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geotagging posts

Filed under: Blogging, Social Software

Let people know where you're at with byNotes

Mirco-blogging is a great way to let people know what you're up to that very instant. But what if you could let your followers know where your post originated from. That may have been the very thing running through the minds of the people behind byNotes.

On the surface byNotes operates like any other micro-blogging site but in addition to sending messages you can also specify where in the world you are via Google Maps.

Now we know what you're thinking, stalker tool right? Post a message of "I'm at this really nice cafe posted at 123 Anystreet, Anytown" could lead to a lot of unwanted attention. Thankfully byNotes has put into place restriction levels so that based on the access level you have established, people can either know the exact location, a general location like the country or some where in between.

The only downside to this service is that you must be in front of a computer to use it as byNotes doesn't appear to have a mobile version available.

Filed under: Developer, Fun, Yahoo!, Social Software, iPhone

Metosphere: create geotagged objects with Fire Eagle and iPhone

GeoTagYahoo! Fire Eagle got a lot of attention when it launched back in March, and for good reason: a cross-platform system for building location data into an application? The buzz died down, though, because there weren't any cool applications using Fire Eagle. That's changing now, though, as the first wave of Fire Eagle stuff rolls out. Metosphere for the iPhone is one of the best of this bunch.

Metosphere has several uses. Like any app that takes advantage of Fire Eagle, it can update your location using your GPS or a WiFi hotspot. It also shows you nearby events on Eventful and Upcoming, and nearby Wikipedia pages. There's a map that shows you all of this, plus meetups, emergency alerts, and the best part: messages and geocaches you can create directly from Metosphere. There's no signup required, just use your existing Yahoo! ID.

Geocaching is going to be a big deal very soon, and Metosphere is a great way to play with it on a platform you already know how to use. Show it to your friends and leave each other messages at your favorite hangouts, or start a city-wide scavenger hunt. We'll keep covering new Fire Eagle tools as they advance -- that monthly renewal email is a good reminder to see what developers have been working on.

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Web services, Google, Yahoo!, Social Software, web 2.0

New project aims to combine Flickr, Google Earth, and "spatial location"


An innovative an dinteresting venture by the University of Southern California called Viewfinder seeks to spatially locate 2D pictures within a 3D environment like Google Earth. The end result places the pictures within Google Earth so that they seamlessly integrate within their environment. Can't picture it? Just check out the video after the jump, and check out the site for more information on how it works.

The goal is to eventually create a service that basically mixes something like Flickr with Google Earth, enabling users to view and post photos within their virtual environment. Flickr currently allows for geotagging, but viewing the pictures within their environment adds tons of more fun to the idea.

Perhaps Flickr should consider expanding its photo services instead of adding video, which it is trying to do right now, since Flickr users seem to hate the presence of moving pics on the Yahoo owned site. It seems a partnership with Viewfinder and Google Earth would be a better move, and -- since Yahoo's busy intermingling with all sorts of companies right now -- why not?

[via boing boing]

Read more →

Filed under: Internet, Video, Google

Google adds YouTube videos to Google Earth

Google Earth YouTubeGoogle may have started out as a search engine, but the company now has all sorts of divisions: e-mail, maps, online video, social networking, online document creation/storage, photo sharing. Some of these services already talk to one another. You can send a Google Document via e-mail, for instance. Others remain separate. There's no way to save a photo from Gmail to Picasa Web.

But if you've noticed that many of Google's services are marching slowly toward convergence, you're not alone. Today Google announced support for discovering geotagged YouTube videos from within Google Earth. Because you know, that's exactly what you've been waiting for. Wait, what?

Here's how it works. Anyone can tag a YouTube video with the location where it was recorded. Then when you're searching Google Earth you can look for videos from across the globe. The new geotagged video layer is in the 'featured content" folder of Google Earth. Click on the YouTube button and you'll see video icons pop up. When you zoom in you'll find even more videos. You can play them from within Google Earth or you can click through to YouTube and watch them in your web browser.

It's kind of cool, but seriously, we would have been happier if Google had announced we could save Gmail attachments to Picasa Web.

Filed under: Photo, Web services, Yahoo!

1.2 million Flickr photos geotagged in the first day

Spiral Jetty, geotaggedRemember Monday when I reported on Flickr's new geotagging features, which gives users a nice drag-and-drop interface for "tagging" photos with the location they were taken at? I thought it was cool, but expected it to take off fairly slowly. According to the official FlickrBlog, though, in the first 24 hours more than 1.2 million photos were geotagged by Flickr users. In his post on the blog, Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield writes, "When we were doing our projections for how many photos Flickr members would geotag, we though that we'd hit Spiral Jetty a million in the first month, maybe even as fast as two weeks. Instead, 24 hours in, there were 1,234,384 geotagged photos (and now more than 1.6 million geotagged photos as I write this, about 9 hours later). Crazy!" Crazy indeed. Browsing around the Flickr map it's obvious he's right--there's way more pink polka dots on the map now, even in my little rural corner of the world. Butterfield also writes a bit about the technical side of Flickr, which will be of interest to my fellow web dev geeks.

[Via TechCrunch]

Filed under: Photo, Web services, Yahoo!

Flickr adds mapping, geotagging

Flickr map
Today Flickr seriously pumped up its geotagging support and added Yahoo! Maps integration. The announcement in the Flickr blog links to a few screencast tutorials that make geotagging, i.e. associating photos with particular locations on the map, look pretty easy. It's done through the Flash Ajax-based Organizr tool, and basically you select a bunch of your photos and then drag them to the location you want to tag them with on the map. Similarly, you can explore other people's photos with a new map interface. You can go to flickr.com/map to see everybody's photos and search by location and/or tag. Naturally, it's all done through the Yahoo! Maps API, which means you can zoom and pan around as well as see a satellite photo or hybrid view of the map. The Flickr update also includes integration with Upcoming.org: you can now tag your photos with a special tag for an Upcoming.org event and they'll be displayed on the Upcoming page for that event. Neat.

[Via Waxy.org]

Filed under: Photo, Web services, Yahoo!

Flickr embracing geocodes and maps?

Flickr LogoMarshall Kirkpatrick over on TechCrunch has an interesting post of a possible upcoming Flickr feature.

Marshall's post highlights some posts from Flickr users that noticed today a new Maps option on their photo page - one of the enterprising users, James & Vilija's, grabbed a screenshot (and posted it to Flickr).

This would absolutely rule and makes all kinds of sense. There have been other ways to geotag photos, but they have been limited and not applicable to the less technically inclined.

Integrating with Yahoo! Maps would make this easy to pin them to the right location, Yahoo! Maps already generates GPS Co-ordinates when you right-click on them, and hopefully will add tags automatically to the photo for easy searching later.

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