Geonames provides free geo-data such as geographical names/coordintates and postal codes via their website or XML webservice at a pretty impressive speed. We decided to use them in our flickr geotagging tool, so easy to find the town of Schornsheim, Mount Everest or a small island close to Reykjavík.
A unique feature of the geonames.org application […]

We’ve been improving the performance of our google map and google earth application. We assemble the files now in batch mode every 15 minutes, as result the load time for you is down to nothing;)
And check out the email function in google maps, you can send around your semapedia postings to your buddies […]

We have been starting to use google maps v2 (in beta) which brings a much much better quality of satelite images. Go to http://www.semapedia.org/map/ and see for yourself. Especially images from Europe like Berlin and Vienna tell the difference.
Old

New (better quality and higher zoom level)

Our flickr geotagging tool is also using the new version. […]