[Gramps-users] Geonames

[Gerald B. <ger...@gm...>]

All -- I don't know if this has been highlighted before:

Geonames

The GeoNames geographical database is available for download free of
charge under a creative commons attribution license. It contains over
eight million geographical names and consists of 6.5 million unique
features whereof 2.2 million populated places and 1.8 million
alternate names. All features are categorized into one out of nine
feature classes and further subcategorized into one out of 645 feature
codes. (more statistics ...).
The data is accessible free of charge through a number of webservices
and a daily database export. GeoNames is already serving up to over 3
million web service requests per day.

GeoNames is integrating geographical data such as names of places in
various languages, elevation, population and others from various
sources. All lat/long coordinates are in WGS84 (World Geodetic System
1984). Users may manually edit, correct and add new names using a user
friendly wiki interface.

Here is a good interview with the founder, Marc Wick:

http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/index.php/id;664453065;fp;4;fpid;792452

I'm wondering if this might be a project we could use within gramps --
perhaps as an adjunct to Places and Addresses (though I hope that this
two converge one day soon!)