Ask HN: What kind of geo-focused APIs would you like to see?

9 pointsshafqat2 comments

There are already a few services that allow you to pass in a location, and get back "local news" articles. I'd like to see this done much better, so I get news I truly care about.

Also, an API where I pass in location and get back local deals/coupons/discounts. Publishers or bloggers can put the results on articles/pages/posts that are location focused.

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One idea that I've thrown around, and seen out there, is the ability to send in a polygonal area that I want to search in and have the API return the houses for sale/rent in that area. Letting the user pick the neighborhood or even the side of the street they want to live on is really powerful.

The funny thing is, I've called one of the major geolocation providers and asked for something along these lines and they couldn't provide it. Built it myself in under 24 hours using open source geo-encoding tools and Google Maps.

You've seen EveryBlock (http://www.everyblock.com/), yes? Among many other things, it'll give you newspaper/blog articles for a specific address in 15 U.S. cities. Not international or even U.S.-wide, but very damn good for its 15 cities.

(Disclaimer: I'm proud to work for EveryBlock.)

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