thanks for the info. now, another question is - is there a kml standard code that google, yahoo and bing follows as a standard format? the reason i ask is because from my research, each of them has their own proprietary document format (kml) that a user has to follow in order for their mapping system to parse the code correctly? i'm no programmer and definitely not knowledgable in geo information - i'm just a newbie trying to learn this important system that i think would be widely used to make your business known in both web and mobile platform. thanks again for the info, i will look them up and learn more.