Exciting to (finally) see a freely available Web service for looking up Member of Parliament in Canada based on a postal code.

Historically, the various licensing costs and restrictions on the data required to support this service made it hard to provide as a "free as in free beer" service to organizations that wanted to make use of the data in advocacy applications and so on.

It seems those barriers have been lowered, as Cory Horner from the How'd They Vote team announces the service and speaks to the licensing questions:

I am pleased to present, at long last, a Postal Code to Member of Parliament web service:

http://howdtheyvote.ca/news.php?i=free-postal-code-lookup-service

Sadly the raw data cannot be shared, but fortunately the terms of the licence dictate that its use in a web service is permitted.

Russell McOrmond, a pioneer in this area, pressed Cory about lookups based on geolocation, i.e., enabling an end-user to click on a map and receive information on their Member of Parliament (made difficult by the nature of riding boundaries). And it appears that Cory has added that functionality to the API also, so that latitude and longitude can be used instead of postal code in the API query.

The geeky among you might want to also know that the service using PostGIS as the spatial database.

Exciting times in Canada, as geeks start to put the Web services in place to enable more democracy-enabling technology.

(Thanks to Civic Access for the info.)

I stumbled on the "lifestream" blog of Cory O'Brien today. Being a fan of "lifestreams" (an aggregation of 'actions' taken on various sites) myself, I was interested to find that Cory's site was running on an lifestream aggregation platform called Sweet Cron, which was new to me. Sweet Cron is an open-source PHP-based application developed by "yongfook."

The developer, however, has since moved his own lifestream/blog to the free service called Posterous. Posterous, like Tumblr makes blogging easy, which is great. However, Posterous, like Tumblr, also has a very opaque business plan. Call me cynical: but I can't get my head around relying on "free" hosted Web services for more than transient projects. (I'm even starting to question my own previous musings about a "Software pyramid for a healthy non-profit".)

From the recent purchase of EtherPad by Google -- leaving even their paid customers in the lurch -- to the quiet shut down of free service TwitApps, it seems that hosted services -- paid or not -- can be volatile ground these days. There's a long list of web services that have joined the "dead pool" over the last few years -- I know that I've been bitten more than once (Stikipad, Ma.gnolia, etc.)

If you've read Free by Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson, you'll know that most of these services aren't free by any means; they are simply going for the largest market possible to make it feasible for 5% of users to pay the freight for the other 95%. If they can't reach the mass market necessary to succeed, troubling times lay ahead for the service's users.

Enough of these free services have shut down that I've started moving toward installed software again for my own personal needs. After enough wasted time looking for half-baked free services, I've found it becomes worthwhile to invest in running the service myself on my own infrastructure. Your mileage may vary of course.

All that said, I'm sincerely curious about what others are doing: Are you relying more-and-more on free services like Posterous and Tumblr? Do you think about the day of reckoning when, inevitability, they introduce a premium plan, sell your data, or show ads on your site? Do you back up your data regularly, or just have faith that all will be okay? Or, alternately, are you starting to dust off your old programming books and getting to work on your own solutions?

That's right. I'm hitting the road again to bring the "Web love" to magazine folks in Vancouver. This is the second-last stop on a cross-country tour that started in Toronto, got snowed-in in Halifax, and will conclude its first circuit in Edmonton at the end of March. So far, it's been a hell of a lot of fun -- the faculty is top-notch and the participants are reporting back that they've embarked on new Web initiatives already. What more could one ask?

So here are the details for Vancouver:

Magazines Canada, Centennial College and the British Columbia Magazines Publishers Association are proud to present Web Weekend Vancouver on Saturday, March 1 and Sunday, March 2 at Simon Fraser University in downtown Vancouver. There is only one week left to register for this unique event. Don't miss out! Register by February 20th.

Download the brochure here.

LEARN TO:

• Leverage the power of digital media
• Cost your online ventures
• Market your brand effectively
• Utilize the latest tools for measurement and analysis
• Build online communities
• Increase your online revenue streams

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

• Print and online editors
• Web development and I.T. staff
• Publishers
• Designers
• Circulators
• Advertising sales Managers

HOW MUCH?

Magazines Canada members, British Columbia Association of Magazines Publishers members and students: $495, others: $750

Tuition includes all materials, coffee breaks, breakfast, lunch and access to a dedicated Web Weekend Continuing Ed Forum.

WHEN?

Saturday, March 1 and Sunday, March 2, 2008 (Saturday & Sunday)

WHERE?

Simon Fraser University, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

Look forward to seeing you there!