OpenCage Data http://www.opencagedata.com/ – a new effort that guarantees to make using OSM data easy for organizations and to help users get OpenStreetMap data in the format they want it! Born out of London-based Lokku (a 15 person team), the team, best known for running Nestoria (see http://www.nestoria.com) has sponsored numerous State of the Map conferences, mapping parties, and made major donations to HOT-OSM and OSMF’s server drives. To kick off this effort OpenCage Data has gathered together a who’s-who in the Geospatial World to head up their board of advisors, these include Andy Allan (OSM developer), Gari Araolaza, Gary Gale (Nokia HERE), Marc Prolieau, Marc Tobias Metten, Sajjad Anwar, Steven Feldman, and Tyler Bell (Factual).
While the service is in launch mode there’s no setup fee and a generous pricing scheme is being offered to clients who can receive there data in a variety of ways including FTP, email etc… Data are also refreshed (updated) as often as required. Data are available in a variety of useful formats including CSV, geoJSON, and SHP (or in a custom data format)
So who is OpenCage Data for? The effort recognizes several key markets:
- existing customers of traditional (often national) geodata sellers who are looking for an affordable way to dip their toes in the OSM waters
- businesses like Nestoria who want to move fast and build something rather than have the pain of data extraction themselves
- anyone looking for geodata for the developing world where OSM is often the best source available and dealing with the local government agency is difficult/prohibitively expensive
See http://www.opencagedata.com/
See Also:
Nestoria blog – Why (and how) we’ve switched away from Google Maps