Free Geography Tools

Via the Mapperz Blog, Nico Goeminne has created a reverse geocoder using the Google Maps API that brings up the closest street to a point of interest. Select a country/area that Google Maps supports geocoding for, zoom to the area in that country you’re interested in, and click on the map at your location of interest to create a marker. You’ll get the latitude/longitude of the point you clicked on, the name of the closest street, and the reference latitude/longitude for that street. A maximum of three markers on the map at one time, and a limit of 10,000 lookups a day if you use the source code for your own purposes.

For the US, more address-specific reverse geocoding is available at both the Reverse Geocoder for the United States and the Geonames Reverse Address Geocode.