GeoNames founder opens up the GIS world

How can application, web, mobile and software developers can use GeoNames?

Location and places are an integral part of many applications. Location is not only important for tourism and real estate sites. Many social networks have a local aspect and want to connect people and things that are in the neighbourhood. Applications focusing on dating, cars, events or leisure all have a geographical relation. Common use cases are the place name search and postal code search, hierarchical administration information for navigation or geocoding of items.

What are some examples of business/enterprise uses for GeoName technology?

LinkedIn is using GeoNames for searching and geocoding. BBC is using GeoNames to power internal applications. Before switching to GeoNames they were using their proprietary aggregation of freely available geo data. Mulitmap is combining GeoNames with commercial data and is using GeoNames data to power the search function on their web site.

How do Microsoft Popfly and Nike each respectively use GeoName?

Microsoft Popfly is a mashup tool, something like Yahoo! Pipes but with an easier to use Graphical User Interface (GUI). With Popfly, mashups can be created with simple drag and drop of so-called 'blocks'. GeoNames is one of these predefined blocks and it is used for geo-coding and reverse geo-coding. The GeoNames block is accessing the GeoNames web service transparently for the mashup creator.

Nike is using a couple of search services for the nikeplus website.

Can and do individuals use GeoNames as well?

GeoNames is mainly a project for application developers to integrate and use the data or web services for an application. Individuals can use GeoNames to search for places or postal codes. The search helps find a lot of places no other search engine will find. Many users use the Google Earth layer for GeoNames in regions where Google Earth has only rudimentary place name coverage. It helps them discover the name of places.

Where is GeoName's largest user base?

I would think the most active users come from Spain. France is also very active.

What is the most unique application you have seen GeoNames used in?

There are a lot of cool and unique applications using GeoNames. One that strikes me particularly is HeyWhatsThat which provides panoramic sketches using digital elevation models and displays the names of visible peaks. GeoNames is used to help determine the names of peaks.

How much time per week, on average, do you spend working on the site and project?

The front end of the site itself needs hardly any work. What needs a lot of work is answering emails and helping to integrate new data. This easily sums up to a couple of hours per day.