The best way to spot future trends in technology is to check what Apple and Google are investing in. Apple’s products show what the near future is, and their design and marketing almost force this to be the future, no matter what. Google is more into the longer term.

The present and immediate future is the iPhone. Google is putting an awful lot of effort into the mobile space with the release of its “G-phone”, a device built by HTC, running on T-Mobile, with an operating system supplied by Google.

Look closely at the mobile software on both phones and you’ll find that location features heavily. When you take pictures with the iPhone it asks if you want to embed the location of the photos in the data being stored. The mapping software in the iPhone knows where you are.

Location data is a bit rough with the older iPhone, because it is asking local mobile masts for the locations. But the newer version uses global positioning system (GPS) and gets a very accurate prediction. From now on we can expect phones to be able to tag our locations when we create content, make calls or show our friends where we are on a map. Eventually all phones will have GPS capabilities. But even now most phones can show our location.

Two Irish companies, Segala and Locle, are working on location-based applications that will run on mobile phones with or without GPS. Users will be able to send a text to all their friends around Dublin city centre, for example, suggesting they meet for coffee.

Google Maps already allows people to leave their own notes on maps, adding business listings, photos, videos and, of course, ads. People will soon start to correct and refine maps like they do with Wikipedia, the people-powered encyclopaedia. This will make information on maps more accurate.

With all these location services coming online, and devices such as laptops and mobile phones getting GPS, why is the Irish government still harping on about introducing postal codes? We’ve had consultation after consultation and we were about to move forward when Noel Dempsey, the former communications minister, put the idea on hold in August 2007. Nothing has changed since.

Why do we need a postcode if we can log on to Amazon.com, order our books and tell the site our GPS coordinates? Or if we don’t have a GPS device, we just click on a Google Map, zoom into where our house is and tell Amazon: “there I am; remember that for next time, too”.

There’s always one, and the “but” here is that Google Maps for Ireland are quite poor outside of urban centres. The road to West Cork disappeared a little bit outside Cork city on Google Maps up to recently. Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSI) has a near monopoly on accurate mapping in Ireland and its data doesn’t come cheap.

When it comes to postal addresses though, it’s An Post and not the OSI that has the most accurate database. An Post knows where every single house is, even O’Sullivan’s up the hill outside Dingle, the one that’s not that other O’Sullivan’s. Unfortunately that database is kept in the heads of post office staff.

An Post and its unions clearly have an advantage here and will do their best to keep this amazing database private. The argument in favour of postal codes was that it would route around the hard-to-access data that An Post had on addresses. But when everyone is going to be GPS-equipped in the medium to long term, this idea doesn’t make sense any more. We will all eventually be able to broadcast our location with GPS devices.

Instead of creating yet another system and more databases, why not just get the OSI to share detail with Google and others so that everyone can point out their location on a map? Why not just flick a switch and share data instead of building something new that won’t last?

Not everyone has a computer, of course. What of the elderly people that don’t even have an internet connection? But they probably do have a mobile, if the ComReg figures of 120%+ mobile penetration rates are to be believed. While their location won’t be as exact as clicking on a map or GPS, it will be accurate enough to get any delivery van to their door.

There are great opportunities for consumers and businesses if we forget about the quaint idea of postcodes and use a standard worldwide system for locations that already exists. We can start in Ireland by freely giving away basic mapping information, and it can be done without more consultations and tenders.

Damien Mulley runs Mulley Communications, a communications training company in Cork. Mulley.net, his blog, covers technology, communications and politics

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