Thank you so much for your assistance. I had looked over the terms of service before, but quickly, and did not realize that it was required that I display a Google map. (Generally the terms read with phases such as I "may display....". I didn't realize that it was REQUIRED to display one. The terms are a bit hard to digest.) I was not planning on displaying a map, but as I think about it, it would be good to display a map after a person enters his/her address so that they can then confirm that the location is correct on the map. Do you know if that would satisfy Google's terms? (Once again, it is a bit difficult to understand the terms.)
I may use straight-line distances or driving distances. However, once I have the latitude/longitude coordinates from geocoding, I can calculate the straight-line distance myself (and have already written a program to do that). The reason for using Google maps would be to get the driving distance (what I would prefer). However, I need to do it from my program, not client-side. I also could not display a map of the results. This is a dating service, and it would violate people's privacy to show a direct route right to a person's house every time a match is made! I could possibly redisplay a map of the user's own address, but there would be no purpose in that. Thank you for the list of other geocoding services. Do you know if there are other services that would provide driving distances server-side? (Or if there is any other way Google can do it?) Thanks again for your help. On Feb 26, 1:48 am, Rossko <[email protected]> wrote: > > Apparently I can use Google to get these distances and am > > thrilled that this service is freely available. > > Slow down a minute, it's not all freely available, it comes with terms > and conditions. You need to check your plans against > those.http://code.google.com/apis/maps/terms.html > Specifically, Google geo-services require you to display content they > supply on a Google map (ultimately). You haven't mentioned a map in > your plans, so that may rule out using Google data. > > > 1. Get the exact address/location that Google can use to calcuclate > > the distances (I believe this is referred to as geocoding) > > Yes. If you want to do this at the server, you > canhttp://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html#Geocodin... > If you fall foul of Google's terms, you may look at other services, > there are many > -http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-api/web/resources-non-goog... > > > 2. I then need to go to Google with this info to calculate the > > distances between lots of (all of?) the different addresses on a > > repeating basis. > > There's a choice to made here. Do you mean straight-line distance? > That can simply be calculated by well known algorithms. > > If you mean by-road, services like Directions can supply that > -http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html#Directions > However Google Directions are NOT available server-side, can only be > called client-side from one of the APIs. > > Without knowing what you need the info for, a combination is > possible. e.g. for "find the nearest" you might use straight-line to > eliminate all but a few and only fetch by-road distance for the few > candidates. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Maps API" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-api?hl=en.
