Many years ago I developed my first site that made use of UK Postcodes in order to locate train stations close to specific venues. At that time I investigated postcode databases, and what was available, I quickly realized that it was going to be very expensive to obtain a proper full postcode database, and eventually had to make do with a much more basic cut down version, which was generally fine for what I needed.

Ever since that first website I've messed with geolocation stuff, and in my current job I have worked with full postcode databases, and

various pay-per-lookup services. The amount of different postcode data varies quite a bit, from 'outcode' only data sets with just the first part of the postcode (which you can generally find for free), to full data sets with each and every address, postcode, and latitude/longitude data.

It has long been a desire for many web developers to be able to use full data sets, but for most of us it's impossible to cover the kind of costs involved in obtaining a proper license for this data.

Recently there have been several developments in the postcode data area. ErnestMarples.com was setup to provide a free look up service, but within weeks they were contacted by the lawyers acting for Royal Mail and told to take down the service.

Since then a lot of media coverage has occurred (The Guardian, The Register), and a petition has been set up.

Personally I think this kind of data should be free to use (certainly for non-commercial use). It allows us to people better websites, that provide content that is much more relevant to the visitor.

So get signing that petition people!

Current options for free postcode data includes the data set from Geonames.org and the leaked data set that's available from wikileaks.org (although using that might get you into trouble. ;).

Update: There's also a been a request made on the OPSI site for the Postcode data to be made avilable, you can vote here.

I posted up my first YouTube video just recently, and while I've created some videos in the past this is the first public one, which meant I had one additional thing to consider, namely I had to find some suitable music that fit the video, but most importantly I was allowed to use for "Free".

A quick search on the net for 'Free Music' will bring up a lot of results, but the vast majority tend to be "Royalty Free" music, rather than really "Free". I understand that people want to be paid for their work, that's only natural, but these days with the amount of internet videos knocking around I figured there must be some sources of really free music and sound effects.

Eventually I came across this site, Incompetech, which has a large library of music, covering many different genres, and all created by one person, Kevin MacLeod. All the music is covered by a CC license, and he's quite happy for people to use it as long as he gets credit for his work.

For this particular video, I also needed some sound effects, and again I found a lot of 'Royalty Free' sites, but eventually I discovered FreeSounds. This site also has a large and varied library of sounds, again covered by CC licenses, I haven't had a chance to fully look through the site, but I did find the sounds I needed pretty quickly.

I'm sure I'll be using both of these sites again in future video projects.

Finally, as this is a post about my experiences in creating my first YouTube video, I might as well link to it, the video itself is nothing special, and will probably only be of interest to those that know the person starring in it.  But nevertheless, here it is: BigFoot Revealed.

Of course the fact that I'm using a piece of copyrighted film footage at the beginning of the video isn't lost on me.. In my defense, it's fairly short, and poor quality.. :)