Gregory's Server1/ Let's head into the weekend with a #geoeducation thread about a little known, but much loved 🥰, feature of our geocoding API: annotations.
Annotations are information about the location that we add to the geocoding API results
 12 comments
3/ The feedback we often hear from customers is that annotations especially help devs who don't have detailed geo experience move faster. For most orgs, engineering time is the most expensive resource, so saving time is very valuable. ⏲️ = 💰 Let's look at some of the annotations we add to results ... 4/ First up we have many different geographic location encodings: for example DMS, geohash, MGRS, and more. There are so many different ways to express a location, each with specific use cases. Example for 52.5186,13.3761 - The Reichstag in Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪 "Mercator" : { 5/ Some annotations provide information about the country the result is in (assuming it is in any country). Local callingcode ☎️, currency 💶💵, the emoji flag 🇧🇷🇦🇺🇮🇹, etc) 6/ Some annotations are about the exact location of the result. For example time of sunrise and sunset 🌅🌇 at that location, the local timezone 🕐, qibla angle 🕋 7/ As you might have heard, here at OpenCage we love OpenStreetMap, so we include a link to the location in OSM so you can quickly add a note or make a correction if needed 8/ Many of our users are academics, doing geocoding for research and with the need to cross reference with other datasets. We include US FIPS codes (if in the US), NUTS codes (in the EU) and UN M49 codes to easily do the matching. 9/ Another common category of customer is vehicle tracking 🚚🚒🛻, so we return"roadinfo", things like what type of road has been matched, speed limits, etc 10/ Similarly, last year we added UN/LOCODEs as an annotation. These are a system of codes developed and maintained by the 🇺🇳 United Nations and commonly used in logistics. 11/ Annotations are added to our API results by default, but if you don't need them you can turn them off by setting "no_annotations=1" to your API request. Here's the full list of optional API parameters: https://opencagedata.com/api#optional-params 12/ Admittedly some of the annotations are a bit niche. Are you into ham radio 📻? Well, we provide the Maidenhead location reference commonly used by amateur radio operators. 13/ Thanks for reading and sharing 🙏. If you're a user of our geocoding API please let us know ideas for annotations (or anything else) that would make your life easier. We have links to many more geothreads about our service, border disputes, exclaves, #geoweirdness of individual territories, etc listed on our blog: https://blog.opencagedata.com/geothreads |
2/ Why do we add annotations?
The whole point of our service is to make using open data easy. Often geocoding is just one step in a data processing pipeline.
Adding other useful information helps teams move faster towards the end goal of building whatever they are trying to build.