Zooomr might being some competition soon huh?

Argh! I wonder where this leaves websites based around allowing you to geocode and map your photos, like http://www.mapsack.com?

This is not supprising as the guy from the popular geobloggers site was snapped up by yahoo to work on flickr.

Haha, bring it on — We’re about to launch some new stuff today as well.

Great News!
Flickr is getting another Pro User!

Geo tagging on sites like flickr is going to make the future of mapping, photo sharing, image searching and people locating very interesting. Mix Riya facial recognition with geo tag mapping / photo sharing and you have some exciting possibilities.

One interesting aspect of the Zooomr vs. Flickr thing is likely to also be a Yahoo! Maps vs. Google Maps issue as well as Flickr is likely to use Yahoo! maps underneath their mash up.

Sergey Chernyshev has written a great tool which allows you to enter in any location on the map and compare Yahoo! vs. Google in terms of mapping software.

http://www.sergeychernyshev.com/maps.html

Type in your own address and see whether or not you think Google Maps or Yahoo maps are better.

Here is Paris, France comparing Google vs. Yahoo for example. It will be interesting to see how someplace like Paris looks like in Flickr’s software when released.

http://www.sergeychernyshev.co.....8,2.350966|2|0

Oh, and I work for Zooomr by the way.

Just trying it now. It’s pretty impressive, but a real shame (although understandable) that they’re using Yahoo Maps, with no street-level mapping in Europe. Leads to pretty hit-and-miss geotagging over here, unless you can recognise your location from aerial photographs.

Does this use Yahoo! Maps Beta, or the standard fare? I’m a big fan of beta, so I hope they use that. Also, anyone have any idea when Yahoo will integrate higher resolution of non-British European satelite photos?

Web 2.0 continues to thrive. Flickr and their uses of Geo related technology will inevitably inspire others to reinvent their content strategy. GPS and the use of GPS is and will be part of web2.0 (maybe 3.0 ???[[ something to think about!@!$@#]]). Also, we will see more companies strategically position themselves for user friendly applications by using AJAX. AJAX programmers keep your eyes open for lucrative opportunities.

Interesting that merely posting a link to this story and cutting and pasting the first few paragraphs from Arrington’s article is enough to get this story deleted from Flickr Central.

This is going to go well with Where’s Tim. I was just talking today about adding GeoRSS feed support. Now hopefully, it will be easier to add flickr feeds. As of yet, the feeds don’t have explicit geo information.

Trying it now and it’s very cool. I won’t be using this for a lot of my old photos because it would just be tedious to add all of those photos to the map. I will, however, use it going forward with new images.

yahoo maps … ah well … that’s a dump truck full of pixel for europeans

ah, info from the dev. more detailed maps to come. good.

Very cool… I’ve been using this feature on Smugmug for some time now. It definitely adds another layer to photo sharing.

We don’t mention this anywhere, because you know, it’s too geeky. But for those people who like to mash GPS tracklogs or units with their cameras and photos, you can set Flickr to import the location info out of the EXIF data when it gets uploaded.

http://www.flickr.com/account/geo/exif

So yeah, you can use Google’s Picasa and Google Earth to ‘geotag’ the photos and add the EXIF info on your desktop and then upload them to Flickr, to share the mapping goodness.

“Haha, bring it on — We’re about to launch some new stuff today as well.”

Too funny. Hurts, doesn’t it Kris? Can’t wait to hear about the new Zooomr features, though. I’m sure Michael will post all about them.

“Haha, bring it on — We’re about to launch some new stuff today as well.”

I really hope the new features include some new servers, no offence by zooomr is way too slow!

Zooomed, I’m not hurt by this at all. I’m actually glad that someone finally stepped up to the mark!

Stewart, Rev Dan Catt & Flickr Co. should definitely be proud of what they have built, but rest assured that there is still much more to be done in this area.

Today is Flickr’s day to demo their new goods. We’ll be launching our new features tomorrow.

Congratulations, guys.

-Kristopher

“Haha, bring it on — We’re about to launch some new stuff today as well.”

“Today is Flickr’s day to demo their new goods. We’ll be launching our new features tomorrow.”

Already delaying new features? I used to be interested in Zooomr, but Flickr just seems more solid and feels like it’s going to be around for a while.

Unfortunately, it’s not of much use for european users. No doubt, it would be a lot of fun, if the maps had street level detail for over here. BTW, does it crash your Safari too?

Kris: your approach reminds me of the Cold War. You’re the Soviet military and Flickr is the US military. You think you’re in an arms race and just like the Soviets, your efforts are not well-directed. Flickr is rolling out features that have some appeal but they’re not overdoing it. I’m not a fan of geo-tagging myself, but it’s a feature that I can see some people using. I don’t care if you did it first either, Flickr has the userbase.

We’re constantly hearing about all these new features Zooomr is getting. There are some cool things you’re doing but for the most part your features have no appeal to 99.999% of the Internet population. People get tired of it. People can only take so much. If you oversaturate them with things that they don’t care about, they tune you out. In my opinion, you’ve hit that point.

If I were you, I’d consider trying to sell my technology to somebody if you can find a buyer (maybe Flickr will buy you and put you on the team - or maybe not). Or maybe put it up for sale on eBay. I don’t know what your business model is, but you and Flickr are competing for a fairly limited segment of the same market and your service isn’t going anywhere.

It’s interesting to see that Flickr have introduced some bugs with this new feature (Organizr broken on Macs) so Zooomr aren’t the only people to stumble whilst launching new struff.

I don’t really get the ‘arms race’ thing, either. SmugMug pioneered, as far as I know, real geotagging support for photo sharing. Am I upset or dismayed somehow that Flickr now has it?

No way! I think it’s great! ( http://blogs.smugmug.com/oneth.....me-flickr/ )

Flickr has the most buzz and PR, so this is good for everyone. It’s good for customers, it’s good for our industry, and hopefully, it’ll get the camera manufacturers to finally put GPS chips in cameras standard.

I just wish they’d done it a year ago so we’d be that much closer to every camera shipping with GPS.

Really nice feature. I’m just waiting for the API for this.

To answer all those who wonder for the future of alternative flickr geotagging websites, I have one small one and I don’t see this feature as a threat. I will be even relieved when flickr will launch the API for this feature. Reason is that after the API is launched (in the next few days), I won’t need a copy of the geotagging data on my own server and I will leave all the work for flickr.

I have just a question about the fact of not using geotagged/geo:lon/geo:lat, if I want to leave flickr, how do I manage to retrieve my geotag data?

kanjiroushi, there’s a couple of API methods you’ll be able to use. You could either do a photo search for your own photos and request the geo data as extras. Or use a getLocation method on a photo by photo basis. Just the same as if you wanted to get the tags for the photos.

I expect once the API is released tools to export/convert to all sorts of formats will pop up (I certainly hope so).

Thats a really cool feature! I have been waiting for something like this. Thanks for the post!

What would be especially cool would be if the APIs for the major photo sites that support geotagging were supported by Microsoft’s Photosynth.

Blogged my review here: http://thomashawk.com/2006/08/.....-damn.html

Funny I did the same on my photoblog a few weeks ago with Google API.
http://www.mcfull.com/photomap.php

As a “masher-upper” of several of the Yahoo properties that are to be integrated today, I always have mixed feelings when the firms with open API’s implement features that have been done extensively in the mashup community.

On one hand, its certainly their right to progress and add to their core service, and any visibility for niche services (geotagging) is a good thing.

On the other hand, when a creative community springs up around and API and a consumer need to offer solutions (in this case geotagging services), it always seems a little backhanded to see the community’s functionality and ideas “go corporate” - without the community. I know a lot of Flickr API developers will lose a lot of traffic to their properties, and that the Flickr/Yahoo tools will include a lot of their ideas and “knowledge equity” - is that how the relationship is supposed to be?

All of that being said, I have no idea how to resolve the issue - its not like once a firm releases and API they have to freeze their internal development.

Thoughts from crunchers?

Zooomr … just because you are only 17 doesn’t mean you have to act as a 17 year old and pretend its either your or flickr - they are adding features, you are adding features, both of you have fans and users … just build your product the best you can and let the work speak for itself.

This is totally sweet. Hopefully they’ll expose the geodata in an open API so someone can build an alternative version that uses Google Maps!

I geotagged a bunch of stuff real quick and already have a fairly useful map (useful for my friends and family anyway) - it didn’t “find” places as easily as Google does but you can manually browse if you know where you’re going.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mahalie/map/

I criticized Zooomr during its pre launch, but I am all for Kris and his team. Flickr if this is your idea of factual based argument, it falls short of my expectations by far and just shows why you would release the feature of geotagging just to keep up with your competitor Zooomr.

Nice feature. Too bad that it uses Yahoo maps (a must have corporate policy too use maps provided by the boss I guess) who don’t even provide a detailed map of London (!). Much less Gothenburg, Kuala Lumpur and other cities outside the US. I tagged some of my photos taken in San Francisco, but tagging anything from home, Asia, England etc. was not very easy or meaningful, unless you want to tag a highway.

I think it’s a shame that a company owned/backed by Yahoo cannot come up with it’s own ideas.

Michael’s already posted about Flickr running scared from Zooomr, how long before they introduce a portals rip-off !?

Well, good time to check again some mobile client with some direct Flickr upload capacities….

You have mobup ( http://www.mobup.org/ ) and
J2memap that does more than this but that use some mobup components( http://j2memap.landspurg.net )

Using these tools you will be able to take a picture from your phone, directly upload to FLickr and eventually add some geotagging information if you have GPS connected, waiting for more GPS integrated phones…

When will we have smart digital cameras with built in GPS so that the Long/Lat of every image taken can be directly imbedded into the resulting JPEGs? Once we have enough such cameras, our pictures could be a lot more informative than todays’.

Surely the better solution is for both sites to offer users the option of Google or Yahoo for their solutions?

I know Yahoo own flickr but surely it’s customers that come first? The Yahoo maps just don’t cut it for me in the UK.
I spent ages last night trying to geotag a collection and I had to just keep moving the collection until I was as close as possible. This isn’t good enough really.
It’s great to see more Geotagging though. I love it and think it’s a fine feature. It’s the main reason I openeed a Zooomr account.

It’s complete useless for any location outside the US or Canada.

Tragically, for everywhere apart from the USA, the maps are so crap it’s almost insulting. USA

As a fresh Flickr pro user my first reaction was one of excitement, but this quickly changed when I tried geotagging my first photos (taken in Eurodisney) on the blurry Yahoo maps. The website Thomas Hawk described above illustrates my frustration perfectly:. Try out this link to Eurodisney http://www.sergeychernyshev.co.....1955566406|5|2
and then go ahead and zoom in!

I understand this is beyond the powers of the Flickr team, and I love the way they integrated geotagging in the Organizr, but to call this pile of pixels a ‘map’ is an insult to all us non-Americans users.

As there seems to be quite a bit of flickr v zooomr debate here, I thought it might be a good idea to have a poll! I put on on my blog: http://www.alastairjames.me.uk.....-the-poll/

Looks like Flickr won, hands down. I think it’s the numbers. Here’s a good example… http://www.shawnblog.com/2006/.....mcdonalds/

Flickr is no doubt sweet. If you are into Picasa as well check this out:

Here is a link to a blog post I did about geotagging my blog posts. It’s not exactly automated, but it is pretty cool. It also talks about geotagging photos with Garmin GPS data using WWMX, Picasa, and Google Earth.

Check out the post:
http://hikesandbikes.blogspot......-post.html

or the main site for geotagged examples:
http://hikesandbikes.blogspot.com

Speaking about “geotagging”: do you know locr?
locr offers the ideal solution and makes geotagging exceptionally easy. locr uses GoogleMaps with detailed maps and high-resolution satellite images. To geotag your photos just enter address, let locr search, fine-tune the marker, accept position, and done! If you don’t know the exact address simply use drag&drop to set the position.
For automatic geotagging you need a datalog GPS receiver in additon to your digital camera. The GPS receiver data and the digital camera data is then automatically linked together by the locr software. All information will be written into the EXIF header.
In the standard view, locr shows the photo itself, plus the place it was taken. If you want to know more about the place where the photo was taken, just have at look at the Wikipedia articles which are also automatically assigned to the picture.
Have a look at http://www.locr.com.