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I'm looking for a global geoapi for the places.

I see Facebook places, google places, simplegeo, factual etc...

Why not create an API that includes all places? Free and easily accessible as OpenStreetMap for the webmapping ?

If people are interested, write me!

Thanks

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what do you want you geo place api to do? Geonames is the best of the 'free' bunch - geonames.org/export/ws-overview.html – Mapperz♦ Jun 12 '12 at 15:52
I would like to start a big project with a quality assurance of the places from private enterprises (Facebook, Google...) – Julien Jun 12 '12 at 16:10
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sounds like a very expensive venture. do you have billions of capital? - private/commercial will charge for this data. – Mapperz♦ Jun 12 '12 at 16:48
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You like this project ? s3.amazonaws.com/simplegeo-public/places_dump_20110628.zip ... A good start !! – Julien Jun 12 '12 at 16:55

1 Answer

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GeoNames has many different types of web service

Placenames:

http://www.geonames.org/export/web-services.html#findNearbyPlaceName

Webservice Type : REST

Url : api.geonames.org/findNearbyPlaceName?

Parameters : lat,lng,

lang: language of returned 'name' element (the pseudo language code 'local' will return it in local language),
radius: radius in km (optional), maxRows: max number of rows (default 10)
style: SHORT,MEDIUM,LONG,FULL (default = MEDIUM), verbosity of returned xml document
localCountry: in border areas this parameter will restrict the search on the local country, value=true

Result : returns the closest populated place for the lat/lng query as xml document. The unit of the distance element is 'km'.

Example:

http://api.geonames.org/findNearbyPlaceName?lat=47.3&lng=9&username=demo

Response (XML)

<geoname><toponymName>Chrüzegg</toponymName><name>Chrüzegg</name><lat>47.2985</lat><lng>9.01488</lng><geonameId>7910950</geonameId><countryCode>CH</countryCode><countryName>Switzerland</countryName><fcl>P</fcl><fcode>PPLX</fcode><distance>1.13459</distance></geoname></geonames>
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