Several Flickr users noticed a brief appearance this morning of a new option on their dashboards to map the location of their photos. Flickr user Brad77 reports on his blog that for just a few minutes he was able to access a page that asked him to set geotagging permissions, then drag and drop his photos onto a Yahoo! map. Very cool. Flickr user James & Vilija’s was able to capture a quick screen cap that shows a “map” tab on the Flickr photos page that isn’t there anymore.
There are a number of ways to geotag Flickr photos now, but drag and drop functionality baked in would be a huge boon for local search and Flickr users. Exciting stuff. Thanks to Kristopher Tate from Flickr competitor Zooomr for the tip!
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Doesn’t Riya already offer something similar?
Jesse, Riya’s Geotagging is very basic / simple.
It’s interesting to see Flickr finally pick-up the ball after we’ve been doing integrated geotagging for over 6 months now.
Check-out our geotag system at this URL:
http://beta.zooomr.com/tagmap
Y! Maps isn’t as “worldly” as Google Maps, which offers most of North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan. To my immediate knowledge, Y! Maps only does North America in detail.
I hope that answers your question.
-Kristopher
Kristopher, to be fair - Google maps are pretty anemic for most of the world as well.
drag and drop functionality in general is obviously useful but why would someone want to geotag their online photo collection blows my mind
Marshall, I don’t doubt that Yahoo! won’t catch-up, but that’s just it, right? Google is far ahead of any other online mapping service and their work reflects it.
Yahoo’s maps may have more features at this point — I’m not certain about features. But, when it comes to plotting and finding a photograph on a map, you need to have detailed maps and geocoding facilities. Google has that and more.
I don’t work for Yahoo and do not have any sources around the company, so I wouldn’t know what Yahoo Maps offers other than what they have up on their Beta Maps site.
I know the Google Maps API has added street level maps for a lot of western Europe and Australia/New Zealand in addition to the UK, Japan, and Canada. Why do you think that Google Maps is so anemic? Is the data inaccurate or something?
Also, to be fair, zoomr picked-up a lot of things from flickr. In fact, to me it is flickr + lightbox, except that it doesn’t have the flickr mass!
Tone - geotagging is useful - I go on some long bike rides in the middle of nowhere, take lots of photos, geotag them automatically based on the gps time and the camera time being synchronised. Then I can see a map of my cycle route with photos placed in the correct places. This is very useful when passing on a route to someone else.
David, I am dissapointed in the availability of data for the rest of the world outside the countries you’ve listed. I’m sure it’s lack of economic incentive, not resources, that stands in the way of all these companies mapping Latin America, Asia, Africa etc. better than they do.
The first thing that came to mind when I saw this is Zoomr.coms map functionality.
Its good to see Flickr and Zoomr benefiting from each other. All the better for us, the consumers.
Flicker rules !
Luckily great google mapping options have been available for months on flickr via Greasemonkey. Because Yahoo maps is worthless outside North America.
It seems everyone at Tech Crunch has to be a Google Critic. So far I would say Google has the lead in Map data/sat images. They don’t have the whole world mapped out but give them time. They have a definite lead in the maps department.
BlockRocker.com has been mapping geotagged photos for months:
http://blockrocker.com/categor.....7187/0/Map
http://blockrocker.com/categor.....985/13/Map
And offers a pretty intuitive geotagging app that plugs directly into the Flickr API:
http://www.blockrocker.com/service_flickr.php
I just wanted to follow up my original comment by saying that geotagging support from Flickr would be fantastic. The more tagged up content out there, the better, as I’m sure Kris Tate can appreciated.
I also wanted to take a second to advocate geotagging of content other than pictures - for instance, I wish del.icio.us, youtube, and so on would deploy such a system, and that bloggers would embrace geotagging a little quicker.
I have to disagree with most of you about Google Vs. Yahoo. We’ve been looking closely at map availability (sat AND roads) and i’m sorry to say that Google is no better than Yahoo.
Google covers well US/Europe/Japan and a few others but has pretty much nothing for the rest of the world (Africa anyone?)
Yahoo actually covers most of the world a minimum but fails when it comes to providing actual detailed info for big cities besides US (Paris anyone?)
The best trade-off you can find today is actually Microsoft’s Virtual Earth (if you discard Mapquest for their obvious disinterest for web2 features). I’m actually suprised that nobody even mentionned it in the previous comments.
When you want to provide worldwide geotagging, Google is simply not (yet) the best choice as far as coverage is concerned.
Marshall,
I think the issue is whether or not Yahoo has better world coverage than Google - not if Google has great world coverage or not. At least that’s how I read Kristopher’s post.
Kristopher I highly recommend you look at the Google Maps / Flickr tools that are offered at link below. More robust than anything I have seen at Flickr or Zooomr - at least for my preferences.
Things like an url (acessible to others without password) that provides a flickr user a fullscreen page with a google map with pins of all geotagged photos (exclusive to that user) with scrolling slide show below. Easy geotagging, button above photo to more to map instantly, and other neat stuff.
There may be a way to get my own big map with all my zoomr photos mapped simultaneously on one page …. accessible to anyone … but I haven’t seen how.
http://webdev.yuan.cc/
I have no affiliation with the link - just a big fan
Good luck and regards,
I am a long time Flickrite, and a member of Zooomr since Techcrunch review the service. I like geotagging because I can find photos of places I am interested in, plus I can recruit photogs to our Atlanta Flickr group. We go on strolls 3 to 4 times a month, and the social aspects of photography are fantastic.
I also like Zooomr because it is so new I can grow with that community.
I love the competition between the two services.
Tone, AFAIK, tagging my content would benefit everyone else by giving a true geographic relevance to my images. Thus, if you wanted to find local flora in San Diego, you could start from a map, enter a tag of “flowers” and get images that were taken locally. Click elsewhere on the map and you’ll get an exclusive set of images totally independant from the first map location.
I love the idea! Enter “New Year’s Eve” and click around. Enter “Best Irish Pub” and roam.
How about entering a tag and seeing where that tag lies on a map? Enter “nude beaches”, “Disc golf course”, etc… That’s just a start.
Burton Lo - what you’ve described is what BlockRocker does. Head to http://www.blockrocker.com and click “switch to tags.” Enter a tag that you’re interested in, and a list of tags will load - click one, and items tagged with that will load below and on the map.
For example:
http://blockrocker.com/tags/po.....3516/1/Map
Steve,
Nice tip, but it really is not fully integrated with Flickr.
Flickr is great because it’s constantly improving - IMO one of the key factors for enduring success.
P.S.: What’s wrong with the TechCrunch feed? Read http://www.baubels.net/blog/?p=97
I have to agree with Tone. While the geotagging feature might benefit a select few, for the average flickr user (including myself), I’m willing to bet that this kind of feature is more trouble than what it’s worth. Tagging seems to get the job done just fine in my opinion.
Maybe Zooomr had some influence on Flickr here, but to me it’s an obvious integration feature. I bet it was being planned soon after the acquisition.
I don’t have any specific information about Flickr’s roadmap, but when you see a feature on Yahoo it has usually been planned for a long, long time. It’s always funny to hear people say “Yahoo launched (insert feature) right after (insert company). They must be copying them.”
Super cool feature either way. I love starting on a sattelite map and zooming all the way in. Random example: http://beta.zooomr.com/photos/.....904/116814
Jonathan - how does that sand crab survive all the way out in the ocean like that? Amazing!
Kristopher, please grow up! Your posts annoy most of us, don’t you get it? You did not invent photo geotagging or Sony stole your idea too, huh? Trust me you are not doing Zooomr a favor with your immature attitude! Mike used to be listed as your PR, but no longer and no wonder!
Marshall, that sand crab was actually a capture by me.. It’s pretty amazing… these little guys can be found EVERYWHERE (during low tide of course) They try to burrow into the soft sand when the tide is moving out but many of them get caught on the beach…. much to the seagulls delight! I found many of them picked clean of their shells. But this little guy was still intact! In fact, he was flipped over on his back and I turned him over before taking the shot!
Cheers!!
Nikolay, of course I did not invent Geotagging, and that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about listening to users by doing something about feature requests.
Zooomr is not the first site to do geotagging, but it is the first photo sharing service to provide 1st party assisted geotagging, which is HUGE because you can see all of the nearby photos and also cluster tags together forming events, among many other features we have at Zooomr.
I don’t appreciate the personal attacks when they are unfounded — Michael van Veen is still with us, and his name is still up on our corporate webpage — I’m not sure why you would say that he was not.
That is one bad ass sand crab.
Yeah, I invented geotagging
I’m pretty sure smugmug was the 1st photo sharing service to provide 1st party assisted geotagging, quickly followed by zoto and a handful of others.
Just saying.
Freaky by great crab btw.
Google’s latest Picasa has a great geotagging built in. I have been with Flickr for close to a year and am very disappointed with their pace of improvements. Beyond their calendar and dvd products, which I could care less for, Flickr has done nothing in terms of improving their core features. It seems all decisions at Flickr are made with money and not creativity in mind.
” 1st party assisted geotagging” ???!!!
What about this?
http://socialsoftware.weblogsi.....nd-photos/
Apparently Zooomr is not just Flickr clone but a hybrid of http://www.flickr.com and http://www.panoramio.com …
“Zooomr is not the first site to do geotagging, but it is the first photo sharing service to provide 1st party assisted geotagging”
Considering how Zoomr is practically a clone of Flickr with some things sprinkled on top, I’m surprised you’d bring up a “they’re copying our feature” point.
I have accounts at both sites and use both but you’re only making yourself look bad by making that post.
Check out Geosnapper.com if you are looking for the pioneer in geotagging of photos. I believe they went online in 2004 or maybe even 2003.
[I work at Flickr]
Re the main topic: these are not the droids you’re looking for.
To John (#29): I’m really sorry you feel that way. It’s definitely not the impression we want to give. We weren’t as fast with the features over the last year as we were in the first year.
This is not an excuse, but an explanation: since last June, we’ve grown a by a factor of a few hundred to a few thousand percent, depending on the category. At the same time, the whole company moved - that means getting work visas, finding apartments or houses, getting new drivers licenses, etc. Not a huge deal in itself, but when a whole company has to do it, all at once while growing at 50% a month (or whatever we were at then), it can knock you off your game. It took us a while to recover, and then a while to come up with an architecture that was going to let us cope with the growth over the long term. That mostly wrapped up this spring, but it did use up everything we had for a while.
(Having said that, we did launch a bunch of major new features in that period, like interestingness and clustering, real-time search that actually works, printing, a site redesign, launch a completely new version of organizr (which itself had a dozen of so small new sub-features) as well as lots of smaller things like commenting on sets, replacing photos, group throttles, set and group adding tools, etc.)
But, the bottom line is: this year will have a lot more active development than last year. While we’ll never get back to the pace of year one because of the scale — back then we might have served a hundred thousand photos on a peak day, now we might serve 9,000 photos per second at peak — there’s a big backlog of features to come
Re geotagging photos: As far as I know, Myron is right and GEOsnapper was first — but there have been some newer entrants (like Panoramio) and established sites like SmugMug have added geotagging (I think they did it a year ago or so).
Hypothetically, if Flickr were to add native geotagging features, I suspect we’d be starting out with the largest number of geotagged photos (there are over a quarter million already, geotagged via 3rd party tools - including the much-missed geobloggers.com, created by our own Dan Catt).
Geotagging in flickr is a breeze withe the correct add-in.
http://webdev.yuan.cc/ pprovides a geasemonkey script where you can have a google map inside flickr. Point Click easy.
Flickrmap.com has a great tool that allows Geotagging of flickr photos using google earth.
etc.
Once geotagged there are lots of ways to use the flickr photos.
One of the great advanatages currently to flickr is the hundreds of mash-ups that allow one to easily access flickrphotos and do neat things with them. So flickr has loads of its own features plus lots of features from mash-ups as well.
For example I post flickr photos to my Joomla and Wordpress powered websites with a single click due to great easyto use plug-ins. Zooomr has a long way to catch up in the field of plug-ins and mash ups.
I wish zooomr well but its features currently don’t cut it for me especially 3rd party support. .
In terms of early photo sharing sites with 1st class geotagging support how about the World Wide Media Exchange site from 2002/2003?
http://wwmx.org/
Maybe it was too “research’y” with papers published at ACM Multimedia 2003 etc. for people to take notice
Cheers
I just wanted to brag a little bit about the website that I started, Geosnapper. It has been all about geotagging from the start and we were the first website to do geotagging when we launched in January 2002. Its nice to see other photo websites finally catching up
http://www.geosnapper.com
-Jake
Stewart
Thanks for the update. All those changes did get lost because they were subtle. I really appreciate the new Organizr.
As mentioned there’s been a huge number of great geotagging tools for Flickr over the last year. At Flickrmap we offer what we think is the most enjoyable and precise way to tag photos using the addictive Google Earth to geotag Flickr photos.