iBegin Blog

Geocoding (converting a physical address to GPS coordinates) is one of those under-belly elements of local that doesn’t get mentioned often. And most local startups completely ignore it - local queries are all handled on the premise of ZIP codes.

I’m very happy that we’ve had full geocoding support (Canada + US) since day one. Not only simple address translation (eg ‘18 Yorkville Avenue, Toronto, ON’) but also street intersections and reverse geocoding (converting physical address to GPS coordinates.). We use reverse geocoding to mention the major intersection near a business.

So after 16 months of usage, and prepping for general release, we have finally unleashed our geocoding service to the public: iBegin Geocoder.

Right now anyone can do 100 geocoding transactions per day for free (we are looking into upping this a bit). Commercial usage is only 1 cent per transaction, and we offer a full enterprise server option for those that want the geocoding to be local to their services.

The documentation is quite simple - if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.

We’ve updated the iBegin Source user panel so that you can now do direct downloads. This allows you do download data directly to your server - no need to login.