Tip finder

[pezholio]

Been fiddling around with a few bits of Warwickshire Open Data for a
while now, and have finally made something which (for me at least)
satisfies a real need - I present to you, the tip finder!

http://www.pezholio.co.uk/warwickshire/

Simply choose the type of waste, enter a postcode and you'll be
directed to the nearest recycling centre that takes that waste.

As well as using the existing recycling centre dataset, I've also
screen scraped the recycling centre web pages to figure out what
centre takes what type of waste and get the opening times. I've also
used the Google Maps API to show directions to each centre from the
given postcode, which can also be printed off (the directions have a
print-friendly stylesheet too). To get the latitude and longitude of
the postcode, I've used my own UK Postcodes webservice (www.uk-
postcodes.com)

Be interested to know everyone's thoughts

Cheers

Stu

[Jim Morton]

This is great stuff, the need for screen-scraping reminds me that as
an organisation that we need to get more of our web content
information (such as the opening times and waste types in this
instance) in more useful, structured data formats.

Hopefully showing the council what can be achieved will help to get
them to focus on organising information more effectively, thereby
making life easier for anyone with an idea for an app like this.