A while ago I came across a great UK postcode lookup service http://www.ernestmarples.com/ and wrote a post about it here.
Just went back to it a few days ago and unfortunately the service has been suspended. Luckily I didn’t have any applications using it (I mostly use the Google or Yahoo) – but it was a damn fast way to just get the co-ordinates of a UK postcode.
It’s just a shame that such a useful service has been shut down – obviously postcode data is worth a lot of money to Royal Mail – but surely more economic value could be extracted if postcodes were free.
If you are interested in how this pans out there is a blog.