Slashgeo Log In
New Geocode Format with Short URL Service
posted by lxnyce
on Wednesday February 27, @11:26AM
Permalink
Trackback URI
Slashdotthis
Diggthis
Del.icio.us
from the hashing-the-world dept.
Permalink
Trackback URI
Slashdotthis
Diggthis
Del.icio.us
from the hashing-the-world dept.
Anonymous Voxel writes "A new geocoding format and a web service which explores it have been made public yesterday at geohash.org.
According to the Wikipedia article, Geohashes offer properties like arbitrary precision, similar prefixes for nearby positions, and the possibility of gradually removing characters from the end of the code to reduce its size (and gradually lose precision). The algorithm has been put in the public domain, which is interesting, as Microsoft holds a patent on an algorithm with similar purposes." Added a few geocoding services below in related stories.
According to the Wikipedia article, Geohashes offer properties like arbitrary precision, similar prefixes for nearby positions, and the possibility of gradually removing characters from the end of the code to reduce its size (and gradually lose precision). The algorithm has been put in the public domain, which is interesting, as Microsoft holds a patent on an algorithm with similar purposes." Added a few geocoding services below in related stories.
Related Stories
Free Batch Geocoding Service 4 comments
[+]
Phillip Holmstrand writes "I put together something that will allow anyone to run batch geocoding right from their web browser for free. It uses Yahoo's REST Geocoding engine, which will allow for up to 50,000 geocodes per day. The unique piece is that I have put it together so you can basically copy/paste straight from a spreadsheet into the tool to geocode. The results can then be copy/pasted right back into Excel for further use or imported into a database. It also plots the first 100 points on a map."
Virtual Earth Geocoding Updated
[+]
The VE4Gov blog informs us that Microsoft's Virtual Earth now provide more accurate geocoding. From the entry: "Virtual Earth was recently updated to provide higher accuracy geocoding--the process of assigning geographic identifiers (such as codes or geographic coordinates expressed as latitude-longitude) to map features and other data records. Most geocoders on the web today approximate a local address. Microsoft is now using the Group 1 Rooftop Geocoder, which contains geocoding information for approximately 40% of the addresses in the United States, particularly those concentrated in denser, urban cores."
GeoNames Does Geocoding for Microsoft's Popfly
[+]
The Geonames blog informs us the new Popfly mashup tool uses Geonames for geocoding. From the blog: " Popfly is kind of a foolproof, slick version of Yahoo! pipes based on the Silverlight browser plugin. For geocoding there is a predefined block GeoNames to access geonames.org web services."
Industry: Reverse Geocode with Google Maps API
[+]
Mapperz announces a reverse geocoding solution created by Nico Goeminne. They report getting feedback from the Google's Maps API Team confirming it's fine to use under the Google Maps API Terms of Service. Nico kindly shares his algorithm and logic behind the code.
Batch Geocoding for Europe via Yahoo! REST Geocoding Engine
[+]
Via Spatially Adjusted, I learned the BatchGeocode.com free tool now supports European countries: "Yahoo Maps Added Recently added support for geocoding in Europe. Now you can geocode and get map coordinates for these countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, France, and Italy. [other countries have limited support, see the blog entry]" See the previous story on BatchGeocode.com and other related stories below.
OpenGeocoding.org
[+]
I recently stumbled onto the OpenGeocoding.org website: "What?
This site contains two applications. One is submitting the address and another one is geocoding application. The geocoding application will retrieved the information about the address either from database or from Google Maps.
This site offers geocoding service for users and offers several output format.
Why?
The attempts to create an open source server hosting geocoded addresses which could be retrieved through querying them have even been very scarce.
This site offer free geocoding, implement gathering data by and for community and independent from commercial solution." I copied below a few related tools previously discussed.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
