More Fun With Flickr Geotags
Yesterday Flickr launched their mapping interface to share a photograph’s location. I spent some time getting to know the interface, which as you’d have expected was crazily simple. I love it.
Fortunately for Flickr they already had a large number of photos geotagged due to third-party plugins. However, the avalanche of tagging that occurred yesterday even staggered them: 1,234,384 in 24 hours!
Putting aside the fun I had geotagging my photos (yes, I’ve already admitted I’m a geek, and you expect it given I wrote How to Use Flickr: The Digital Photography Revolution), the true fun is yet to come. As Stewart points out in his update, it’s worth exploring some of the amazing locations now in Flickr. Brenda points to Lighthouses of the Great Lakes, and the tag “selfportrait” was fun before, but now you can put it in the context of place.
They’ve also updated their API to grab geo data from their DB. Now we sit and wait, and see what new third-party applications appear using the data.
August 30th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
So, Richard, when can we expect How to Use Flickr: The Gamma Edition with a whole geotagging chapter of its own? ;) (I liked the book, btw - particularly useful for introducing Flickr Unaware Academics to the joy of digital photos and their social uses!)
August 31st, 2006 at 2:18 pm
With me turning into a geek myself, I went ahead and added tags to most of my photos (heaps) straight away!
Only downside is that the maps for WA aren’t very detailed, so sometimes I have to guess where to put something… Especially for something like Karajini National Park.
Oh, and the place name search is a bit strange sometimes…will find Nullagine, but not Broome. And zooms into the wrong spot for Walpole…
Anyway, despite my whinging (which I should be messaging flickr about, not you), I’m loving it! :D
August 31st, 2006 at 2:32 pm
That depends on my publisher Tama :). I’m guessing that’ll depend on sales. Thanks for the positive feedback on the book though. I did enjoy writing it (can’t say the same for the one I the Podcasting Pocket Guide).
August 31st, 2006 at 2:35 pm
I’d already discovered some of your photos Simone :). I went looking for photos down south and noticed some you’d tagged in the Margaret River area.
You are right about the maps. Stewart Butterfield, one of the Flickr co-founders says that new maps are on the way. However, I just use maps.google.com to refine my search, and then compare high level maps when I know where I need to “pin the tail.”
August 31st, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Yeah, not hard seeing mine, I’ve so many…!! I’ve decided to upload less though (or make less public), sticking the slightly better quality and no people ones…
Anyway, my point of this comment was to say that I will start adding proper titles now to, instead of the photo name I use now. It’ll be easer to see what’s what when looking on the map. And if I find the time, I will use google maps to pin point some stuff more precisely (though in the past I’ve had to resort to using other maps to be able to pinpoint stuff on google maps, ha ha!)
August 31st, 2006 at 9:46 pm
Simone: another tip–which I just used to locate James Bond Island off the coast of Phuket–is to use Google Earth. Many locations are already bookmarked, and the resolution is amazing. If you zoom our it can also give you a nice yellow outline of borders and coastlines, so you can find things by comparing them to the Yahoo! maps used by Flickr.
Worked a treat for me. There we a couple of dozen other images, all placed in the wrong location. Makes me wanna email them to get them to move their tag :).
Did I mention I was a perfectionist :).
August 31st, 2006 at 11:02 pm
I’ve also seen lots of photo’s placed wrong (much more wrong than any of mine :D ) and want to leave a comment or something…. :D It’s a shame you can’t move others people photos(though obviously has more positives than negatives!!)
I’m sometimes a perfectionist (oh yeah, that makes great sense!). Having slow internet at the moment doesn’t help (next step after getting macbook is getting bigger download limit on internet so we are not subject to shaping!!), and I didn’t Google earth was available for mac!
hmmm, this is why I often refrain from commenting on blogs: I ramble and can never keep comments short! Seeya! :D