New from PHPRiot today, there's this new tutorial showing you how to combine a PHP interface with the Google Maps API to do some geocoding of your own.

Geocoding is the process of finding the longitude and latitude of a given address or location. The Google Maps service gives developers and web site owners free access to their geocoder, both using the Google Maps JavaScript API, as well as using the web service. In this article I will show you how to access the geocoder web service using PHP so that it can be used in your own applications.

The tutorial walks you through every step of the way - from getting your Google API ID to making a simple request all the way out to using placemarks to store locations to fetch later on.

This is a great, very detailed summary that anyone wanting to work with the Google API in PHP should definitely check out.