Underexposed

LAS VEGAS--A company called Geotate hopes to use an Internet service to lower a significant barrier to the technologically challenging practice of geotagging.

Geotagging, which uses a global positioning system to attach location data to photos to build in more descriptive data, is at present a difficult and largely manual process appealing mostly to serious photo enthusiasts. That's largely because it's too hard right now to build GPS directly into a camera for automated geotagging, so photographers must carry a separate GPS device and then marry the location data to the photos after the fact.

But Geotate, which NXP Software is in the process of spinning off, thinks it has an answer to some of the GPS integration difficulties for camera makers. Here's how it works, according to product manager Paul Gough, who described the technique Wednesday at the Photo Marketing Association trade show here.

First, a camera has to include a built-in GPS radio or have one attached externally to its flash hot-shoe. When a photo is taken, the camera or an external device records about 2 milliseconds' worth of GPS signal data.

That's not enough for the camera to get a location fix; one of the big problems of geotagging is that GPS receivers often take 30 seconds to get their first fix. Geotate's method, though, relies on a central server that later can figure out the location information from just that brief record of GPS data by comparing it to its detailed records of GPS satellite positions.

Geotate today has Windows software that handles communication with its server, and that software then embeds the location data in JPEG images. (It doesn't support raw images or Mac OS X at this point.)

Eventually, Gough said, he hopes camera makers will license the technology to build their own interfaces. Geotate plans to license an API (application programming interface) that could give camera customers access to the service for a particular camera or for a subscription, he said.

Geotate also announced a partnership Wednesday with a New Zealand company, Rakon Limited, to integrate its software with Rakon's GPS radio hardware. The radio measures 1/4 inch by 1/5 inch.

The ATP GPS Photo Finder is designed to ease the geotagging chore.

(Credit: ATP Electronics)

ATP Electronics has announced a device called the GPS Photo Finder that's designed to take some of the trouble out of geotagging your photos.

The device, like many GPS receivers, keeps track of its location based on signals from satellites. What's different is that instead of marrying that location data with your photos on a computer using special software, the Photo Finder has an SD card slot and handles the tagging by itself, the company said. When you copy photos to your computer, the location data is embedded in the JPEG files.

The device should go on sale for $99 in the next couple weeks, said marketing manager Jeffray Hsieh. It also includes a USB port that lets you plug in a flash card reader if your camera uses CompactFlash memory cards or some other format. It's based on the highly regarded SiRF Star III GPS chip.

Sadly, the device supports only JPEG files at this stage. Most photographers shoot only JPEG--indeed, most cameras have no other option--but higher-end models such as SLRs also support raw files, which record the image sensor data with no in-camera processing. And the kind of enthusiasts who shoot raw sometimes are the kinds of enthusiasts who like to geotag photos.

"We'll definitely continue to develop additional support for raw formats," Hsieh said, "but because of the fragmentation between camera manufacturers, it will be a challenge."

The company also plans on adding the ability to export track logs as a KML route file, a record of a person's trip that can be imported into Google Earth software. The company also is planning on adding altitude and direction data that some GPS devices can supply.

The Photo Finder also includes a screen that's can display the time, a feature designed to help nip geotagging time zone complications in the bud.

Personally, I geotag photos for personal archival reasons: which church/mountain/beach was that photo? Various Web sites also can take advantage geotagged photos.

Ricoh's G3 can accommodate a GPS module, but tigher integration is on the way.

(Credit: Ricoh)

The year of the GPS-enabled camera is nearly upon us.

So predicts Kanwar Chadha, founder of GPS chip designer Sirf Technology. "Most (camera makers) are seriously planning location-enabled cameras. The first," he said, "you'll see next year."

Chadha has a vested interest in the technology, so take that bullish prediction with a grain of salt, but don't discount his expertise, influence, and connections. And do pay attention to a new technology Sirf is developing that Chadha promises will let GPS devices find their location within 10 seconds of being switched on.

If his prediction comes true, it'll be good news for those of us who want to know where our pictures were taken as well as when.

Adding location data to photos--a technology called geotagging--is potentially useful, though some are worried about privacy implications. For one thing, you could find out where some particular photo in your archive was taken, which could be handy after your European vacation recedes into the past and all those cathedrals start blurring together. For another, you can give guided slideshows based on a map rather than a timeline. And having location data is another way of searching for photos of a particular subject.

"A location stamp is much more important than a time stamp in most cases. A year down the road, you have no idea where those pictures were taken and no way to search for location," said Chadha, who is Sirf's vice president of marketing. I'm not sure if I agree which I'd rather do without, but I would prefer to have both.

Combining the widespread use of geotagged pictures data with photo-sharing sites gives a new dimension to privacy concern: you'll have to be more careful if you don't want people to figure out where you live or your children play, for example. No doubt that could be a problem for some people, though no doubt law-enforcement agencies will love it for forensics purposes, but it's not an issue I'd get overly alarmed about.

For one thing, people will get gradually more used to the risks of public disclosure, just as they've had to for Web site postings, blogs, MySpace pages, corporate e-mail--and photo sharing as it stands today. I wouldn't be surprised if geotagging is an option you can disable in your camera, and photos-sharing sites such as Flickr and Smugmug let you keep location information private if you choose. Flickr won't even capture the information unless users specifically enable it.

But geotagging is technically challenging, typically requiring that a photographer use a PC to merge photos with location data copied from a GPS receiver. Building GPS receivers into the camera would sidestep that unpleasantness and be a significant step toward an autotagging future in which the camera adds useful metadata to photos automatically.

Based on my experience with GPS receivers, which judge location based on signals received from orbiting satellites, I was skeptical when Chadha made his 2008 prediction during an interview earlier this month.

One problem is that GPS receivers, which generally stay switched on all the time when in use, require a lot of power, whereas cameras automatically shut off to conserve it.

And if you do switch the GPS unit off to save power, there's a different problem: when you switch it back on, it takes a long time to pinpoint its location--a wait called "time to first fix." New GPS units typically take 30 seconds under the best of conditions to During that wait, the photographer might well have moved on, and the wait can last a lot longer if the satellites are obscured by trees, buildings, or other impediments.

But Chadha described technology Sirf is just unveiling that could get around the power-on, power-off problem. The basic idea is that a GPS system can simplify and speed up the process of finding its position by calculating where in the sky satellites are at a given time.

The technique lets a GPS system can find its location within about 10 seconds, Chadha said.

Software on the GPS device runs the calculations, but it must be synchronized with a PC or network service to get updated, accurate satellite position information, Chadha said. Orbital details such as friction with the Earth's atmosphere make the actual performance of the satellites harder to predict with computer models.

For a device such as a camera with limited computing horsepower, the model could run about two or three days before fresh satellite location data was needed, but a more powerful personal navigation device can go five to seven days.

"I don't believe anybody else has this kind of technology," Chadha said.

Ricoh sold a camera with an add-on GPS module, and Canon and Nikon higher-end SLR cameras can accommodate them. But so far GPS integration is rough at best. We'll check back a year from now to see if Chadha's prediction comes true.

I've been immersed in a story in geotagging, in which location data is attached to digital photos. I'm going to post a blog entry later with my own impressions about the technology, but meanwhile CNET News published my high-level look at geotagging today.

I love photos and I love maps. So geotagging--labeling of photos with geographic metadata--is a technology that was tailor-made for me. I'm starting to look into the issue for a feature I'm writing.

But from my early testing so far, it's clear geotagging is nascent at best. Cameras don't support it, geotags generally have to be manually added to photo metadata, and the software to automate it a bit feels kludgy to me. Five years from now my camera will probably have a GPS receiver built in, or at least a port to add one easily, but for now it's far from seamless.

Which brings me to my request: What do you find works and doesn't work? I'm hoping to benefit from the collective research that readers of this blog have put into this domain.

Specifically, I'd like to know about which GPS units you use, which cameras integrate best with GPS, which track file formats you like, which Web sites you use to display tracks and geotagged photos, and which software you use to tag your photos--especially if you're tagging raw images as well as JPEGs. Do you like Google Earth? I'd love to hear about your negative experiences as well as positive.

Feel free to share comments here in the Talkback area below for the benefit of others, or send me e-mail directly.