In "Spidering Hacks" book Ron Racheco describes the way to calculate a distance between two points based on their latitude/longitude (hack # 77). He calculated the distance from his house to his friend's house, which is about 7.5 miles, with the error of only 0.06 miles. The problem is how to find out the latitude and longitude of your house?

I am skipping the author's attempts not to share with the reader the details of his research, and go right to the point, or, more precisely, MapPoint.

Go to http:www.mappoint.msn.com/ and enter your address. Ok, but there is neither latitude nor longitude on the resulting page! Look at the URL, advices Ron. You'll find your coordinates after the parameter C.

I followed his advice and now I am a happy owner of my exact coordinates. You can do it too!