Flickr teachs you how to geotag
Flickr announced a new feature that allows users to geotag photo — i.e., annotate photos with location information such as latitude and longitude coordinates. Unlike typical keyword annotation where users manually enter text strings of keywords, Flickr geotag allows users to annotate location information by simply drag-and-drop photos onto a digital map.
Since most Web users are comfortable with online mapping applications (Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps), for them to learn to use Flickr geotag shouldn’t be too difficult. Flickr even produced a short video that teaches users how to geotag photos and set privacy protection.
I think Flickr has done a great job building this new feature. First, there is little mention of GIS vocabularies in the whole tagging process (e.g, you don’t have to know what lat/lng is before you can geotag). Second, it has built-in privacy protection. This gives a greater comfort to those who put information on the Web. Flickr users will be in control of the information and not Flickr. Third, the geotag map UI looks better than the one in Yahoo! Maps. To me, it seems to have a cleaner design with less clutter.
Spotted on Anything Geospatial
If you prefer Google Maps instead of Yahoo Maps and the possibility of watching the photos in Google Earth (KML feed), Panoramio.com may be an interesting alternative.
We have been working hard on it. Hope you like it
Eduardo
Comment by Eduardo Manchon — August 29, 2006 @ 5:10 pm
Where do flickr save the location.
Before they had the regular tags and other applications could also use it using Flickr API.
Also there is the option of the EXIF data, which I also Panoramio (above) support, but also many others. Do Flickr use now additional mechanism? What will the user benefit if can see it only on their map.
Comment by Roni Segoly — August 30, 2006 @ 9:56 pm
[...] Some may argue that geotagging is not a good idea to begin with — typical users don’t have interests in GIS. I think that is a false argument. In the parallel universe, Flickr’s geotagging photo application caught the public’s attention within a short period of time, and the idea of geotagging has been proved to be useful, at least for photos. Personally, I think that asking users to geotag their blogs is not much different from asking them to geotag their photos. The reason that cause a slow adoption of geotagged blogs must be something else. [...]
Pingback by Geospatial Semantic Web Blog - GIS Data Integration, Geo Ontology, Geo Tagging & Geo Web 2.0 News » Blog Archive » Geotagged blogs are rare in the blogosphere — September 22, 2006 @ 5:46 pm
[...] I think it’s only natural for the new iPhoto applications to support geotags. Geotagging photos is one of the most trendy features in Flickr. People love it, and I love it. Few questions that I’m interested in – [...]
Pingback by Geospatial Semantic Web Blog - GIS Data Integration, Geo Ontology, Geo Tagging & Geo Web 2.0 News » Blog Archive » iPhoto may support geotags and Google Maps — October 13, 2006 @ 8:09 am
[...] I enjoy using Flickr, especially its geotagging feature. Not only it helped me to organize photos based on location, but also helped me remember the context in which my photos were taken. [...]
Pingback by Geospatial Semantic Web Blog - GIS Data Integration, Geo Ontology, Geo Tagging & Geo Web 2.0 News » Blog Archive » My geotagged Flickr photos — December 3, 2006 @ 11:20 pm