there was a cute [well, quirky anyway, and somewhat offensive to the geotagging community] and informative article on flickr and geotagging in today's new york times, "pictures, with map and pushpins included." the article defines geotagging, mentions different ways to do it, discusses EXIF headers, and even mentions a product the labs uses and endorses, robogeo. it also questions [and provides several different takes on] the rationale for geotagging.

"Then why go to all the trouble of geotagging now? For some the payoff might be the feeling of satisfaction that comes from adding to the growing pool of location-tagged photos on sites like Flickr."

…

"The stored location information and Web links created by these systems allow the photos to be displayed as an overlay on the digital maps. Similarly, geotagged photos can be searched by location rather than just by file name or time."

…

"Mr. Butterfield has found that geotags already add valuable information to some kinds of photos. In particular he finds it useful when viewing photos of urban decay."

despite the trouble [and it is a hassle, even with robogeo], the labs is solidly behind geotagging, given our background in GIS and community-asset mapping. the labs also endorses flickr [even though it's owned by yahoo^*], because of their amazing api and support for georeferencing [view our geotagged photos].

→ read the entire nyt article

^*we have neither forgotten nor forgiven

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 at 9:40 pm and is filed under web mapping, GPS, APIs, geotagging, mashups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.