The world of precise coordinates is easy to interact with using software. The problem is humans don't use precise coordinates to represent places. They don't even agree on place names. I will try to give an overview of the current existing services/APIs that you can use to find a precise coordinate with a place name. And then demonstrate why we are not there yet. See http://www.slideshare.net/afroginthevalley/sylvain-carle-people-suck-at-naming-places-notes for version with notes.

1. People Suck at
Naming Places
Ignite
Where
San Jose
2010/03/30 1

2. If a search falls on a map...
and nobody is
around to map
coordinates
does it exist?
“To be is to be
perceived”
Awareness. 2

3. Places names are...
๏ Relative
๏ Fuzzy
๏ Temporal
๏ Variable
๏ All about
Perception
3

4. Places names are...
๏ Historical
๏ Cultural
๏ Personal
๏ Based on convention 4

5. Humans define places
Humans are imperfect,
“namespace” of places
is really, really, messy.
Add politics, religion,
ownership, language...
#l10n #i18n #hard 5

6. Language and approximation
๏ J’ai quitté mon domicile qui se situe à la
frontière des quartiers Outremont et
Mile-End à Montéal.
๏ Vers l’aéroport de Montréal, nommé
Pierre-Elliot Trudeau, situé à Dorval, code
YUL, au Québec.
๏ Direction de la côte ouest américaine, plus
précisément vers SJ qui est ma destination
finale.
๏ De plus, cette fin de semaine, je serais au
WhereCamp chez Google.
6

7. The Cathedral and the Bazaar
๏ Smart data structures and
dumb code works a lot better
than the other way around.
๏ Often, the most striking and
innovative solutions come from
realizing that your concept of the
problem was wrong. 7

8. One ID to Rule Them All
๏ Three IDs for the WEB kings under the MS, AOL & Y!
๏ Seven for the LBS lords in their halls of stone,
๏ Nine for GIS Men doomed to die,
๏ One for the G Lord on his “non-evil” throne
๏ In the Land of the Internets where the Shadows lie.
๏ One ID to rule them all, One ID to find them,
๏ One ID to bring them all and in the darkness bind
them (under a restrictive license).
WRONG!
8

9. TIMTOWTDI
๏ Find by...
๏ Lat/Long (duh)
๏ Name
๏ Nickname
๏ Neighbourhood
๏ Proximity
๏ Activity
9

10. TIMTOWTDIBSCINABTE
๏ Lightweight Identifiers
๏ As simple as possible
๏ Distributed (webwide)
10

11. Name Repositories
๏ GeoNames
๏ Geocommons
๏ Placemaker Others? Tweet
๏ Wikipedia/DBpedia
Text suggestions to
@afrognthevalley
๏ Freebase with #ignitewhere
11

12. Geographic Indexes
๏ OpenStreetMaps
๏ Maps API (you know them)
๏ Open Data Repos Others? Tweet
suggestions to
๏ geodata.gov @afrognthevalley
with #ignitewhere
12

13. Linked Data & IDs schemas
๏ WOEID (Twitter)
๏ Flickr place_id
๏ Google place URL
๏ Freebase GUID
๏ Geohash
๏ Not 4SQ/GW (yet)
Others? Tweet suggestions
๏ but machine tags
to @afrognthevalley
with #ignitewhere
13

14. Activity Streams Mining
๏ Status updates
๏ RSS/ATOM feeds
๏ ActivityStrea.ms
๏ Explicit
๏ Implicit
๏ Derived
๏ PlaceStrea.ms? 14

15. Most Data Licenses Suck
15

16. Be a Data Hippie
16

17. The World is Messy
I like it like that
It’s more work
It’s more fun
17

18. Bootstrapping
๏ BOF on matching location in
unstructured text anyone?
๏ WhereCamp session on
Places in Activity Streams...
๏ Machine Tag Exchange?
18

19. Places are Social Containers
19

20. Thanks!
๏ http://afrog.in/ (activity stream)
๏ http://afroginthevalley.com (blog)
๏ @afrognthevalley on twitter
๏ http://code.google.com/p/praized/
๏ www.praizedmedia.com