Re: Forward/backward compatibility

Hi all,
I haven't entered this discussion to date, though I've been following 
with interest. I am making a case for geo-location and geo-aware 
applications services in a sector with an illuminating use case that 
I hope you can address, over time.
Applications I'm interested in involve making cultural heritage 
information (about artifacts and specimens) currently held in museums 
available to people where they are and by geographical queries.
The information on many billions of collected objects is currently 
held in museums where they have ended up (through quirks of history). 
Recorded geographical knowledge in these databases is infrequently 
lat/lon. It is sometimes geo-political (includes historical entities 
not generally being considered by your 'civic address' discussion and 
religious entities like parishes), sometimes geo-morphological (great 
rift valley, Mt. St. Helene's), sometimes geo-cultural (Roman, 
Frankish), etc.
I'm seeking an API that can roughly locate millions of things so that 
mobile social annotations functions can more precisely locate them.
thanks,
David


-- 
David Bearman
President, Archives & Museum Informatics LLC
158 Lee Ave.
Toronto, ON M4E 2P3
Canada
ph. +1-416-691-2516
fax +1-416-352-6025
http://www.archimuse.com

Received on Sunday, 16 November 2008 14:47:56 UTC