently writing this blog post on an airplane. I’m en route to Austin, TX (my first time there!) to meet with my mastermind group for a few days. Major planning sessions ahead, but for now—this blog post.
I had another post scheduled, but something funny happened at the airport that I wanted to write about.
While sitting in Terminal 1, Gate 9 at the San Diego airport, listening to a podcast (the new . Not for your super young kids, but it’s awesome!), and a woman who I have never met before walked up to me, smiled, and waved.
I took off my earbuds and then she said, “Hi Pat!”
Rarely does anyone ever come up to me in public and talk about what I do online. When it has happened, it’s really weird to me and I don’t think I could ever get used to it.
It’s flattering—don’t get me wrong—and I appreciate it very much, but it doesn’t make me feel like a “rock star”.
Plus, my wife once said to me, “If your head grows too big I won’t be there to support it for you.”
I love her for that. Seriously.
While attending blogging and business conferences, however, people who I’ve never met before come up to me all of the time, since I’m in a place where my audience is gathered already.
The first time someone approached me, he started asking questions like he knew me, and I started to freak out because I knew nothing about this person who seemed to know so much about me.
That was scary.
But, when this kept happening over and over again, I realized that everything I was doing online to build a relationship with my audience—the blog, the podcast and the videos, the stories within and the personalization of my content, it was working!
I realized that I was making real connections and building real relationships with real people through my content, and instead of being scared, I was thankful for those moments.
I became proud of my work.
And I became humbled as well.
I took off my earbuds and then she said, “Hi Pat!”
I replied, “Hi!”
“Hi Pat, I’m Jean! I listen to your podcast all of the time! Thank you for what you do…I was in marching band in the 80s and played the trumpet too, I heard you mention it at the beginning of one of your podcasts.”
Jean and I ended up chatting for over a half an hour about random things—mostly marching band and trumpet related stuff—until I had to board my plane.
It was such a fun conversation!
Sitting here on the plane now, I thought about how that conversation started and it was interesting that out of all the things to say first, she mentioned marching band.
But it also makes complete sense, because it’s one thing she knew we both had in common.
And They Told Me I Was Stupid…
When I first started my podcast, there was a lot on my list of things do to. One of those things was to create an intro that would play at the beginning of each episode.
Because I didn’t like listening to the same intro over and over again on other podcasts (I would often fast-forward through them), I had an idea to include a different intro each time, specifically by having my voiceover guy introduce a new, random fact about me at the start of each episode.
When I shared this idea with my online business colleagues—some who had podcasts already, some who did not—nobody got it.
They would say things like:
“Pat, you’re wasting your time and money. Focus on the meat and content of your show instead.”
I also heard:
“Nobody will care or remember these random facts about you. It’s at the start of your show, and you said it yourself…it’s random.”
And one person, who I trusted (and still do), replied with:
“Pat, don’t be stupid.”
Well, I did it anyway.
Fast forward nearly 4 years later with a top-rated business podcast and 8 million downloads, those same exact people who doubted my choice have since told me how smart I was to do it.
When I think back to the conversations I’ve had with people who have come up to me at conferences, a couple of things come to mind:
1. They almost always mention the podcast—never the blog anymore. When I realized this at New Media Expo in early 2013, I switched from a bi-weekly show to publishing an episode once a week.
A podcast is an incredible way to make a personal connection with several people at the same time.
(If you’d like help starting a podcast, check out my
No cost or email opt-in required.)
2. Within those conversations, I would say that one of those random facts from the introduction of my show is mentioned 50% of the time.
That’s a lot.
People ask me about my fantasy football team, my marching band career, when I was a DJ, how I was 11 lbs. 12 oz. when I was born, and the one thing that seems to resonate with the most people—my love for Back to the Future, my all-time favorite movie.
When I get deeper into those conversations, I find out that they remember those things because they experienced or enjoy those things too, or know someone close to them who has.
These random things that seem to have absolutely no relevance to the topic of my blog or podcast are making all the difference in the world when it comes to connecting with my audience.
Therefore, it actually has all the relevance in the world to what I do online.
The purpose of this post is to remind you that it’s okay to share bits and pieces of your life with people—and actually—you’d be doing yourself and your audience a disservice if you don’t.
Your hobbies, your interests and other things outside of the topic of your blog, you may feel like it doesn’t matter—that’s it’s wasted space on your blog or podcast—but it does matter.
It’s like that ice breaker during the first day of summer camp.
People connect with real people, and this is a quick and easy way to show that you’re a real person online—a place where people are often not being real and are afraid to show exactly who they are.
Although your audience may not connect with everything you have share, it only takes that one shared experience—that one time at band camp—to make people remember you and keep coming back.
So…How, Exactly?
So how are you supposed to share bits and pieces of yourself with your audience?
For me, I chose to do it regularly during the intro of my podcast, but you don’t have to do it that way. Plus, I’ll be honest, it does take some work to do it this way.
The intro to each new episode is edited—I can’t just copy and paste an intro from a previous episode—and I have to work with my voiceover guy to get them done ahead of time.
It’s worth it to me though.
Here are some other ideas for you:
You can share bits and pieces of yourself on social media, on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
As interesting things come up in your life, mention them in your podcast episodes or blog posts, and if you can interweave those happenings with your topic and content, even better!
Create an entire blog post or podcast episode that is devoted just for helping people get to know more about who you are. These are some of my favorite blog posts to read,
from Live Your Legend.
Definitely mention one or two things about yourself on your about page. But of course, make sure you structure your about page in an effective way, .
If you do any public speaking, inserting bits and pieces of your real life into your presentation can help add flavor to your talk, and make a connection that will keep people’s attention and keep them engaged for much longer. I’ll often start my own presentations with a relevant story or video that involves my kids (and I’ve started one talking about marching band too!), which then leads into the main topic of the talk.
These are just a few of the hundreds of ways you can better connect with your audience and more quickly build that relationship and trust that’s needed for any online business to succeed.
And now, I’d like to flip the switch a little and get to know YOU more (and have all get to know each other)!
I Want to Get to Know You (And Skype with One of You)!
All you need to do is leave a comment below sharing a fun and interesting fact about you and your life. That’s all! Share something that will help us get to know you better—something beyond what you do online.
As incentive, I’m going to pick one commenter at random and get on a Skype call with you for 30 minutes to help answer any questions you may have about your specific online business. I don’t do consultations very often, but I thought this would be fun.
Plus, I would already know a little something about you before we chat!
Leave a comment before 11:59pm PST Sunday, May 4th and I’ll choose someone at random for the Skype call. I’ll contact the winner via email to schedule a date and time to chat. I’ll announce the winner in next week’s blog post.
Cheers, and thanks for reading this blog post (published at 21,400 feet in the air!) and I look forward to learning more about you!
*Congratulations to Kevin Young for winning the 30 minute Skype call with me! Thank you all for your comments I’ve read them all over the past week, and please feel free to share a tidbit about yourself if you haven’t already! I hope you can already see how much of an impact just sharing these fun little stories can make.
**Also, shout out to Gareth for the highest rated comment (you can sort below to find it), and probably the most epic blog comment I’ve ever read.
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Just real content that's meant to make a difference.From OpenStreetMap Wiki
Free The Postcode () is a free database of postcode-to-location mappings. They are asking people with
to submit their copyright-free latitude/longitude readings for any particular postcode.
This is a , in fact it's a sister project of OpenStreetMap, set up initially by the same guy . Clearly the aims overlap quite nicely with some of the activities of OpenStreetMap, so we can help each other out.
has created a postcode map, which displays postal areas on top of an OSM map, based on 'Free The Postcode' data:
See also OpenStreetMap
which has some information relevant to FreeThePostcode.
Enter postcodes as waypoints in your GPS unit. Then when you get home you can go through them and send them to freethepostcode. If you don't know the postcode, it's fairly easy to figure out well-known places. For example, take a waypoint outside a pub then go and google for the pubs address. Bingo, you have the postcode.
A good source of post codes is phone boxes.
In some parts of the UK most phone boxes have their full postal address on a small label inside (this is so that a caller can tell the emergency services where they are).
Another good source is businesses with local branches/stores (banks, supermarkets, etc). Most have a list of stores (with postcodes) on their web site.
has written an application for the iPhone which makes it really easy to submit postcodes using the in-built GPS on the newer iPhone models. More information on that can be found on the . The application is open source and free to install (via the iTunes App Store).
has written an application for Windows Mobile devices, based on the look and feel of the iPhone application, which makes it really easy to submit postcodes using the in-built GPS on newer Windows Mobile phones. More information on that can be found on the .
The basic geocoder can get from postcode to lat/lon and back:
The postcode geocoder knows not to fall back on N-something if you ask it for NW-something. It will give you the closest match it can. You can make it better by collecting more postcodes. The format should be pretty obvious and not subject to change. Lines starting with a hash are comments, see also
Enter OSGB coords rather than lat/lon
Enter eastings and westing rather than positive and negative numbers
Enter coords in degrees, minutes, seconds
Not just UK - eg freethepostcode.org/norway
Upload by GPX waypoint names (would need to validate postcode formats vs waypoint names, and many Garmin GPS receivers only allow 6 character waypoint names, which means only a subset of UK postcodes can be done this way). This avoids co-ordinate keying errors.
Accuracy information - eg if a user requests OX1 4AU then if we don't have an exact match we can return a location based on OX1 4xx or OX1 xxx or OXx xxx with an estimated error based on average sizes of zone/district etc.
this is already done, the geocoder returns the best match available and tells you which one it's giving back, try it :-)
Sure, but this isn't good enough for an end-user application where we want to say "this postcode is here, plus or minus xx m/km". The implication here is that we need to store some information about the size of each postcode zone. --Dom.
This is an issue for non-residential codes especially - my work postcode covers a site about 500m across. Should I measure the postcode somewhere in the middle of the site (looking the postcode up on google maps etc provides a point vaguely, but not exactly in the middle) or should I provide the location of the actual entrance? Even the latter is difficult, as the visitors' entrance used to be on one side of the site, and is now on the other... --DA
Incidentally, can we have a mailing list for freethepostcode? It'd make this sort of discussion easier --Dom.
Allow people to amend postcodes they enter, or at least to reject codes when the confirmation email arrives. I very stupidly put in the wrong coords whilst going through a list I gathered, and ignored the email but trying it a second time with the right coords doesn't seem to have worked -- .
Please can we have a means to enter postcodes by clicking a position on an OSM map? Surely this is free of copyright? I could add quite a number of postcodes I know from memory but don't have the time to take a GPS to. Thanks,
18:34, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Good idea.
The coverage is pretty extensive, after all.
20:35, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
The feature is already there.
can be specified for any node/way/area.
09:31, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
This might need some different approaches for different countries
with comments)
For the format, consult wikipedia: .
There is an up-to-date
available from the
website that associates each postal code to (parts of) it consists of 5 columns, giving the community, Bundesland (federal state), municipality, postal code, denomination of the post office. In order to use those data for OSM, the Austrian Post should probably be asked first if that's okay for them. As postal codes tend to be rearranged sometimes, a script checking for changes in that file might then be quite useful.
To a rough approximation, the first digit 2-7 covers six states (2=NSW, 3=VIC, 4=QLD, 5=SA, 6=WA, 7=TAS) with territories either 0nnn or 2nnn.
The Australian postcode database is a zero-cost download from , but with copyright and usage restrictions.
Each commune has his one. The two first numbers give the province.
10nn 11nn 12nn are for Brussels
13nn 14nn are for the Brabant Wallon
15nn 16nn 17nn 18nn 19nn are for Vlaams-Brabant
2nnn are for Antwerpen
30nn 31nn 32nn 33nn 34nn are also for Vlaams-Brabant
35nn 36nn 37nn 38nn 39nn are for Limburg
4nnn are for Liège
5nnn are for Namur
60nn 61nn 62nn 63nn 64nn 65nn are for Hainaut
66nn 67nn 68nn 69nn are for Luxembourg
7nnn is also for Hainaut
8nnn are for West-Vlaanderen
9nnn are for Oost-Vlaanderen
Each street os cities bigger than 50,000 habitants have their it own code, big avenues can have more then one, such as one for each side. Some special buildings, such as big offices or any other places that receive lots of mail can have it's own code as well.
0xxxx-xxx: Greater S?o Paulo ()
1xxxx-xxx: Interior and litoral of S?o Paulo ()
2xxxx-xxx: Rio de Janeiro () and Espírito Santo ()
3xxxx-xxx: Minas Gerais ()
4xxxx-xxx: Bahia () and Sergipe ()
5xxxx-xxx: Pernambuco (), Alagoas (), Paraíba () and Rio Grande do Norte ()
6xxxx-xxx: Ceará (), Piauí (), Maranh?o (), Pará (), Amapá (), Amazonas ( e ), Roraima () and Acre ()
7xxxx-xxx: Distrito Federal (), Goiás (), Rond?nia (), Tocantins (), Mato Grosso () and Mato Grosso do Sul ()
8xxxx-xxx: Paraná () and Santa Catarina ()
9xxxx-xxx: Rio Grande do Sul ()
More details (in portuguese) is available on Wikipedia:
Accurate to street segment and side if the second digit is non-zero.
If the second digit is zero, it identifies a whole community and is not subdivided ( a municipality might be split between codes, though, as with U.S. zipcodes). Postal codes ending in 0 identify post offices, counters and similar facilities.
The first digit indicates the province, roughly east to west:
A = Newfoundland
B = Nova Scotia
C = Prince Edward Island
E = New Brunswick
G,H,J = Quebec
H = Montreal
K,L,M,N,P = Ontario
M = Toronto
R = Manitoba
S = Saskatchewan
S7 = Saskatoon
T = Alberta
V = British Columbia
X = NWT/Nunavut
not street level. (areas)
The number denotes a 'Zustellbezirk' (postal district)
1. Number: Zone
2. Number:
3-5 : district
are assigned by the German Post, as suited best for their postal needs:
Most of the time a city or commune has just one number.
Bigger cities have more than one (Frankfurt/Main: 37 between 60311 - 60487)
Villages may share one number with other villages or a town nearby.
The number can have leading zeros because 0 is a valid zone
The postal districts have no relation to the city districts
The postal districts may exceed the borders of counties or even federal states
Single locations may use the postcode of the nearby office which delivers post best, even if located within another postal area otherwise.
There can be seperate numbers for P.O. Boxes or large institiutions (e.g. businesses receiving large ammount of mail) where no real street or geolocation can be assigned.
A street might pass more than one postal district
City District
60316 Frankfurt
Berger Str.
Nordend-Ost
60316 Frankfurt
Berger Str.
Nordend-Ost
60385 Frankfurt
Berger Str.
Nordend-Ost
60385 Frankfurt
Berger Str.
Nordend-Ost
60385 Frankfurt
Berger Str.
60385 Frankfurt
Berger Str.
, translated into English
The Faroe Islands, which are part of Denmark, used to be part of the danish postcode system, but now have their own 3 digit postcodes, so even when sending letters from Denmark "FO-" has to be prepended the postcode. The danish Wikipedia article for Faroe Islands postcodes is .
Greenland however is still part of the danish postcode system and uses the range .
Un código postal espa?ol (Código Postal) consta de cinco dígitos, los dos primeros dígitos se derivan de una lista por orden alfabético de las 50 provincias espa?olas - a partir de 01nnn ?Lava/Araba y termina en 50nnn de Zaragoza. Códigos postales 51001 a 51005 se utilizan para las direcciones de
y 52001 a 52006 para las direcciones en
(los territorios espa?oles en el norte de ?frica). Hay un poco de confusión para los códigos postales Asturias que comienzan con los dígitos 33nnn (en lugar de 05nnn), porque antiguamente, era conocido por su nombre de la ciudad capital, . Ese es también el caso de Cantabria (39nnn), que fue conocida anteriormente como o La Rioja (26nnn) por .
14 Córdoba
40 Segovia
02 Albacete
15 La Coru?a
41 Sevilla
03 Alicante
29 Málaga
04 Almería
43 Tarragona
18 Granada
31 Navarra
06 Badajoz
19 Guadalajara
07 Islas Baleares (orden de Baleares)
20 Guipúzcoa
33 Asturias (orden de Oviedo)
46 Valencia
08 Barcelona
34 Palencia
47 Valladolid
35 Las Palmas
48 Vizcaya
10 Cáceres
36 Pontevedra
37 Salamanca
50 Zaragoza
12 Castellón
25 Lérida
38 Santa Cruz de Tenerife
13 Ciudad Real
26 La Rioja (orden de Logro?o)
39 Cantabria (orden de Santander)
52 Melilla
Smaller numbers in the south, bigger in the north
There's a service for mapping between street / city and postal code at
All French addresses use a postal code ("code postal" in French), written before the commune name on the same line.
These postal codes are not assigned up to the street level, but are assigned for each postal distribution area organized from a local post office.
French postal codes have 5 digits, generally with the following format when based on local geography:
1-2 : number of the metropolitan , from 01 to 95.
The postal code may have a leading zero because 01 to 09 are valid department numbers.
Postal codes for locations in Corsica keep using the prefix "20" and not the two distinct department codes "2A" and "2B" assigned later by INSEE.
The new department of Rh?ne and the new Métropole de Lyon (both created in 2015) continue to use the same prefix "69" assigned to the previous department of Rh?ne.
3-5 : number of the postal distribution areas organized by post offices located in that department. The number "000" is used in most departments in its main city.
or outside metropolitan France:
1-3 : Overseas departments and collectivities, numbered between 971 and 989 (like INSEE codes).
4-5 : Postal distribution area organized by post offices located in that department or collectivity (here also "00" is also used in their main city).
or nationwide special postal codes:
1-2 : 99 for institutions (army), or for special locations abroad, or for large organisations (CEDEX).
3-5 : special distribution codes for each specific institution or organisation.
Important:
French postal codes must never be confused with 5-figures INSEE codes assigned to each commune, and which are almost always different in their last digits.
Postal codes have been assigned historically by the French Post, as suited best for their postal needs:
There exists additional (non-strictly geographical) postal codes for P.O. boxes, or special "CEDEX" codes for organisations with special distribution (e.g. businesses receiving large amount of mails).
In most communes, there's just just one postal geographical code, but the effective postal distribution areas have no relation to commune boundaries.
Several communes may share the same postal code with other nearby small communes.
The postal distribution areas may even exceed the borders of arrondissements (counties) or even departments or regions by several kilometers, or just for houses in the same street separating two communes, or for houses accessible only by a road coming from another commune.
In large metropoles (Paris, Lyon, Marseille) the standard postal codes are simply assigned with one for each city district (municipal arrondissement) (e.g. Lyon uses postal codes 69001 to 69009).
Others cities may also have more than one postal code (e.g. Saint-?tienne-sur-Loire: 4...) (which could also span other nearby communes).
Isolated locations anywhere may use the postal code of another nearby office which delivers them post the best, even if they are otherwise located within another postal distribution area.
Postal codes may eventually change over time when post offices are reorganized, or after several communes have merged, so that they'll use the same (but this is not always true as postal codes may still be useful to distinguish postal addresses if there are homonymous streets or locations after the merge).
Shown format is ISO format for postal code use in Croatia, in standard use is also 5 digits number without "HR-" prefix.
The code is divide by bigger city in which Croatian Post have major distributing center :
10000 Zagreb Area
20000 Dubrovnik Area
21000 Split Area
22000 ?ibenik Area
23000 Zadar Area
31000 Osijek Area
32000 Vukovar Area
33000 Virovitica Area
34000 Po?ega Area
35000 Slavonski Brod Area
40000 ?akovec Area
42000 Vara?din Area
43000 Bjelovar Area
44000 Sisak Area
47000 Karlovac Area
48000 Koprivnica Area
49000 Krapina Area
51000 Rijeka Area
52000 Pazin Area
53000 Gospi? Area
Mostly Post use central city of County for distributing center. Also Croatian telecom use first two digits for prefix number when you call phone number in Croatia.
Postal code is assigned to post office, not particularly for area, so it will be nice to submit coordinate of postal office with exact postal code.
All code are freely available (and very accurate) on Croatian Post .
that Croatian postcode database may be imported in OSM.
Every postcode in Budapest (the capital of Hungary) starts with number one, like this: 1nnn. Then the 2nd and 3rd character tell the districts (23 districts exist is Budapest). So a postcode like 1028 can be found in the 2nd district within the city.
Other areas in the country has different method, follows clockwise order from NortEast (3nnn) to NorthWest (9nnn), however the Budapest agglomeration usually starts with number 2 (2nnn).
Dublin n(n)('W')
The Republic of Ireland currently does not use postcodes at all, the closest thing being the , of which only the Dublin ones are ever used on letters. A Dublin postal district is similar to the old pre-postcode UK ones, and is included on the postal town address line in the format "Dublin 15".
Odd-numbered postal districts (1-17) are north of the river Liffey, even-numbered ones (2-24 and 6W) south (with slight spillover in at least one river-spanning suburb). Dublin 6W is an anomaly to the system caused by address snobbery triggered by a boundary adjustment that threatened to include a slightly-upmarket district with its middle-class neighbours.
Cork's postal districts go from 1 to 4.
A project is in progress to devise and implement a countrywide postcode scheme, with 2011 the currently suggested date for a rollout. Although details of the scheme are not yet clear, Postcodes are likely to be street-level and at least at townland resolution in rural areas.
In India postal codes or PIN codes are 6 digits without any letter prefix or suffix.
Sample codes:
* 1xxxxx - Delhi and most North India
* 4xxxxx - Mumbai and most Western India
* 5xxxxx - Hyderabad
* 7xxxxx - Kolkatta and most Eastern India
* 6xxxxx - Chennai and most South India
On a general basis, they are on town level.
This cities have street level granularity:
Alessandra, Ancona,
La Spezia,
Reggio Calabria,
Reggio Emilia,
more info here:
unofficiale
Lithuania since 2005 has had a 5-digit postcode system, LT-xxxxx.
Current Lithuanian postcodes can be obtained using a search engine on the website of .
There was a four-digit system from independence until 2005, based upon the last four digits of the old USSR postcodes.
Latvian post codes are managed by Latvian Post. Code consists with letters LV and for digits like LV-xxxx
If code is in Riga then it is in interval 1000 - 2000.
Outside Riga codes are bigger than 2000.
You can find any Latvian post code by going to
The full postcode looks like MD-nnnn, where the first two numbers indicate the city/district, and the latter - the post office code.
65xx - Anenii Noi
67xx - Basarabeasca
31xx - B?l?i
47xx - Briceni
39xx - Cahul
73xx - Cantemir
44xx - C?l?ra?i
43xx - C?u?eni
61xx - Cead?r-Lunga
20xx - Chi?in?u
41xx - Cimi?lia
38xx - Comrat
48xx - Criuleni
51xx - Dondu?eni
52xx - Drochia
4571 - Cocieri
46xx - Edine?
59xx - F?le?ti
50xx - Flore?ti
49xx - Glodeni
34xx - H?ncesti
68xx - Ialoveni
63xx - Leova
64xx - Nisporeni
71xx - Ocni?a
35xx - Orhei
54xx - Rezina
56xx - R?scani
62xx - S?ngerei
30xx - Soroca
37xx - Str??eni
72xx - ?old?ne?ti
42xx - ?tefan Vod?
74xx - Taraclia
58xx - Telene?ti
36xx - Ungheni
the first two digits d the remainder denotes the delivery route, down to street side and segment. There is a scheme that uses a check digit to denote odd street number, even street number, or even boat moorings, which is easy enough to implement to check validity of addresses.
Postcode / area:
South East region (?stfold county)
Central East region
Central South region (Vestfold, Telemark counties)
South (Agder, Rogaland counties, Stavanger, Haugesund)
West (Hordaland county, Bergen)
North west region (?lesund, Molde)
Mid Central region (Tr?ndelag counties, Trondheim)
Low north (Nordland)
High north (Troms, Finnmark, Svalbard)
Nrk/YR is [] to make a free database
First digit corresponds to one of 10 mail sorting lines. Each base code has approximately the same number of addresses, numeric IDS ascend going southwards. See .
Directories are freely downloadable but copyright.
Database costs $.
0000 Northland, Northern and Western Auckland
1000 Central Auckland
2000 Southern and Eastern Auckland
3000 Waikato and Bay of Plenty
30xx Rotorua
31xx Tauranga/Whakatane
32xx Hamilton
4000 Taranaki, Hawke's Bay, Gisborne, Manawatu-Wanganui (not Horowhenua)
40xx Gisborne
41xx Napier/Hastings
44xx Palmerston North
5000 Horowhenua, Greater Wellington (includes Tawa but not the rest of Wellington City)
50xx Hutt Valley, Porirua/Tawa, Paraparaumu/Waikanae urban street addresses
55xx Levin
58xx Masterton
6000 Wellington City (not Tawa)
7000 Nelson, Marlborough, Tasman, West Coast, Canterbury (not Christchurch)
70xx Nelson
72xx Blenheim
74xx Rangiora
77xx Ashburton
79xx Timaru
8000 Christchurch
80xx urban street addresses
9000 Otago and Southland
90xx Dunedin
93xx Queenstown
94xx Oamaru
Like Croatia / Slovenia - assigned to the post office. In most cases first three digits identify city (nn-nxx).
Consult wikipedia for more details:
First two digits are marking the county (region). More details on
Not street level, usually in densly populated areas a street have more than one postcode, but where the population is more sparse there might be many streets per postcode. I did a fast count of the number of people per postcode and came up with 1000 per number, in Stockholm.
PO boxes and companies
Street addresses
PO boxes and companies
Street addresses
PO boxes and companies
Street addresses
Before the revision 951 xx
Top level post codes:
1000 Ljubljana
2000 Maribor
3000 Celje
4000 Kranj
5000 Nova Gorica
6000 Koper
7000 (unassigned)
8000 Novo mesto
9000 Murska Sobota
Like in Croatia ([Free_The_Postcode#HR HR]) postal codes in Slovenia are assigned to a post office, not to a particular geographic area, although an office has assigned places (city, villages...). Bigger companies (national television station, mobile operators, newspapers...) get their own 4-digit post code.
Post code finder and download:
the first two digits denote , as also used for vehicle licence plate prefix. Not street level.
nnnnn or nnn.
I had fun .
They hand it out free at the post office, and one finds no copyright notice on it.
The CDROM is better than their website,
, which doesn't expose the innards.
Administrative centre
01xxx-06xxx
07xxx-09xxx
10xxx-13xxx
100xx-Zhytomyr
14xxx-17xxx
140xx-Chernihiv
18xxx-20xxx
180xx-Cherkasy
21xxx-24xxx
210xx-Vinnytsia
25xxx-28xxx
250xx-Kirovohrad
29xxx-32xxx
290xx-Khmelnytskyi
33xxx-35xxx
330xx-Rivne
36xxx-39xxx
360xx-Poltava
40xxx-42xxx
400xx-Sumy
43xxx-45xxx
430xx-Lutsk
46xxx-49xxx
460xx-Ternopil
49xxx-53xxx
490xx-Dnipropetrovsk
54xxx-57xxx
540xx-Mykolaiv
58xxx-60xxx
580xx-Chernivtsi
61xxx-64xxx
610xx-611xx-Kharkiv
65xxx-69xxx
650xx-Odesa
69xxx-72xxx
690xx-Zaporizhzhia
73xxx-75xxx
730xx-Kherson
76xxx-78xxx
760xx-Ivano-Frankivsk
79xxx-82xxx
790xx-Lviv
83xxx-88xxx
830xx-Donetsk
88xxx-90xxx
880xx-Uzhhorod
91xxx-94xxx
910xx-Luhansk
97xxx-98xxx
95000-Simferopol
a(a)n(n|a) naa
the initial alpha(s) are a mnemonic for city or region. All of Northern Ireland is BTn(n), despite containing several cities. London on the other hand is divided into several regions. Quite complex to parse/validate. Mnemonic look-up tables will be needed.
Girobank post codes are an exception (GIR naa) - see the
The first part of the postcode is known as the "Outward" part, and the second part is the "Inward" part.
Typically, the "Outward" part relates to one, and only one postal town, though there are some exceptions.
A lot of the impetus for the Free The Postcode project came from the UK, where postcode data was not freely available. To some extent the project has succeeded, as Ordnance Survey were forced to release postcode locations data for Great Britain as part of the their open data releases, in a dataset called Code-Point. See . However that dataset only has centroid points, whereas a postcodes are actually polygons, or even a "point cloud", and so the Free The Postcode dataset still can potentially add value in the UK. Even so, the OS data release rather reduces the project's value in the UK, but Free The Postcode helped to make that happen!
The OS Opendata does not include Northern Ireland postcodes (which all begin BT). However these postcodes (along with the Great Britain codes) are part of the Office of National Statistics (ONS) Postcode Directory (). It is essential to note that the Northern Ireland postcodes in this dataset have eastings and northings on the OSI, not the OSGB grid.
The ONS dataset also contains creation and expiry dates of postcodes where known, and it includes some postcodes (denoted by an expiry date in the past) which are no longer current, hence it is important to check the expiry date when there is no interest in obsolete postcodes.
There's an old page tracking UK coverage at
Postcodes have been allocated for the Isle of Man (IM) and the Channel Islands (GU, JE). These are formatted and allocated in an identical manner to the UK. The postcodes are present in the ONS dataset but unfortunately without coordinates.
Several of the UK's Overseas Territories have now been allocated a postcode (one single postcode per territory). They are generally a four letter code (based on the territory name), followed by 1ZZ. One exception is for Gibraltar, which uses a postcode of GX11 1AA.
has an apparently full list of them.
The Gibraltarian authorities have stated that GX11 1AA is a temporary postcode until they devise their own system, based on that of the UK. .
(aa) nnnnn(-nnnn)
the alphas denote state, the nnnnn seem to be low in the Eastern US, high in the West. The -nnnn suffix brings zipcodes down to the carrier level.
The street address and zip+4 is all the address that is needed in the USA.
Northern Region (Gauteng, Mpumalanga, most of North West, Limpopo)
Eastern Region (Kwa Zulu Natal, eastern part of Eastern Cape)
Southern Region (Eastern Cape, eastern parts of Wetsern Cape)
Western Region (Western Cape (Cape Town and West Coast), Northern Cape)
Central Region (Northern Cape and Free State) (excluding , formerly South West Africa)
As stated on the website itself. PLEASE ONLY ENTER DATA YOU YOURSELF HAVE COLLECTED WITH A GPS OR DERIVED FROM COPYRIGHT-FREE DATA. Other data may be copyrighted!
Alongside the data links the website also mentions the words 'public domain'.
for more detail (discussions)
This article or section may contain out-of-date information. The information is no longer correct, or no longer has relevance. If you know about the current state of affairs, please help keep everyone informed by updating this information. ()
— mirror of UK database available in other formats
FTP will be upgraded to take other postcodes and also train stations. Until then, I'm dumping the data here: