Flickr is offering geotagging since the 28th of August. They published two Flickr blog articles and a nice 'tools and services' list on their blog about geotagging and available services and software. My first tests have shown that Flickr geotagging with Yahoo Maps directly in Flickr Explorer is crap compared to geotagging with Google Maps when considering the world outside of the US of A. To call Yahoo Maps not precise and detail poor is definitely an understatement - Flickr argues pretty lame that the Yahoo maps team is working on that issue. But what else can Flickr do? They are a Yahoo company.
Wherever possible use Google Maps to locate exact positions. The best geotagging tools on the web use Google Maps and even the Flickr blog is only listing Google Map tools.
This is a loose follow-up to: Markus Merz - How-To: Geotag your blog
As I said before: Flickr is like an additional blog in your portfolio and geotagging your pictures is like an additional geographical RSS feed for images. Get your links to the Flickr posts and the recommended mashups ...
The three Flickr blog entries about their new geotagging service:
- Great shot - where'd you take that?
- Geotagging - one day later
- Weekend wrap-up (also #5 in the list below)
Recommended geotagging services
Geotagging your pictures can bring a new quality to your blogs if you offer it as a service or additional level of information for your readers. I played around with the Yuan.CC and the loc.alize.us services. Nice work.
Yuan.CC adds geo tags to Flickr and some other services. Very good Google Map mashup. You can even rearrange or refine your geo tags with drag and drop.
The premier service of Trippermap looks like some real value for the money because you get a nice Flash application using Google Maps. It's only 10 bucks a year and they do the work.
The geotagging software and services list
This is a nice copy and paste action from del.icio.us btw ... Still a lot of style code to edit.
- Yuan.CC Web Experiments (Flickr stuff) Worth to take look at all this if you are a Flickr addict! ... Yuan.CC web programming projects
- loc.alize.us - Explore your world through everyone's eyes Very nicely done and very easy ... Search people to find your buddies. Click or search tag to filter by topic. Rollover a tag to highlight related images. Rollover a preview to see it's location. Click a preview to get a larger view.
- World-Wide Media eXchange: Download The WWMX Client does not actually add location information to your photos; it only saves the location information in the WWMX database. To stamp photo files themselves with location information, download the WWMX Location Stamper. It will write location i
- Trippermap - get a flash world map of your flickr photos 50 pix free, Google Earth and more pix = 10$ a year, looks good ... Trippermap.com (former Flickrmap) is a web service that allows you to put a flash based world map on your own website or blog. Trippermap will then automatically search your photos at Flickr
- FlickrBlog - nice geotagging links (tag with Flickr API) Quick geotagging with Flickr links. Good services and nice reference. I checked Yuan.CC GMiF Firefox extension - recommended!
- How-To: Geotag your blog Hmm, no note ... Update: Ooops, that's my p.com article :-)
Bonus: There is one independent service and community I always forget: Woophy Recommended ... Needs Flash ... Navigate the world with a Flash map and see pictures from all over the world.
The link or traffic baiting aspect
If you use geotagging for your pictures every series of pictures will literally cover a little spot on earth and if you have a link to your site or to an interesting article in the description then some people will follow. This way taking private pictures in the zoo and publishing them at Flickr will become a promotion hotspot on all (!) the mashup services which use the Flickr API because of the huge pile of available pictures.
A nice example for the baltic sea with the disadvantage that it does not show the picture description: Denmark Skaroe
Technorati Tags: geotagging, GMiF, Flickr, Google Earth, Google Maps, Trippermap, mashup, photography
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