I use the following in a script:
var JSONResult = Maps.newGeocoder().geocode(member.address); var AddressFormatted= JSONResult.results[0].formatted_address; <
You can do charset conversions using Blobs. This example converts "foo" from UTF-8 to UTF-16.
Utilities.newBlob("").setDataFromString("foo", "UTF-8").getDataAsString("UTF-16")