An initial version of open source GeoNames code in java is now available. This very first part is a webservice client to consume GeoNames webservices. Details here : http://www.geonames.org/source-code/
The source code is hosted on sourceforge : http://sourceforge.net/projects/geonames/
Sourceforge first refused the project as they feared it was planned to host the geonames database and it would use too much disk space and too much bandwidth. They finally approved after I assured them that we only plan to host source code on their platform and that we have no intention whatsoever to host the GeoNames database on sourceforge.
Please feel free to join our project on sourceforge. Every contribution is welcome and we will also continuously check in more GeoNames source code after a little bit of refactoring.
GeoNames Blog 
[…] A Java API for accessing Geonames web service has been released. Check out the project page at its SF.net page. Look at this page for a quick code example. If you need more information, see its Javadoc page. Sharing is Good.These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
Hi, I am trying to use your geonames data in South Africa, do you have any predictive test input forms that can return the various options for a suburb name as a user enters the first few characters? Thanks!