So this is an idea that's been kicking around in my head a while. I've sought feedback on it before, and had two different responses - an iPhone app dev said it sounded quite useful, while someone whose opinion I respect immensely was skeptical.<p>The idea is to create a "location wiki" - an attempt to describe every location with as much metadata as possible. This overlaps with what Chris Brogan wants Brightkite to become, "the annotated world", here http://www.chrisbrogan.com/if-i-owned-brightkite/ and I think an opportunity does exist to create this "annotated world" resource (though I don't think Brightkite is it).<p>This could have a couple of different interfaces: a website for users to visit, and an extensive API for developers.<p>The website would let users look up a location and see a description, photos, related locations, websites, whatever. For example looking up a train station would show you the line that station is part of, the suburb it's in, nearby businesses, etc., but the entry would also contain lower-level data about what type of place this is (eg. public transport), and could pull in items from other services that are geotagged.<p>But the main benefit I'm envisioning is having a service like this with a reasonably complete dataset ready to be plugged into third-party apps. As far as I'm aware, iPhone apps like nrme cobble together business listings and whatnot from a few different 3rd-party resources, but with this service, they could plug it in as their location-contextual backend and immediately have that data and functionality available. I am aware Google Maps also contains a lot of extra data about locations these days (business listings, photos, etc) but it's by no means comprehensive, nor does it aim to be I think.<p>There would be a few different ways to monetise, but I imagine selling ownership of a business' wiki entry would be the easiest - a business could buy their entry and restrict editing, publish updates, link to their website, whatever.<p>The main criticisms I've had so far are:<p>* Nobody needs it - I disagree, I think it's something that will only become more relevant as mobile/location-contextual internet use increases<p>* Not feasible, too large in scope - I agree in that I do think getting a reasonable amount of data would be the hardest task. But you have to start somewhere...<p>Would love to hear your feedback. If it's a stupid idea then please be gentle :) If not, who wants to start working on it with me?