Search By Distance Feature

[epidemic]

I'm working on business plan for an idea I came up with earlier this week.

To do it the way I'm wanting I'll need a 'search by distance' feature. They enter their address and out pops the closest service provider. Is there an API I can plug in easily? Is heavy coding involved?

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

 

[brentb]

google.com location based search

 

[xRAPx]

Dont all smartphones already do this? I know mine does.

ps. Derek Sivers. Uncommon Sense. 7-of-8. Ideas X Execution on Vimeo

pps. http://www.programmableweb.com/apitag/location

 

[Kiopa_Matt]

Need the longitude and latitude of both, origin and destination. Then you calculate the distance, such as:

Calculate distance and bearing between two Latitude/Longitude points using Haversine formula in JavaScript