Standards bodies join forces to create better geolocation Web data | PCWorld

"From ordering pizza online to pinpointing the exact location of a breaking news story, an overwhelming portion of data on the Web has geographic elements. Yet for Web developers, wrangling the most value from geospatial information remains an arduous task. Now the standards body for the Web has partnered with the standards body for geographic information systems (GIS) to help make better use of the Web for sharing geospatial data. Both the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) have launched working groups devoted to the task. They are pledging to closely coordinate their activities and publish joint recommendations ... As much as 80 percent of data has some geospatial element to it, IT research firm Gartner has estimated. In the U.S. alone, geospatial services generate approximately $75 billion a year in annual revenue, according to the Boston Consulting Group.  Making use of geospatial data still can be a complex task for the programmer, however. An untold amount of developer time is frittered away trying to understand multiple formats and sussing out the best ways to bridge them together ..."