Millions of Locations for Thousands of Brands (tech.marksblogg.com)

All The Places has rolled out a significant update to its location data repository, utilizing advanced web scraping techniques to compile information from thousands of brands' websites. The latest release features an extensive dataset comprising over 14 GB of GeoJSON files, drawing from 3,070 unique brands, including well-known names like Nando's and McDonald's. This GitHub repository, rich with over 145,000 lines of Python code and contributions from 162 developers, highlights the collaborative efforts in open-source data collection, with crawlers operating weekly to refresh this valuable data. This initiative is crucial for the AI/ML community as it provides a comprehensive, structured dataset that can be leveraged for various applications, including geographic analysis and location-based services. The technical implications are expansive; the integration of libraries like DuckDB for data manipulation and spatial analysis showcases innovative approaches in handling large datasets. Additionally, challenges like the increased use of Cloudflare by brands, which complicates scraping efforts, point to the evolving landscape of data availability. By continuously updating its data and addressing issues with empty GeoJSON files, All The Places enriches resources for AI developers and researchers focusing on location intelligence and geographic datasets.