Thursday, December 15, 2011

Factual Adds Restaurant Dataset

Los Angeles-based Factual, the data startup heavily backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and other big name venture investors, said this morning that it has launched a new, restaurant dataset. The firm--whose open datasets are used to power location based services and other web services--said the dataset includes over 55 million entries, providing information such as hours, cuisine, meal types, and more on those locations. The firm said that the data also includes two new countries, China and Canada. Factual's APIs make it easy for developers to bring up updated information from a single API--for example, getting a listing of all sushi restaurants in the world, or the location of every Starbucks location in North America. Factual's efforts are being closely watched due to founder Gil Elbaz, who founded Applied Semantics, the firm which created what is now Google AdSense. The firm is looking to make its massive database of location information the standard for developers of all kinds of location-based services, web apps, and mobile applications.

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