This page is part of the Twitter Location Search (aka fun with geocodes) resource on Thoughtfaucet.
Every place on the earth has a specific coordinate. Each coordinate has two numbers, a latitude and a longitude.
You can remember which is which by using this simple rhyme taught to me by my 2nd grade public school teacher, Mrs Anderson (West Elementary, Grand Forks ND): “Latitude Flatitude.” If you’re looking at a map, latitude lines stretch from the left to the right, flat across the page. Longitude lines go up and down. Mrs Anderson didn’t have a simple rhyme for longitude. Flongitude?
Use this tutorial to figure out what the geocode of a specific location is. Then you can do awesome stuff with that information. Like make custom Twitter searches that focused on a local area. Or other cool GPS related stuff like setting up a geofence.
Step One: Pick an address you want to geocode.
Most geocode tools are picky and really do want a specific street address.
For our example we’re going to pick Thoughtfaucet HQ:
4 Howard Street, Burlington VT 05401
Step Two: Go to a site that calculates the geocode of an address and … enter the address.
Here’s a screenshot from http://geocoder.us/ which is a fine site for determining what your latitude and longitude coordinates are.
An even better site for determining your latitude and longitude based on putting a pin on a Google map is: http://itouchmap.com/latlong.html. No address required! (thanks Mad Vince!)
Step Three: Click search and… voila! Your address is geocoded!
The site will return a page which has the geocode data for the location you entered in your previous step. In our example of Burlington VT, we get a latitude of 44.467186 and a longitude of -73.214804
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