Tut tut... a cartographer complaining about the difficulty in using long and lat - that will never do
But yeah get google maps out or some other map site, browse to place and get the coords off of that.
Take google maps, get to the white house, washington DC and click on the "Link" link in the top right. It highlights the link for this:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&...04823&t=h&z=18
Code:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=38.889885,-77.009021&spn=0.00301,0.004823&t=h&z=18
and you can see the "ll=" bit which is the lat long. So stick in 38.89 into lat and -77.01 in long and your at the whitehouse on the map.
Maybe I should have a box on the page where you just paste the whole google link in and it strips out the lat long from it.