Re:Ask HN: Database with country names down to the city, etc.
by wenbert on Monday February 01, 2010 @02:07PM
(#1093141)
Hehe. I am from Asia (Philippines), but in Norway right now for a short training. Things are a little bit unpredictable right now (schedule, etc.) for me but I find your project very interesting. It would be good if I can find something else to do since I have a few hours at night after the training.
Would be good if you can give me some more info about it.
Re:Ask HN: Database with country names down to the city, etc.
by jacquesm on Monday February 01, 2010 @02:59PM
(#1093292)
Autotagger is one of the more interesting things I've worked on in the last couple of years, it takes a pretty weird approach to the problem but it worked surprisingly well.
When I have some time I'll do a write-up on it and post it.
The basic idea behind it is 'google backwards', if you can figure out how it works from those two words drop me a line ;)
I don't actively maintain the dataset, but if you want I can create a small website around it so people can update it.
The reason I built this was a project called 'autotagger', the idea behind it is to identify people, places and subjects in texts automatically.
It's one of my pet projects but I don't have enough funds to continue to work on it full time without a way to monetize it, so it's been sitting there rusting for the last year or so.
I think I have most of the datastructures and algorithms worked out, it needs a massive rewrite to get it production ready and fast enough.
The fields most subject to change are the population and the names, cities/towns don't get created too often but merging smaller towns does happen.
They rarely move around, so I figure the longitude/latitude should be good for a while ;)