I've based my query below to select points near a spatial point called point on the other SO solution, but I've not been able to get it to return any results, for the past few hours, and I'm a bit edgy now... 
My table lastcrawl has a simple schema: 
id (primary int, autoinc) point (spatial POINT)
(Added the spatial key via ALTER TABLE lastcrawl ADD SPATIAL INDEX(point);) 
$query = sprintf("SELECT * FROM lastcrawl WHERE  
     MBRContains(LineFromText(CONCAT(
        '('
        , %F + 0.0005 * ( 111.1 / cos(%F))
        , ' '
        , %F + 0.0005 / 111.1
        , ','
        , %F - 0.0005 / ( 111.1 / cos(%F))
        , ' '
        , %F - 0.0005 / 111.1 
        , ')' )
        ,point)",
        $lng,$lng,$lat,$lng,$lat,$lat);
$result = mysql_query($query) or die (mysql_error()); 
I've successfully inserted a few rows via:
$query = sprintf("INSERT INTO lastcrawl (point) VALUES( GeomFromText( 'POINT(%F %F)' ))",$lat,$lng);
But, I'm just not able to query the nearest points to get a non-null result set. How do you get the query to select the points nearest to a given spatial point?
After inserting $lat=40, $lng=-100, trying to query this returns nothing as well (so, not even exact coordinates match): 
SELECT * FROM lastcrawl WHERE MBRContains(LineFromText(CONCAT( '(' , -100.000000 + 0.0005 * ( 111.1 / cos(-100.000000)) , ' ' , 40.000000 + 0.0005 / 111.1 , ',' , -100.000000 - 0.0005 / ( 111.1 / cos(40.000000)) , ' ' , 40.000000 - 0.0005 / 111.1 , ')' )) ,point)
 
     
    