geotagging

Back in September, I mentioned a new GPS geotagging device for digital cameras with hot shoes, the Jobo PhotoGPS. Unfortunately, at launch, Jobo left Mac users out of the picture, so to speak: the included software used to match the receiver's recorded data to photos transferred to a computer was Windows only. However, arriving a little later than originally planned, there is now a Mac version of the software.

For the unfamiliar, the PhotoGPS is a small and lightweight GPS receiver that fits directly on any digital camera's hot shoe--just like a flash unit. The $175 device allows … Read more

On Thursday, HTC revealed a revamped version of its HTC Touch Cruise smartphone, complete with an updated look and souped-up geotagging software called HTC Footprints.

The new Touch Cruise replaces the original model, which debuted in January 2008, and expands on the capabilities of the GPS-centric smartphone with HTC Footprints. The application not only lets you geotag photos that you take using the device's 3.2-megapixel camera, but you can also add notes and audio clips to these digital "postcards."

In addition, Footprints will automatically name each postcard with its general location or area, so you have … Read more

With its launch of iPhoto 09, Apple has begun showing some reasons why it's worth enduring the hassle of geotagging your photos.

It's generally not easy right now to label your photos with information about where you took the pictures--the process usually is done with special software to marry the photos with location data taken from a separate GPS receiver.

Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, demonstrated what you can do with iPhoto at the Macworld 2009 keynote Tuesday.

iPhoto 09 works best with photos that already have been tagged. That's getting more common, as GPS hardware support becomes less of a rarity. For example, Nikon's Coolpix P6000 has a built-in GPS receiver, and Nikon has begun selling its GP-1 GPS receiver, which can plug into its SLR's flash mount so location data is embedded in the photo. Apple's iPhone can geotag its own photos, and camera manufacturers say GPS support in cameras has become a matter of when, not if.

But the software also can help you tag your own images. Clicking a photo flips it over, letting you type in a location, then showing the spot using a map. (Google supplies back-end mapping services). Helpfully, iPhoto then can spread that location data to other photos with similar time stamps, and they can be bundled together into a group called an event.

OK, but what can you do? Once you have geotagged photos, what can you do with them?

For one thing, sift through them geographically using iPhotos' new Places interface. Viewing an iPhoto event can show an associated collection of pushpins on a map, and clicking each pin shows the photo.

For another, you can search for photos based on where you took them, not on whatever filing system you might use. iPhoto can handle geographic hierarchies, so if you labeled a photo with "Eiffel Tower," it'll find it with a search for "France" or "Paris." … Read more

Nikon's GP-1, a GPS tracking device that fits into the company's cameras and writes location data into image files, is starting to go on sale for a price of about $210.

Nikon announced the GP-1 in August along with the D90 SLR, saying it would arrive in November, but didn't give a price at the time. Now it's on sale: J&R.com lists it for $209.99 and Adorama for $209.95.

Don't expect to get one immediately, though. Adorama lists it as out of stock, though it lets you order it. J&… Read more

As expected, Mozilla Labs released a Firefox plug-in Tuesday called Geode that lets Web sites figure out a person's approximate geographic location and use it in online services--as long as you grant the software permission to access the information.

Geode, a preview of technology to arrive in Firefox 3.1, taps into technology called Loki from Skyhook that deduces a computer's location from the signals of nearby wireless networks, according to a Mozilla Labs blog post on Geode.

To show the technology off, Mozilla shared an application called Food Finder that shows the user's approximate location and … Read more

Mozilla Labs plans to announce a plug-in called Geode on Tuesday that gives the Firefox Web browser a better ability to understand and use geographic information on the Web.

Geode details at this stage remain sketchy, but here's the example used in the alert about the project: "With Geode, a user who is looking for restaurants while they are out of town will be able load up their favorite review site and find suggestions a couple blocks away and plot directions there."

Geotagging most commonly refers to photos with geographic data stored within the file, but there … Read more

Because these days pocket-size isn't small enough, ATP has redesigned its GPS Photo Finder into a key-chain-size receiver that you take shooting with you and a still-quite-small dock that sits at home and awaits a plug-in from the receiver and your flash-carded photos. Appropriately dubbed the GPS Photo Finder Mini, the system matches the history of location coordinates in the receiver with the timestamps on your photos to provide the geotags.

I like the idea of the new design, and the post-processed geotagging is usually a more performance-friendly solution than real-time tagging in the camera. However, I did run … Read more

Jobo AG, purveyors of digital-imaging accouterments, announced availability of a GPS receiver for a digital camera's hot shoe. Dubbed photoGPS, the $159 device captures raw GPS data and time and stores the info to its 128MB of internal memory (that holds up to 1,000 locations).

Included software can then be used to match the receiver's recorded data to photos transferred to a Windows or Mac computer (though the Mac version won't be available till the end of 2008). Jobo also set up a PhotoGPS server that works with the software for calculating locations and geotagging images … Read more

Flickr is now utilizing maps from the wiki-based Open Street Map project to improve the detail level on cities where Yahoo's maps fall short. The first city to get the treatment is Beijing in honor of the Olympics. Flickr has posted before and after shots and the difference is profound. What was once a brown blob now has streets, landmarks, and of course geotagged shots.

Despite the improvement in Flickr's world map, parent company Yahoo's maps, which power the rest of Flickr's world map cartography, have not been cross-updated to share the changes. Flickr is using … Read more