GPS Coming To A Camera Near You

A recent article in the New York Times predicted that the practice of geotagging photos is ready to hit the mainstream and that we should begin to see more camera manufactures including built-in GPS systems this year.

As it is now, geotagging typically requires a substantial amount of extra work – photographers have to carry a standard GPS unit that records location data every few seconds and then later use special software to match that location data to the photograph’s time stamp. Alternatively, there are a handful of photo and video sharing sites that allow people to go back and add location information to images, but not as precisely as with GPS.

All this additional work has limited geotagging to a tech savvy minority.  Flickr estimates that only about 5% of digital images contain location information.  However, Dan Catt, senior software engineer at Flickr predicts that as more people become more exposed to the GPS through car and mobile units, the technology will also become ubiquitous with capturing images.

NYT: GPS Adds Dimension to Online Photos