locative utilities

Handy website to find longitude and latitude of a spot directly:
http://www.gorissen.info/Pierre/maps/googleMapLocation.php

If you want to calculate things with GPS you need an astronomer :-)
GPS formula's:
http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html

Google Maps:
Google maps can be programmed in JAVASCRIPT
Here a Javascript tutorial (so without Google Maps)
http://richardbowles.tripod.com/javascript/menu.htm

Google Maps, watch it! There are different API (Application programming interface), that is systems of commands to program.
This is the last one: ( Google Maps JavaScript API V3)
http://code.google.com/intl/nl/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/tutorial.html
which does not use a server key anymore (?), wel yes if you want to do it all in PHP and not JAVASCRIPT.

Do not use:
The version of this API before this (API V2) still uses a key, you can get from Google:
http://code.google.com/intl/nl/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/v2/overlays.html
You can get the Google Maps key here: (bottom of page)
http://code.google.com/intl/nl/apis/maps/signup.html

Google Maps using Javascript:
Start tutorial of Google Maps using JAVASCRIPT:
http://code.google.com/intl/nl/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/tutorial.html
With these examples you can play around with Google Maps.

But to use the database (with POI's) you have to add PHP and MYSQL. SO to keep it simple (as far as possible) you could better use PHP directly instead of a double mix of HTML, JAVASCRIPT and PHP.


Google Maps using PHP (for easy connection with your database):
For PHP you have to include a PHP class, which can be downloaded from the tutorial pages.

Found this tutorial:
http://www.timshowers.com/2008/08/php-geocoding-tutorial-with-the-google-maps-api-part-one/
http://www.phpro.org/examples/Google-Maps-With-PHP-And-Phproogle.html