GeoPlaceMatch and Open Places
Sam Critchley
Sam Critchley
steveneHP
Looking at the slides, I don't see any methods for validation and
scrubbing out the garbage. If an app was to use that service how
would it know what places were real vs. garbage and graffiti?
Maybe I'm missing a lot, not being at the session and just having
slides to look at. What are the plans to have data validated? Would
it be by the contributing company? Maybe it's just an issue if you
are collecting places directly from the client. If you only accept
data that the contributing service would serve to its own customers
then maybe you're onto something.
-Steve
On Apr 5, 12:24 pm, Sam Critchley <scritch...@gypsii.com> wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I'm not at Where 2.0 or WhereCamp, but I did see the notification of the mailing-list creation come up on geowanking. At WhereCampEU, a couple of weeks ago in London, Martijn van Exel ran a session entitled "Open Places" (and I ran one called "The Race For the Place"), with the idea being getting together to build a distributed open database of POIs. That's the baseline idea.
>
> We fleshed this out a bit more at the GyPSii office a week or so ago and started talking about ideas for a Usenet-style POI distribution setup where servers "peer" with each other for the exchange of POIs. Just like Usenet, you could peer certain categories of POI for certain geographies. Then services could download sets of POIs or request POIs near a certain geo, from whichever server they wanted.
>
> Is this the kind of concept you were talking about at WhereCamp?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sam
>
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Grant Ritchie (Locationary.com)
building and where we see our value in this ecosystem. Instead of the
Usenet framework, I see the solution more like a "global DNS for local
data" because of the issues in cleaning and keeping the database
fresh. The Usenet system has all peers ranked equally, but IMHO, there
needs to be a global community authority focused on cleaning and
maintaining the data.
With this "global DNS for local data", local businesses get control of
their information while websites and mobile apps get a free way to
access the world's local data, while maximizing the availability of
local ads to monetize their applications. Furthermore, in addition to
lat/long, address, name, etc., the system we're building supports the
exchange of structured data like hours of operation, products &
services, coupons, events, job postings and rich media. The goal is
real-time structured updates to every every website and mobile app so
they can use it however they need to meet their users' needs. I've
been working with other like-minded people under the Locationary
Foundation to create this DNS-like system. My hope is that this
Foundation can be a community-lead initiative to provide the necessary
thought-leadership to bring these goals about and to manage the
system. (We need and welcome your help, so if you want to be involved,
please let me know!)
Our separate company Locationary.com is supporting this initiative by
building a global army of users who focus on keeping places in their
neighborhoods updated. They compete against each other to collect and
verify data to keep it clean and fresh. Locationary's army is now in
over 70 countries and we've finished seeding the US and Canada, and
are now working on the UK, Scandinavia, Australia and India. We should
have most of the developed world seeded over the next few months.
Locationary and its partners have a userbase of over 430k people and
growing quickly.
Other than the local businesses, this ecosystem we've proposed has
four main participants:
1) Profile Managers: The PMs are participating websites where local
businesses manage their profiles. These PMs could be Google Local
Business Center, Facebook, or even a community newspaper or a
community association. These companies host the profiles and do
customer service, helping the local businesses manage their
information and buy ads (coupons, click to call, sponsored listings,
etc.).
2) Ad Networks: The Ad Networks could be Google, or Apple iAd, etc.
3) Data Users / Data Distributors: These companies use local data in
their businesses or display local data to users. Examples include
SimpleGeo, Foursquare, Cloud Made, Poynt, Google Maps, etc.
4) Locationary: We keep the data clean and fresh across the system.
Our objective is that within 24 hours of a business opening or
closing, our database is updated by our users. In addition to the real-
time updates from our users, we collect data from the PMs, clean it,
structure it, and distribute it to everyone. We also offer an unique,
universal ID number for every physical place so everyone can easily
exchange local data and relevant ads in respect of the places. By
virtue of our global army, Locationary is the only part of this
ecosystem that can collect real-time data on 100% of the places in the
system (retail, non-retail, public, and perhaps later residential) and
can know which places are open and valid, and which are not.
This system offers the following benefits:
+ Local businesses get control of their information and manage it
through a PM they trust. No matter the size of the PM, the business'
data is distributed as widely as possible in structured form to reach
every possible customer;
+ Many local businesses owners are not tech-savvy and need a higher
level of customer service. PMs can help businesses in their
neighborhoods and communities with this process while making money
from selling ads and services to these local businesses; and
+ The ads and data are aggregated across all the PMs so Data Users and
Data Distributors get the deepest source of ad revenue and the
cleanest and freshest data. Being able to tap into ads generated by
every PM, they maximize how much money they make from their apps, help
their users find what they need, and don't send their users to places
that don't exist.
We chatted about these issues at WhereCamp 2010 in SF:
http://www.youtube.com/user/dothewww#g/c/0588F4DB303C6AA3
This is a massive problem which is why I believe everyone in the
ecosystem needs to work together with the objective that the
structured data be available to everyone in real-time. None of us can
do it alone, but I'm confident that if we join forces, we can do this
together. If you can help, please let me know...
-Grant
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