A very interesting demo from MetaCarta shows how their technology can translate natural language into specific geo-coordinates that can then be mapped and searched by geography.

MetaCarta originally received funding from DARPA's Next-Generation Internet initiative, a fund that develops technologies produced by academic researchers that may have military applications. Currently, MetaCarta offers specific modules for the energy sector (particularly resources exploration) and government projects.

What's most interesting is how the software is able to index and convert document text into geo-specific information. With this technology released in the private sector, it can't be long before local search is able to use this same type of processing to provide advanced geo-tagging for web search.