It’s long been on my mind to use the Google Maps API on some of my sites, but the last hurtle has always been getting the raw longitude and latitude to satisfy the Google Maps API. Google Maps allows you to insert their maps into any web page using javascript. The only catch is you have to give it the latitude and longitude. It doesn’t take street addresses. They recommend using a free geocoder (an application that takes a street address and returns a latitude and longitude.), but they don’t give any real recommendations.
Yahoo!, however does have a free geocoder! http://developer.yahoo.net/maps/rest/V1/geocode.html
Matthew Hazlett just wrote a great tutorial on using both of these APIs to create a map application that takes a street address and turns it into a Google Map!
Here’s the link.