Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Photo Sharing 2.0

I broke down last night and spent the $25 required to upgrade to a Flickr pro account. I've been torn between continuing to use my own personal web site for photo albums, or moving towards a sharing service. In the end, despite all the infrastructure I put into place on my site, it's just much easier to work with a service, and I've found Flickr to be the best, so I made the move. I still plan to use my site for my favorite shots, maybe a gallery of actual quality photography vs. simple photo sharing. We'll see how that goes.

For now, let's explore some of the features of Flickr that I could never hope to replicate on my own. Today, we'll discuss different ways to explore my photos.
  1. Tagging. You can't be Web 2.0 without supporting tagging. Want to find all of my photos that I tagged lighthouse? There you go!
  2. Geotagging. While this feature isn't unique to Flickr, it's the first time I've used it, and I think they've done a great job with the implementation. Want to see all the photos I've taken in Maine? No problem!
  3. Calendar. Want to see all of the photos that I took in February, 2007, laid out in a nice, clean calendar? Sure!
  4. Combined. Sure, geotagging is neat. And yes, viewing on a calendar is great. But what if I want to combine them and see where I took photos in February, 2007? No problem, Flickr does it!
Now of course, tagging and geotagging require me to put in some effort when I upload my pictures. Tagging is probably going to stay that way, but camera manufacturers are already beginning to embed GPS receivers in their devices, so automatic geotagging is becoming a reality! Unless you take pictures in the subway. Then you're just hosed.

If you're actually viewing this blog, and not reading this post in an aggregator, you'll always be able to see my three most recent Flickr photos over on the right. If you're using an aggregator, why not add me as a contact and subscribe to your Friend's Photos?
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Speaking about “geotagging”: do you know locr?

locr offers the ideal solution and makes geotagging exceptionally easy. locr uses GoogleMaps with detailed maps and high-resolution satellite images. To geotag your photos just enter address, let locr search, fine-tune the marker, accept position, and done! If you don’t know the exact address simply use drag&drop to set the position.

For automatic geotagging you need a datalog GPS receiver in additon to your digital camera. The GPS receiver data and the digital camera data is then automatically linked together by the locr software. All information will be written into the EXIF header.

With locr you can upload photos with GPS information in them without any further settings. In the standard view, locr shows the photo itself, plus the place it was taken. If you want to know more about the place where the photo was taken, just have at look at the Wikipedia articles which are also automatically assigned to the picture.

Have a look at www.locr.com.

April 20, 2007 at 2:36 AM

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