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.
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
this strikes me as tech for tech’s sake. do i find the technology interesting? yes. do i see a practical use for it outside of yet another mindless “treasure hunt” promotion for a cereal or energy drink? no.
i understand that adding geography or mapping to images might help the viewing “understand” them better, but for me, it takes the imagination out of them.
when i see a picture from my friend traveling in Vietnam, I don’t need a GPS tracker to tell me where she is. I like to explore, find a real map and track her journey.
far more stimulating than pulling up yet another google map.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
GPS probably isn’t the right way to approach it, since it’s primarily designed for use outdoors, and even then in certain circumstances.
More likely is that a greater percentage of photos will be taken using high-end phonecams, which could upload cell-site information along with the photo (when asked nicely).
In addition, there are other non-GPS techniques for location-based tagging in cameras under development. Look for those to be announced pretty soon.
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:22 am