Where to find free or paid database of European postal addresses? - database

I'm searching for database for delivery service. Delivery rate calculates based on ZIP code. The only good product I found is geopostcodes.com, is there any more? E.g. geonames.org is good but contains not enough data.

How about this free solution http://download.geonames.org/export/zip/.

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Datasets for clustering algorithms

I am asked to give a lecture on clustering algorithms for an audience that is not very technical. With that in mind, I wanted to do a simple exercise where I will ask the audience to identify groups from a dataset. However, I cannot find good datasets that could be usable for this purpose.
Is there a dataset of customers and some products they have bought that I can use for this purpose? Or any other dataset that might look suitable!
I can suggest a simple geo location database for example all cities in germany. I think you can find it for free. Or you can look for the NASA sky data. Would be nice to cluster too.
Here is the Ta-Feng dataset containing 4 months of transactions. Got it from Prof. Chun Nan himself. It is now stored in my dropbox folder: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tsd5zd8a7afmzs7/D11-02.ZIP?dl=0 The first line of each file shows the column names in Chinese. In English is:
Date; Membership Card ID; Product Category; Product Code; Quantity; Total Transaction Amount (in TWD)

Official/Accurate database of Time Zones by city/state or zip or phone

USPS does not have on official listing of Time Zones by Zip Code. They have up to date street names, 2006/7 lat/lng and up to date city/states.
Also, AT&T (phone) does not have any time zone data from phone area codes (at least they said they don't)
I am looking for the most accurate way to get time zones by either zip code, city or phone number. Whatever is more likely to be accurate. I can make sure the results are not drastically off by looking at the state., but that could still be an hour off.
The focus here is accuracy. What is the most reliable way and/or most trusted source(s). Any help would be appreciated. If it costs something, then that is OK. Don't withhold the suggestion, especially if you think you can speak to its accuracy.
The concern about Phone Number is that some people use out of state area codes from VoIP services. But if that is the most up to date way, we might just use it anyway.
Started with states, had a co-worker come up with the zip codes that were not in the biggest TZ for their state. I don't know how he did it but it was a manual process.
For fun, look up Time In Indiana on Wikipedia. It is a joke-looking history.
GeoNames looks good for an API. Get lat/lng from zip and then TZ
A friend used this for an opensource project: http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm - he had no complaints about its accuracy, but that is hearsay...
ZIP Codes are more accurate and that is becoming truer by the day as more people are keeping cell numbers when they relocate to different areas of the country and - as you mentioned- VoIP usage is increasing. Obviously, good data will accurately reflect daylight savings (including a few areas like Arizona that do not observe it -hard to believe, but true). There is a lot of helpful information here greatdata.com including a free lookup tool where you can enter a ZIP Code or Area Code and get the time zone (plus a lot more). Here is the commercial data for your situation Area Code Database by ZIP Code
Chronomouse.js is a library that helps you get the current time, GMT offset, time zone name, location, capital city, daylight savings laws, or daylight savings status for any US/Canada area code, or any country code (essentially, from any phone number).
For example:
console.log ( getLocalInfo('212',{zone_display: 'area'}).time.zone );
// EST
More documentation and examples are available at www.chronomouse.com
Note: I am the author of this library.

UK Zip Code List - Nearest Five Zip List

Does anyone know of a free postcode CSV for UK? I have one for the USA but can't fined a UK equivalent.
I want to implement nearest Five kind of logic based on long, Lat.
Kindly let me know if any one is aware.
Regards,
Jigar
It looks like you need to explore the Ordnance Survey OpenData dataset.
The UK doesn't have zip codes; rather, it has postcodes, which are much more precise. For example the building where I work has a postcode to itself, BS1 2PH.
Commercial organisations that validate postcodes use the Postcode Address File, which is commercially licensed (and expensive!), mostly as maintaining a per-premise address format is very time-consuming.
In practice most Web sites. etc. use Web services such as Postcode Anywhere which aggregate and resell the data.

Technological solutions for extremely long term data archiving?

Are there any good technical solutions for extremely long term archiving of data, for example for 25 to 100 years?
Somehow I just don't have a lot of confidence that a SQL 2000 backup file will be usable in court cases or for historians in 25 to 100 years.
This is a customer requirement, not just speculation.
This is comparable to trying to trying to do something useful with a back up for ENIAC or reading Atari Writer wordprocesing files. The hardware doesn't necessarily exist anymore, the storage media is likely corrupt, the professionals for using the technology probably don't exist anymore, etc.
Actually, printing on Acid-free paper is probably a much better solution than any more advanced technological one. It is much more likely that the IT tech of +100 years will be able to high-speed scan and load print than any digital data storage based on 100 year-old media access HW, technology and standards, 100 year-old disk/file format standards and 100 year-old data encoding standards.
Disagree? I've got a whole attic full of vinyl CD's, 8-tracks, cassette tapes, floppy disks (4 different densities!) that argue otherwise. And they are only 20 years old! (OK, the 8-tracks are closer to 30).
The fact is that there is only one data storage & archiving technology that has ever withstood the test of time over 100 years or more and still been cost effectively retrievable, and thats writing/printing on physical media.
My advice? Don't trust any archival strategy until it's been tested, and there's only one that has passed the 100-year test so far.
You'll need to convert to text - perhaps XML.
Then upload it to the cloud, make archival copies etc.
I think you need to pick a multi-modal approach.
If you have the budget: http://www.archives.gov/era/papers/thic-04.html
<joke>Print it.</joke>
script the data into flat files (either one file per table or summarize multiple tables into a file), write them to high end archival CDs. in 100 years they will have to load this data into whatever "database" they have, so so some manual conversion will be necessary, so a nice schema script dump into a single file would help the poor guy trying to read these files and make the proper joins.
EDIT
offer the client a service contract, where you make sure they are up to date with the latest archival technology on a yearly basis. this could be a good thing $
I suggest you consult a specialist company in this field.
You might also be interested in this article:
Strategies for long-term data retention
It might help to speak to one of those companies/organisations
I don't know if anyone reads this thread or not anymore but there is a really good solution for this.
There is a new company called Millenniata, the have a product called M-Disc. The M-Disc is essentially a DVD made out of rock like materials that give it an estimated shelf life of 1,000 years +. You have to have a special DVD burner to burn the DVD's but it is not that expensive. Plus any normal DVD reader can read them. I have a professor at BYU that helped form this company, it is some pretty cool technology. Good Luck.
Link to M-Disc Website

Where can I get postal codes for all countries?

I once read about an open source database for postal codes with geolocation data but now I can't remember its name. Can someone help?
My guess is that your lost friend is GeoNames.
Find all countries at GeoNames or run a ready-parsed MySQL script (INSERTs):
Download delivery_zip.zip (11 Mb)
You're looking for an Open GIS database - the main keyword being "GIS". This will help you find results.
The information you're looking for is usually Commercial grade (i.e. you need to pay for the data), but you can see what's available on the open-source GIS websites:
http://www.osgeo.org/
http://opensourcegis.org/
http://freegis.org/
I'm currently using this one: https://www.back4app.com/database/back4app/zip-codes-all-countries-in-the-world it's free and very useful!
It's also possible to collaborate with this dataset, in order to improve it even more. :)
Yes Geonames is the place. To be more specific as slacy said
https://download.geonames.org/export/zip/
It has a list of countries' postal codes and it has an allCountries zip file.
And the data is updated daily.
Checkout postal code database . Its low cost,free updates as well for over a year.
Video demonstration of the database and supported fields on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzjHzMDKyYw

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