Hi. I want to find, for each US 5 digit zipcode, the distance
to the nearest store run by one of our competitors. I can determine a list of competitor zips by using the store locator on their site. I also need a good source for the latitude and longitude of (the centroid, I guess) each zipcode, as well
as a function to get the distance (great circle, I guess) between two points specified in latitude and longitude, as
well as reasonable approach to find the closest zip to each zip (as there are 30 or 40K valid zipcodes).
This doesn't need to run in real time -- it is not a web app -- but I do need to refresh the whole process every few months.
Any suggestions from the Monks? Any useful CPAN modules I should be considering? Any good sources of zipcode data in the public domain?