Rosetta Stone for geo?

ReadWriteWeb reports that Foursquare are aiming to create a ‘Rosetta Stone’ for location:

© Hans Hillewaert / CC-BY-SA-3.0

"As location-based services continue to spring  up, it's becoming increasingly
important that these companies have  access to correction location data. However,
there's no one place where  developers can go to access or verify this data, and
there's no single  database for location-based information.

But Foursquare has just announced an effort to move things in that direction:
a "venue harmonization map"  that it says it hopes can serve as a Rosetta Stone,
of sorts, for  location data.

Part of Foursquare's new initiative involves opening its Venues API and removing
some of the restrictions on access to it. The API will be  available at higher
rate limits, but more importantly, now developers  will be able to search
Foursquare venues and find associated data - such  as tips, photos, and trending
check-in information - without requiring  their end-users to authenticate via
Foursquare."