How to convert an address to a latitude/longitude?

Question

How would I go about converting an address or city to a latitude/longitude? Are there commercial outfits I can \"rent\" this service from? This would be used in a commercial

Answer 1

Yahoo! Maps Web Services - Geocoding API accurately geocodes UK postcodes, unlike Google's API.

Unfortunately yahoo has deprecated this service, you could visit http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/placefinder/ for yahoo's service