I received an email from MaxMind after posting Getting Your Geospatial Freak-on with MaxMind ...and my ActionScript wrapper for their JavaScript City Web Service has their official blessing.

What does it do? Well... you've probably seen small visitor traffic maps embedded in some of the websites you visit right? The trick to displaying this information is resolving the IP address of the visitor to another nearby IP address that has a known latitude and longitude. This is sometimes referred to as Geo Targeting, Geo Location, or Geo IP Lookup. That's what MaxMind does and that's what the GeoIP.as wrapper can help you with; it can be used in Flash, Flex, and AIR applications.

This kind of information is incredibly valuable in targeted marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), dynamic localization, fraud prevention, and loyalty analysis... just to name a few.

Here are some links to get you started...
http://www.maxmind.com/app/geoip_resources
http://www.maxmind.com/app/javascript_city

Remember - if you use MaxMind services in your application give them credit by including a link to their site in your application. They ask for this since they provide the service free of charge.

Here's the source...
[ source: GeoIP.as ]