[uf-discuss] geo - accuracy of coordinates

[Scott Reynen]

On Oct 2, 2006, at 9:20 PM, Ryan King wrote:

> 1. Actually, you don't need to have lat/long to get distance. There  
> are plenty of services for translating human readable addresses  
> into machine readable values.
>
> 2. Remember, lat/long is not human first. Lat/long is for machines.  
> Few people use them (remember, us geeks are exceptional). In most  
> cases people author with human readable location information, they  
> only use lat/long to make the machines happy.

This is probably a good time to point out that I made a proxy service  
to read URLs with hCards and append geo markup wherever it is missing  
and can be found from public geocoding services (currently covering  
US and Canada):

<http://microformat.makedatamakesense.com/auto_geo/>

I was hoping to add some more functionality before posting it to the  
wiki, but Ryan wrote such a nice explanation of why this is useful.   
Here's my geo-lacking hCard mapped on Google using this and Brian's  
geo-to-KML service:

<http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http%3A//suda.co.uk/projects/ 
microformats/geo/get-geo.php%3Ftype%3Dkml%26uri%3Dhttp%253A// 
microformat.makedatamakesense.com/auto_geo/%253Furl%253Dhttp%25253A% 
25252F%25252Frandomchaos.com%25252Fdocuments%25252F%25253Fsource% 
25253Dscott_reynen>

Peace,
Scott