🗺️ Meridian

OpenStreetMap-based places database and API.

Meridian is designed around solving 2 specific problems:

Instead of another centralized service, Meridian is an open source project that can be hosted for app-specific purposes. Setup will take an export from OpenStreetMap and extract places from it, loading them into a local database. It could be hosted as a standalone service or plugged into existing platforms like Micro.blog.

The API will be focused on 3 endpoints:

Blogging platforms may also wish to take Micropub API requests and route portions of the data through Meridian for updating places automatically as posts are created.

If configured with an OpenStreetMap account, adding or editing places will push those changes back to OpenStreetMap in the background. Otherwise the changes will be stored locally.

There should be a mechanism to pull in new data from OpenStreetMap. That way as multiple instances of Meridian are deployed, as one instance improves, those improvements can make it back to other instances by syncing through OSM.

What it doesn’t do

Meridian is not a full replacement for check-in services like Foursquare. It’s also not a blogging platform. It does not keep track of where someone has been. Those are features that could be built as separate platforms on top of Meridian.