TORONTO-- iBegin announced today the launch of iBegin Source, a comprehensive source of nationwide business data. iBegin hopes to spur development in the emerging local market by making business data freely available and combining it with a self-updating system.

The market for local business data has been dominated by companies only willing to sell business data to corporate customers that can afford their hefty price tag. iBegin Source will challenge this arrangement by providing local search data for free to non-commercial users and at a fraction of the current rate for commercial ventures. iBegin Source is also introducing a number of features that will improve the accuracy of local data.

iBegin Source relies on both traditional sources, such as telco records, federal/state agencies, and new methods such as web-crawling technology that captures business data from across the Internet. In a first for the industry, iBegin Source introduces a trackback system that allows users to automatically update entries, as well as a wiki-like interface that enables anyone to update the data. The previous one way relationship between data provider and customer has now been changed into a two way street.

iBegin Source will also make geocoded data available for its paying customers. Geocoding is the process of converting a physical address to GPS coordinates, and allows easy integration with a mapping application such as Google Maps. Taking this one step further, iBegin Source also provides the nearest major intersection, making it easier for end-users to find any business.

"Data quality has been one of the historical challenges of local search," said Greg Sterling, principal Sterling Market Intelligence. "This approach starts to broaden and 'democratize' access to the local database." By offering high quality local business data to enthusiasts and hobbyists without charging exorbitant fees, iBegin Source is breaking down the price barrier that has so far restricted local data to businesses with deep pockets, and is opening up the local search industry to a new landscape of possibilities.

About iBegin:

iBegin is an established player in local search, having been visited by over two million visitors since its inception over a year ago, where users have conducted over a three million searches. The site is a subsidiary of Enthropia Inc., a web development firm located in Toronto.

Incorporated in 2003, Enthropia Inc is involved in many markets on the web, including blogs and local search. The company has a staff of over twenty working on a broad-spectrum of topics, including local.

See www.ibegin.com