Web service to find nearby points of interest?

Question

I'm looking for a paid or free service that can return geographic points of interest within a given proximity (e.g. 10km) filtered by category, such as "Restaurants".

Factual looks promising, but doesn't support my country - South Africa. The Google Places API is still in developer preview.

There must be a mature online service that can act as an "online GPS" for finding nearby places?

Answer 1

GeoNames API returns geolocated Wikipedia articles located near given point:

http://www.geonames.org/export/wikipedia-webservice.html

SimpleGeo API returns info about given point

https://simplegeo.com/docs/api-endpoints/simplegeo-context

Here is a long list of mapping related APIs on Programmable Web. I'm sure it will give you more clues in regards to datasources:

http://www.programmableweb.com/apis/directory/1?apicat=Mapping