After I wrote about loc.alize.us, the service that mashes together Google maps and Flickr to support the geotagging of photos, Flickr today revealed their own geotagging integration.
The tagging is done inside the Organize section of a person’s account, a new tab called Map appeared there today. They use Yahoo maps, which unfortunately don’t support all of Europe in as great a detail as Google maps does. The upside is that Flickr recognised the photos I had already tagged with loc.alize.us and imported them nicely into their own map.
Tagging is easy, as you can just drag and drop your photos in there. The fact that it’s done inside the organising area makes for much faster tagging than with loc.alize.us, but as mentioned above, Yahoo maps simply aren’t as good as Google maps. I hope they’ll catch up soon.
Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like when you drag a photo onto the map:
It’s also possible to just drag and drop a bunch of photos in there. That’ll be a time-saver, once I decide to actually tag all of my 900+ photos.
When you look at your photostream and click the map button, they show you the map with the tagged pictures indicated in pink:
Overall, the whole implementation is really quite smooth, and apart from the fact that they have to use their master’s map service, it’s a good addition to the service. By the way, before you can start tagging, they show a little disclaimer about privacy, and let you decide the default permissions for who can view your geo-tags. Nice that someone’s thinking about the fact that there are indeed a whole bunch of weird people out there, for whom geotagging of photos is probably a recurring wet dream.
Geo-tagging, the practice of adding geographical information to media, in this case photos, has been around for a while. Flickr, the Yahoo!-acquired social photo-site that’s loved by everyone, has been ignoring this idea for a long time. In the fast-paced world of online services, not delivering new stuff that wows people can be deadly. Unless of course you’ve got a following that’s not only loyal, but also quite gifted, and whips up new stuff just because it can.
Case in point, loc.alize.us, a geo-tagging service that is very easy to use and integrates Yahoo!-rival Google’s maps right into the Flickr interface. The fact that Yahoo! has their own map-service makes this whole thing rather naughty. Naughty but nice!
When looking at your pictures in Flickr, simply click the loc.alize.us bookmarklet and follow the instructions:
Here’s a screenshot of what the loc.alize.us homepage looks like:
Go there to look at geo-tagged photos or for the bookmarklet that will open up geo-tagging heaven for you.
Finally, just to top it off, the bookmarklet adds the geotags to the existing tags in Flickr. In case Flickr ever decides to let people export their pictures complete with tags, this will come in very handy!
And next time I use the word “tag” or any derivative more than once in a sentence, you have the right to come over and give me a good whipping.
Zooomr, once one-man show, photo sharing, Flickr-clone-accused, prototypical web 2.0 service is going to launch its new version tonight.
I haven’t tested the service thoroughly yet, but they do offer a load of interesting additions, stuff everyone’s darling Flickr doesn’t. Like geo-tagging, so you’ll always know right to the square meter where my photos were shot. It also comes in quite a few languages, and overall, it looks like it’s got potential. How they’re trying to beat the hipness factor of Flickr, that I don’t know.
I’ll check out the new version tonight to see what the fuzz is about.
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