Wow! I have just noticed that the “Hybrid” button in Google Maps was replaced with a “Terrain” button. So when I use it on my Google Maps default location it looks like that:
Of course there are better things to look at than your own neighborhood. Like for example those fascinating features of the terrain in Venezuela:
I have just discovered what seems to be a problem with Flickr’s GPS data interpretation. Some time ago I have noticed that some of my pictures are slightly misplaced on my Flickr map. At first I thought it is just the limited accuracy of my GPS receiver. So, I checked the data in the picture manually and according to Google Maps it was all fine. I even went a step further and checked the data from a picture downloaded from Flickr and it’s also correct. So - it’s just Flickr misreading the data somewhere in between.
The picture below shows the wrong placement on the left and the correct one on the right (with the incorrect above on the bridge).
GPS data problem on Flickr
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.
So yesterday I blogged about how I don’t understand why Picasa doesn’t offer geotagging functionality and today Google is announcing the purchase of Panoramio - the service that allows for viewing geotagged photos in Google Maps and exporting Google Earth files. I’m probably not going to take too much risk predicting that the next version of Picasa will incorporate some kind of integration between pictures and GPS data. On a slightly related note, I uploaded some geotagged photos into Panoramio and the GPS data was not recognized - I was asked to place them on the map manually. Hopefully Google will iron out all the quirks…
PhotoMapper goodness
Originally uploaded by piotr zurek.
PhotoMapper is a nice little free (GPL) application that allows you to geotag your photos and export them in a .kmz file for use in Google Earth. It’s all cool but if you import previously geotagged photos it rounds up the coordinates and loses the accuracy. As you can see in the table all the photo seem to have their geotag at 36 50 00.00 S 174 44 00.0000 E when really it should be 36 50 27.60 S 174 43 54.60 E. I hope that it’s a small bug that can be easily fixed and since PhotoMapper is open source it should happen pretty soon. Unfortunately I don’t know C++ in which it’s written so I can’t help here.
It would be nice if someone ported it to Linux/Gtkmm or maybe just created a plugin like that for F-spot. I can’t understand why Picasa doesn’t offer that functionality. It would make so much sens.
 So, I’ve just uploaded some of my first geotagged photos to Flickr. Truns out it’s also pretty easy to see them in Google Maps - thanks to Google’s support of free and open standards, in this case GeoRSS. Here’s a link to my Flickr photostream in Google Maps. That’s how it looks in the browser:
And some of the photos I’ve taken tonight:
I’ve got it and quick! I’m very nicely surprised with the delivery speed. It was ordered on Friday and I got it on Monday morning. Well done FedEx! The online tracking is pretty cool too:
First impressions on the N2 di-GPS mini?
So now I need a weekend with a bit of good weather for a photo trip to test it. That’s going to be a looong week of waiting.
