1.2 million Flickr Photos Geotagged in 24 Hours

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1. Frank Gruber
   

   August 29th, 2006 at 3:33 pm

   3 of the 1.2 million were mine.

2. Skip Trace
   

   August 29th, 2006 at 3:43 pm

   That is a really impressive amount of photos in such a short time.

3. Steve Collins
   

   August 29th, 2006 at 4:07 pm

   I’m trying really hard to like this new functionality, but I’m really not. And not because I don’t think it’s cool, I do. But here in Australia, Yahoo Maps treats us like poor cousins, and the resolution of the maps is very poor - so poor that it’s really not worth tagging my photos.

   See my blog post for more detail.

4. Michael Arrington
   

   August 29th, 2006 at 4:55 pm

   Yeah, I know the maps suck outside of the US…and that makes the product not nearly as much fun.

5. Stewart Butterfield
   

   August 29th, 2006 at 6:12 pm

   [I work for Flickr]

   I’ll be posting about this shortly, but we just released the corresponding Geo API methods: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/.....ssage/2161 So, in short, don’t like our maps? Go ahead and map them on Google, MSN, Mapquest or any of the dozens of European, Asian or South American regional speciality sites

6. Matthew
   

   August 29th, 2006 at 6:48 pm

   Steve has a good point, the maps may not be as good as we’d like (in places like Australia.) However my question is why do we need resolution down to the metre? Surely the photo itself is a good clue as to where the photographer was standing (crumbling history notwithstanding I suppose…)

   Well, I’m sure the maps will get better - what is most important, though, is how do we get our data back out of the silo? Can / will we export the geotags? Can I as easily tag my photos before they are uploaded?

7. jantox
   

   August 29th, 2006 at 7:32 pm

   I dont know, but somehow there is a bug in Flickr geotagging, every once in awhile when i searched a place (that is on the map, of course) it showed me the number of photos geotagged but will not let me zoom into that place.

8. Stewart Butterfield
   

   August 29th, 2006 at 7:32 pm

   Matthew: “what is most important, though, is how do we get our data back out of the silo?”

   If you scroll up to the comment I made immediately before yours, you’ll see links to the published documentation for our open API that allows people to get their data out of the “silo”. (Of course, in that case, “silo” may not be the best term

9. Duncan
   

   August 29th, 2006 at 8:15 pm

   Matthew,
   what are you on about? down to the metre? the closest I could get in a densly populated part of Queensland when I tried to geotag some of my Flickr shots was 1km. TOTALLY USELESS!

   Google went to 50m on the same shot, which was sufficient to actually locate the building/ structure where the pictures were shot, obviously if it was the states it would be a matter of a few metres, but that’s not the point being made by others. The map feature totally sucks, and the satelitte imagery isn’t much better, not just for Australia but basically anywhere outside of the US and Canada.

10. yorkie
    

    August 29th, 2006 at 9:26 pm

    Awesomely done Stewart. Nice to see that even though the Y! integration is tightening (ie. both flickr and upcoming), it’s not at the expense of the open standards of flickr. Keep it up and keep it open!

11. Bernie Goldbach
    

    August 29th, 2006 at 10:11 pm

    Since most of my images were snapped in Europe, I have to manually relocate them on the default maps served up by Flickr. It’s not Flickr’s fault. It’s the national mapping agencies who use tax money to construct a geodetic grid that sits behind a stiff licensing scheme. Like many in Ireland and the UK, I believe it’s time to free that mapping data.

12. Brian
    

    August 29th, 2006 at 10:16 pm

    You think you could get a higher res logo for flickr… m’kay?

13. Danny
    

    August 29th, 2006 at 10:30 pm

    1.1 million of those photos are of my cat…

    Absolutely marvellous to see, a great addition to the Semantic Web. (Although I must echo Bernie’s points re. Europe).

14. Stewart Butterfield
    

    August 29th, 2006 at 11:34 pm

    Bernie and Danny, we’re with you too

    But, despite the licensing hurdles, Y! Maps will get better. Some points on that and spatial search tech and more on the FlickrBlog now: http://blog.flickr.com/flickrb....._one_.html

15. Edwin
    

    August 30th, 2006 at 1:14 am

    Brilliant service. Patrons want interactivity. Addictive interactivity…

16. holiday planner
    

    August 30th, 2006 at 4:23 am

    The geo tagging is awesome stuff. I’ve been playing around with it and its great fun

17. Bill Hooven
    

    August 30th, 2006 at 5:15 am

    I love this idea and quickly jumped on the bandwagon to add a few of my own. However…I go back today and can’t find any of my pics. I can easily find pics from some kids birthday party in the middle of the road somewhere but I can’t find a beautiful picture of Bald River Falls I uploaded simply by viewing the map. I’ll check for a while but if it fails to show, I’m done. No sense wasting time.

    Second, I’d like to suggest they improve the “page” tool. I can’t imagine the complexity and power required to make this work so I hate to be critical BUT I kinda expected to see all pics on a map on the first viewing, without the need to keep clicking “next page” over and over in a popular area. I’d rather see them all and then drill down with zoom or use the filter.

18. Ralph Tuckwell
    

    August 30th, 2006 at 6:14 am

    Well, it’s a great idea, but the execution is not brilliant. I somehow cannot see how there can be over 1 million photos as a search only yields a few in each place. And then I lost patience over the speed and the maps.

    When cameras have an inbuilt GPS it will be much easier …

19. Blake P
    

    August 30th, 2006 at 6:34 am

    The concept is good and the execution will improve. I think this will become very interesting as more people jump in and try it out. MySpace could use a mapping feature like this.

20. Gatomalo
    

    August 30th, 2006 at 6:53 am

    What ever happened with Zooomr…

21. bree
    

    August 30th, 2006 at 8:05 am

    Several hundred of those geotagged photos were mine, including some I took in Australia. I did find it surprising that Australia had so little detail, but at least you can place them in the general area. It would have been worse to launch with the feature only in North America.

    There was almost too much detail within Canada. I would have been happy to show the photos on a pin dot for Montreal, for instance, but it went right down to the specific streets which I didn’t know. I took my best guess.

    I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to use the map function. Geotagging sounded a little too propeller hat for me, but in execution it was brilliant. For travelers it’s a nice ego boost as well to see your pin dots all over the world. Made me wish I’d been to more places.

22. mahalie
    

    August 30th, 2006 at 9:30 am

    My first impressions of the mapping tool are extremely positive. Tagging photos is ridiculously easy…Flickr sets the bar as far as easy to use ajaxy interfaces go. I agree with many comments here that the major downside is Yahoo maps. I actually spent a lot of time finding maps on Google Maps because Yahoo couldn’t and then visually pinpointing the location. But now that the API is out (thanks for the heads up Stewart!!) I hope to be seeing lots of Google mashups.

    I also experienced the weird no-zoomin for addresses in Flickr. It seems to have problems with streets that had no N, NW, E, etc. For instance an address to 1st ave s showed up fine but one on 1st ave, no luck. But I attribute this and the slowness I experienced last night to it being a brand new release, likely to improve.

    Go Flickr!!

23. web design uk
    

    August 30th, 2006 at 11:38 am

    Geotagging is a FANTASTIC new feature. I love it

24. Eduardo Manchon
    

    August 30th, 2006 at 2:07 pm

    For those who are interested in areas not well covered by Yahoo Maps, Panoramio can be an alternative.

    In Panoramio you can locate your photos via drag and drop interface using Google Maps. You also can watch the photos in Google Earth through KML feed.

    Eduardo

25. Phil
    

    September 1st, 2006 at 7:23 am

    Sorry Duncan but it sounds like you’re whining here:

    “The map feature totally sucks, and the satelitte imagery isn’t much better, not just for Australia but basically anywhere outside of the US and Canada.”

    The map feature itself is brilliantly done. I found it very easy to use the Organizer to add locations to 300+ of my photos. And the ability to look through other’s photos works well, if a tad slow at times. I don’t quite understand the Page feature (Page 1 of 20+), particularly how they separate images/users between pages. But the designers and programmers at Flickr should be given big raises for this masterful work! (No, I don’t work there! I’m just a professional programmer who especially appreciates a good interface.)

    Sorry for you that the maps and satellite images aren’t as detailed as you’d like, I have no clue why other companies show better quality satellite. But I suspect Yahoo/Flickr will improve this ASAP.

    Once again Flickr has proven they know how to do this stuff right.

26. Liz Waldner
    

    September 1st, 2006 at 11:17 pm

    I haven’t fallen onto the Flickr badwagon yet…and don’t suspect i ever will. Still photos seem so yesterday…i’m a youtube addict and proud of it.
    Real time moving video for me thanks.
    Cheers,
    Liz Waldner
    http://www.lizwaldner.wordpress.com
    Prince George, British Columbia, Canada

27. Gavin
    

    November 22nd, 2006 at 6:42 am

    Grapheety in an early beta release already has a better interface. Also Flickr geotagging is almost pointless. Have you seen Flickr photos? They are like of a wall with paint on it. Who cares where it was taken. http://www.grapheety.com is a geoblog where you can just click on the map to put on stories, and add attachments, the first of which is a photograph. And when its a story and a social one at that, there IS a point for doing it.

    Once people get over the geek factor on Flickr they’re going to want real usage. Then they’ll come to http://www.grapheety.com

28. dalwin
    

    January 9th, 2007 at 2:59 am

    i can’t see any picture in flicker. how i can watch that photo

29. jason galanis
    

    March 1st, 2007 at 12:47 pm

    lots of reasons to start geotagging. google and all the others will be fully indexing images over time and will be correlating all data with physical locations. see the attached interview with a senior google exec. geotagging is the future.

    http://jasongalanis.blogspot.c.....earch.html