• Core data updates
• Updated statistics file available for download updated Dec '02
• Internet radio pages

LOCAL SCRIPT NAMES
The major development in the database has been the inclusion of local script names, held as ASCII high-bit characters, in response to customer demand when developing sites requiring localisation. 

Countries included (or waiting be be incorporated into the existing records) are:

• China - around 12,000 places updating places with population and postcodes
• Taiwan - around 80 places
• Greece - around 12,000 places
• Egypt, Israel, Russia, Ukraine

In addition, I am working with an Egyptian GIS company to acquire data for other Arab countries.

VARIANT NAMES
Coverage of variant names, especially language variants, has been extended. The types of variant have been categorised so that I can extract just language variants, or just English versions of place (and country and administrative areas). There are now variant names in 100 languages, and because of the way in which the data is linked, I can extract more important places as well as other selections.

POSTCODES
More postcodes are being incorporated into the database as well as following through the changes to codes in El Salvador, Georgia and the Ukraine. The latter has been especially interesting, since much of the data is currently only available in the Russian transliteration (eg using 'g' instead of the Ukrainian 'h'), so it has required a double conversion to ensure that the old name version is retained as a variant.

The total number of places with postcodes is 1,662,079 which, with places that have more than one postcode reference, contain a total of 2,119,271 postcodes.

UPDATED FACTS AND FIGURES
The current distribution of numbers across the broad groupings of places

Each category is exclusive, eg a place which appears in Group 1 is not subsequently counted again in a lower group.

Bear in mind, though, that there are also some 1.35 million records without geocoding. These are mainly postcode records which are in the process of being geocoded, although there will always be a residue of very small places and settlements (eg farms) which cannot be geocoded.

For detailed statistics, a quote or a tailored sample, please contact ALLM.

Click here to download a copy of the data files or here to read the documents describing the new features.

INTERNET RADIO
By way of diversion, there is a new section on Internet Radio. One of the best things about broadband access has been finding all the Internet radio stations that are available, so these pages will provide a guide to sources and search tools for radio stations and highlight some personal favourites. This page will be uploaded every so often but maintained offline regularly, so do e-mail to request updates.

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