If you are experiencing slow posting in WordPress 1.2 or below (like I did this morning) or get fsockopen() errors from PHP, it might be related to geourl problems. Look under options->Miscellaneous and uncheck the box that says “Use Geographic Tracking Features”. Try posting again to see if the speed has returned.
Considering the problems I have had with GeoURL recently, I am quite glad this is out of the WordPress 1.5 core (last I remember from the CVS logs).