Metacarta today announced at the Where 2.0 conference that they have made available through Metacarta Labs a set of APIs that provide approximation of location from blocks of text.

The APIs are pretty straightforward and interesting. If you just want to play around, check out Trinity and try typing in some search keywords that will then be search on and then will be represented on the map to the right.

Applications are mostly in keyword location or search result location, so it could be used as a mapping element in a web site news feed or for location of places mentioned on pages in a web application.