I've been searching for the holy-grail of geo-coding for a while now, trying various systems and methods, and none of them satisfied me. With the right one you should be able to type in your home address and see it on a map, or type in a place and have it discovered. I think I have it now in the simple control you see below. Start typing your search and when you see what you want in the results box below, select it...

I've also implemented this control into the Place Map and when you search for and select a new place, everything gets updated. (holy-grail stuff...) Click the image below to try it out.