Hi rwwade,

GeoPlanet is indeed very much alive -- we're busy on the Yahoo! side
creating services that build significantly upon it. In answer to your
specific questions:

-- No one has posted an XSD to the forum yet, so we haven't heard
directly. I am assuming you're talking around an XSD for GeoPlanet XML
-->HTML rendering rather than converting to another XML application.

-- Geonames: I have huge respect (though never met) Marc, and the output
of the GeoNames community. We've had GeoPlanet in Yahoo! for years
however, and we wanted to open it up and get it out -- the offerings are
therefore very similar, but I'll enumerate the at-a-glace differences:

- GeoPlanet provides richer navigation of the geo hierarchy
- GeoNames offers an open data dump (this is also our intention)
- GeoPlanet has richer global coverage
- GeoNames has more, and more granular natural features
- GeoPlanet's Web service is more performant (this is a finger in the
air estimate and I don't have numbers at hand to back it up)

We're working on concordance so I can qualify this formally, and I am
sure the GeoNames lads have their own assessment so don't take our word
for it only.

-- Tyler