Interview with GeoNames Founder

Good Gear Guide has an interview with Marc Wick who founded the GeoNames site which was launched in 2005 to provide and open and free source of geographical names.  At the last count, the service has over 8 million geographic names and has a wiki style interface for users to add, edit and correct names in the database.  The service is used by companies such as the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), Nike and LinkedIn, to name a few.  The interview looks at the inspiration for starting GeoNames, uses for its database and where the most active users of GeoNames hail from (hint: it’s a country in Europe).  The interview goes into detail about the  nuts and bolts of GeoNames so this article will probably tell you most everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the site including where Marc Wick sees GeoNames in five years.

• GeoNames founder opens up the GIS world