Free geocoding

For the geographically minded out there . . . there has always been a free geocoding service on the web but over the years they've made it more difficult to extract geographic co-ordinates. First, there was no limit to the number of address you could plug in (well, except for the tediousness of it all - you could only do one at a time). Then they put a limit of 10 addresses per visit. You had to open up a new window to be able to continue. Now, they ask the user to enter a code provided on an image. Too much work for a cheap Dutchman, I say.

Now comes Google Maps. Not just is it the best looking map service around but it is hackable. I tried this and it didn't work - but I'm an impatient fellow at times and not a programmer. Nevertheless, you can use Google Maps to give you latitude and longitude coordinates and a map, to boot. Type in an address in the search box - let's say 100 Yonge Street, Toronto. It provides you with a map, of course (smaller towns will require a province or state name behind it). To get at the geographic coordinates, click on the "Link to this page" link and voila! The coordinates appear in the address bar (in this case 43.650085,-79.378290).

This only seems to work with Mozilla; Internet Explorer doesn't seem to provide coordinates.