GeoNames Forum

The more I think about it, the more it seems like an 'attraction' featurecode makes sense.

Besides amusement parks, 'roadside attractions' are a part of the culture here in the United States. Usually something claiming to be 'the world's largest', or some collossal piece of art/sculpture. I'm English, so Amercian culture will always seem a little bizarre to me at times

A couple of the many web sites devoted to them:

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/

http://www.wlra.us/

You may not agree it's worthwhile, and I'd respect that if so. But I know I'd put it to good use

Paul

I've been running into a little 'chicken and egg' problem. I've wanted to add a Geonames entry for a well-known place, but end up using maps.google.com to reverse-geocode it, then jump through hoops to get the embedded map in geonames.org to the same co-ordinates.

This seems a little clumsy/perverse. Am I missing something?

Another use case: I know the street address I'm at, and want to see nearby points-of-interest. How do I quickly get the geonames map to center on that street address?

Would it be possible to use Google map's location search to center the Geonames map?

Paul

Another just occurred to me: 'Taxi Rank', a place where taxis congrigate to wait for passengers, e.g. outside airports, some large hotels, convention centers, etc. If you're on foot in an unfamiliar city, knowing the nearest place to find taxis is very useful information.

I also don't see a featurecode for 'Convention Center' / 'Exhibition Hall', now I think about it.

Paul

By the way, can I also request the following featurecodes?

Public Restroom

Public Telephone

First Aid Station

I've been looking at amusement park maps again

, and while I see a code for ATM, I didn't see the others, and they seem generally applicable.

Perhaps something else worth considering - disinguishing those that are equipped for disabled/deaf people from those that are not.

Paul

Thanks Marc, already changed California Adventure, but am still unable to change Disneyland. When I get a minute, I'll add a few others.

Yep, there's certainly plenty of feature codes I don't see myself ever using, but I imagine they came from the metadata definitions of the sources you're pulling from. No biggie, the only downside is the additional clutter it adds to the web UI.

Paul

Which generic POI code did you have in mind? I'd like to put it in the same class as L.AMUS, for obvious reasons, and have been using 'Locality' (seemed to be the most appropriate from http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/featureCodes.txt.

I like tags as an approach in general, but here I'm concerned that the 'free format' of tags means consistency goes out of the window. Any two people from the same culture won't tag in the same way consistently, throw in cultural/language differences and there's no hope. That's where the rigid taxonomy really brings benefits - in sharing the information, and building on it. Which reminds me - are tags public or private to me? they're not mentioned at all in the online manual.

By the way, looking at the maps for a couple of amusement parks, it seems 'attraction' is the preferred term, rather than 'ride'. Makes sense, not all attractions are rides.

Amusement parks can be huge - take a look at the grand daddy of them all - Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida. 44 square miles... approximately the size of San Francisco. Big enough that I think it's useful to be able to add more points-of-interest within that area.

Paul

p.s. You don't need to have kids to enjoy a good amusement park

Execllent! now to figure out how to put them to good use...

-- Paul

Could be... I'm not used to being 'under-privileged'

-- Paul

The findNearbyPlaceName reverse-geocoding web service currently resolves co-ordinates to an 'administrative domain'. When geocoding photos, that's useful, but not as useful as a nearby point-of-interest might be.

For the sake of argument, say we're visiting Paris, and we take several pictures of and from the Eiffel Tower at lat=48.85832 & lng=2.29452

http://ws.geonames.org/findNearbyPlaceName?lat=48.85832&lng=2.29452 gives us 'Invalides' at 0.86 km.

http://ws.geonames.org/findNearbyWikipedia?lat=48.85832&lng=2.29452 gives us 'Effiel Tower' at 0.03 km.

I've just been geotagging pictures from a recent Disneyland vacation. Anyone here know where 'Neff' is? (a nearby subdomain in Anaheim, apparently). I've had to manually fix up nearly a thousand images with either 'Disneyland' or 'California Adventure'.

I'd really like to see a web service offered that includes a configurable mix of point-of-interest data when reverse-geocoding. In the interests of sparking discussion, I'd like to propose a three-phase API:

Step One: an API that returns a list of featurecodes and description in an easily-parsed format (I think this exists?). I'm imagining this would be used by an application to build a preference panel for the user to select which points of interest should be included (like the selection tree in the web UI)

Step Two: the application provides a list of featurecodes to the web API, which returns some opaque ID as a private shorthand representation of that combination. This is to avoid geonames having to maintain state, or deal with URLs with a very large number of parameters per query. I'd imagine the application would do this each time it started, and whenever the preferences were changed.

Step Three: the opaque key can be used as an optional parameter to a reverse-geotagging API, to control what is & isn't included in the response. I'd love to see one that merges wikipedia data, even if it's all lumped under one featurecode dedicated to wikipedia entries (since they don't seem to classify).

Paul

Something else that puzzled me: the following are listed under the 'S spot, building, farm' category, rather than 'R road, railroad'

RSD - railroad siding
RSGNL - railroad signal
RSTN - railroad station
RSTNQ - abandoned railroad station
RSTP - railroad stop
RSTPQ - abandoned railroad stop

I was looking for 'railroad station', and it wasn't under the 'road, railroad' category in the UI...

It could also be argued that the following make more sense under 'road/railway' (i.e. transportation) than under 'spot/building/farm':

BUSTN - Bus Station
BUSTP - Bus Stop
MTRO - metro station
PKLT - parking lot

Call me crazy, but these seem to 'belong' more logically under 'H stream/lake' than 'S spot/building/farm'

DAM - dam
DAMQ - ruined dam
DAMSB - sub-surface dam
DCKD - dry dock
DCKY - dockyard
DIKE - dike
FY - ferry
JTY - jetty
LDNG - landing
LOCK - lock(s)
LTHSE - lighthouse
MAR - marina
PIER - pier
WEIR - weir(s)
WHRF - wharf(-ves)

Seems odd to find harbor under one category, but dockyard and marina under another, for example.

Paul

I'd like to put in a vote for L.AMUS - Amusement Park, and also ask for a code for 'Amusement Park Ride' (L.RIDE?), as discussed in another thread

Paul

Nope, still no joy. So far it's only been those two points - I can neither move nor edit them. But you've moved them to where I was trying to put them, so it's moot.

I've been able to create, move and edit new points, and move other existing points nearby (I've fine-tuned the locations of a few surrounding hotels). Just not these two. As you say - weird...

Paul

I tried again, same behavior.

Disneyland - GeoNameId : 5343229 (trying to move it to the center of the park)

Matterhorn - GeoNameId : 5371109 (trying to move it to the ride, it's off to one side)

I have been able to create several new points, and subsequently move them.

Paul

Yes, I'll gladly contribute a few. The least I can do in return for the benefit I'm getting from geonames.

'Amusement Park' is a better term - they're not all themed, by any means.

Can I also request a 'Amusement Park Ride' feature code, or is that getting too granular? I've added a handful already, for Disneyland and California Adventure, where I've been often enough to be able to pick them out from satellite images

-- Paul

I've been trying to 'correct' the actual location of a few points, but have been encountering a rather non-descript 'error while saving:' message.

I've registered, logged in, selected the point in question (the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland in Anaheim, California), clicked the 'move' link, been invited to move it, moved it to the correct location, then hit 'save' in the tooltip, it attempts to save the new location, then after less than a second I get the 'error while saving' message, with no further explanation.

I'm getting a lot of benefit from the service (indirectly when geotagging pictures) and I'd love to contribute back. But I'm stumbling at the first hurdle.

BTW, how does one add new points?

Paul

I've come across geonames.org by way of geotagging my photos (I'm using GeoSetter). One thing that I'm finding rather strange is the sublocation assigned to my photos.

A picture taken in Disneyland (Anaheim, California) is labeled as being in 'Micaflores, Anaheim, California, United States'. One taken in the adjacent California Adventure park is labeled as 'Neff, Anaheim, California, United States'.

Should these adventure parks be given their own 'sublocation'? how about Disneyworld in Florida? the various Six Flags parks across the United States?

Paul