Yahoo has announced the public release of Yahoo PlaceFinder, a web service providing multi-language global geocoding of named places, that replaces the Yahoo Maps Geocoding API.

What PlaceFinder does, is allow developers to make their apps location-aware. Yahoo’s official overview for the service:

The PlaceFinder web service allows you to convert street addresses (like ‘1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC’) or place names (like ‘Washington, DC’) into geographic coordinates (like latitude 38.898717, longitude -77.035974) that you can use as the center of a map or the position for a map marker. This conversion is called “geocoding” and can be used to make your applications location-aware.

The service also allows you to convert geographic coordinates into street addresses or place names. This conversion is called "reverse geocoding" and can be used to provide user feedback when only coordinates are known.

PlaceFinder supports building-level address recognition in over 75 countries, and as well as points of interest, airports, cities, and other place names.

Consider PlaceFinder Yahoo’s offering in the location-sharing space populated by services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Google Latitude, Twitter, etc.

More developer details on PlaceFinder are available here.