Geospatial Semantic Web Blog

I dreamed of designing a new digital camera that knows my location when I take pictures. Since then, few products have showed up in the market. But, none of them is as sexy as this new product called Eye-Fi.

It’s an SD memory card with built-in Wi-Fi capability and does geotagging. It requires no special hardware modules. It works with any digital cameras that support SD memory card. How much? $129.

Technical details:

• Supports 802.11b/g/n
• Geotagging is built on the Skyhook technology (not GPS)
• Can upload photos to the Web without connecting to a computer

Skyhook is a Wi-Fi based geo-location technology. It doesn’t rely on GPS signals to determine a device’s current location. Instead, it exploits the signal strength of Wi-Fi stations in the close vicinity.

500 full-time Skyhook employees have spent the last five years driving every road, lane and highway in every major American city —and, lately, European and Asian cities. Its equipment measures all those Wi-Fi signals leaking out of homes and stores and offices, and marries that information with the car’s G.P.S. location as it drives.

Read more about Eye-Fi in this NY Times article.

GeoSpatial Expert, a company specializes in developing software for GPS cameras and geotagged digital photos, announces the release of GPS-Photo Link 4.0 that add Google Earth functionality.

A key business of the company is selling GPS camera bundles. For example, their GeoExplorer Bundle comes with a GPS camera and software for processing geotagged photos. The GPS camera supports wireless communication over Bluetooth (i.e., receiving GPS signals from a Bluetooth GPS module).

As location-based technology enters the mainstream consumer market, I think we will see more wide usage of GPS cameras and applications of geotagged digital photos. Though I think many people (including me) would be interested to buy a set of those GeoExplorer Bundles, but I think its price ($3000-$6000) is a bit too expensive for an average consumer.