Joel, Neat demo of Google MAPS API! And wicked elegant, pulling the hidden XML reply packet out for data. I like it. For occasional use, this is awesome.
For serious bulk geocoding (anything beyond Eagle's free 50 samples, anything worth automating), using Google is both overkill and way too chatty on the network. A local Geo::Coder::US TIGER/DB would handle bulk geocoding all in-house. And I suspect the GoogleMaps API terms of service will crack down on excessive commercial use ... and unclear if Google Maps will be updating their Geocoding data with exception reports as assiduously as the commercial providers are. http://geocoder.us/ is available both online and offline, free*, using Geo::Coder::US and TIGER/Line DB. * The Geocoder.US WebService and on-line data is under a **NonCommercial-ShareAlike** license, so not considered Free Software under the Debian definition, not useable for business/commercial purposes w/o paying. (But their prices are a bargain for commercial use compared to the competition.) The http://search.cpan.org/~sderle/Geo-Coder-US/ module however has the Perl license, specified as 5.8.3 or later. And the data is USGovt Copyright, which is both Free and Libre as well. So if you download the data and PMs and build your own DB, it's apparently FLOSS usable commercially ... even under the Debian definition ... w/o need for webservice connection. Which is a win if you have enough of it to do, and don't need to pay someone to update the database with corrections. I make extensive use of geocoder.us in cleaning the data for my (very non-commercial) Perl+PHP+MySQL mapping project at http://ema.arrl.org/fd/fd_dir.php (which charts the sites you can see Ham Radio in action in Easter Mass in a little over a week, June 25-26, Field Day weekend). Cheers, Bill Ricker Not speaking for The Firm aka N1VUX _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
