Mickaël ‘Korbinus’ Graf has released an improved geo:truc. If you haven’t tried it yet, geo:truc is a great and simple service for generating the GeoData markup in currently 8 different formats: Machine tags, geo Microformat, GeoJSON, GeoRSS (GML), GeoRSS (simple), HTML, KML, and GeoRSS-W3C.

To use it you can just click on the map, or enter a location in the form field. Then click on the link for the format you want to see. Read more about it on Mickaël’s blog. One of the neatest improvements, and very useful for integrating into another application, is the webservice:

• http://geotruc.net/gt.php?q=Detroit,%20Michigan&format=georss
• http://geotruc.net/gt.php?q=Detroit,%20Michigan&format=w3cgeo
• http://geotruc.net/gt.php?q=Detroit,%20Michigan&format=machine
• http://geotruc.net/gt.php?q=Detroit,%20Michigan&format=geo
• http://geotruc.net/gt.php?q=Detroit,%20Michigan&format=geojson
• http://geotruc.net/gt.php?q=Detroit,%20Michigan&format=gml
• http://geotruc.net/gt.php?q=Detroit,%20Michigan&format=html
• http://geotruc.net/gt.php?q=Detroit,%20Michigan&format=kml

What is really great about geo:truc is that it provides a very simple and easy to use tool for users to get somewhat complex information. I believe his primary purpose was to provide scientists a mechanism for geocoding their specimen identification experiments. These are non-GIS users who want to store geographic information. Now, they can do it and include it on their websites/documents and share with the world.

But why geo:truc? Mickaël’s reasoning behind the name explains it very well:

“Truc” is a french word meaning an undefined thing, so I joked by calling it “geo:truc”.