Comments on: Geotagging links photos to locales

Attaching location data to images enables new ways to search photos, give slide shows or be a virtual tourist. For now, early adopters only need apply.
Photos: A look at geotagging technology

[Ed from Texas]

Just be careful what you tag

I have geotagged a number of my travel photos and it's a useful tool - though it definitely needs more development. Adobe's support in PS Elements 5 is pretty weak in that, the data is not stored in the file photo. So I have to retag a picture that I upload to Flickr.
But, I make it a point not to tag everything, especially pics of a close to home nature. I know where I live and where my parents live, so I have no need to geotag those photos. The only ones helped by that are potential predators.
I'd be wary of having the GPS built-in to a camera so that it tagged every picture. At least it wouldn't be able to get a coordinate if you were inside a building.

[Shankland]

Flickr privacy controls

It's true that you have to be careful with sharing information you might not want to share. Flickr has some controls that help in this department: You have to explicitly activate the feature that records geotags, and Flickr makes you decide whether you want your geotagged photos' location data to be public or limited to yourself, friends and family.

But yes, if this is built into cameras, there will be a lot of cases where there's no precaution of this sort. Overall, though, it seems to me more an added layer of care you'll have to take with your photos that you probably already ought to be exercising, given how easy it is to e-mail and post pictures.

[LuvThatCO2]

Could be embarrassing too!

Cheating spouses and dumb criminals will undoubtably get caught by this evidence. A geotag on a photo will make nice proof that a suspect was near where a crime was committed, or that an unfaithful spouse wasnt where they said they were!

[fchodson]

Wonderful Possibilities

I've been using RoboGeo
( http://www.robogeo.com ) for a while and have been very happy with thier GoeTagging capabilities. Just this week they have added tagging to RAW files from many of the common camera companies.

FH3

[leszekp]

Lots of options

There are many free programs out there that let you do geotagging with a GPS, most of them very easy to use:

http://freegeographytools.com/category/geotagging

[fogtrain]

Ricoh 500SEW Wifi+GPS

Check out the Ricoh 500SE-W with GPS as it also can embed gps data into exif which can be read/extracted for automatic geotagging.

I mostly use software to geotag my picture collection, mostly since I already have tons of digital pictures from past years. I've found Panorado Flyer (http://www.panorado.com/en/PanoradoFlyer.php) to be very helpful, especially since it connects to Google Earth and captures its 3D-Information like azimuth and tilt, too.
And once the data is in the pictures, a tools like CDWinder (http://www.cdwinder.de) is a blast in blazing through my collection and finding those pics geographically (e.g. all pictures taken at a specific place) or based on other IPTC or EXIF tags...
I find it's a great way to enhance a digital image collection !

[GlennRogers]

A photo database system, DBGallery, allows easy geotagging of one or more photos. The geotag info is stored in the photos Exif data so it's reused ever after for uploading to Flickr, etc. My favorite feature is having a set of photos displayed across a map, and the selection of those photos can be based on months, folders, cameras, or a keyed search criteria. An overview can be found at

http://grrsystems.com/DBGallery/GPS_QuickTour.htm