Underexposed

Readers of this blog will have inferred I'm a fan of geotagging--in fact, I'm trying to label all my photos with the tags that show where the picture was taken, even though the geotagging process is complicated.

I'm betting that much of the value of geotagging lies in the future, for example, when I might have a harder time remembering which hike a particular picture came from. But can anything useful be done with those geotagged photos today?

Based on my scrutiny of a handful of sites--Google's Picasa, Yahoo's Flickr, SmugMug (the only fee-required site), Locr, and Everytrail--the answer is yes.

Google's Picasa site can show a map sprinkled with thumbnails of a photo album's pictures.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

But as with other aspects of geotagging, today's cartographically clever Web sites are likely to appeal chiefly to enthusiasts who have some patience and technical abilities. Just like we're not at the stage where most cameras can add a location stamp as easily as they can add a timestamp, we're not yet at the stage where most folks are going to start with an online map when they want to share their photos or reminisce.

Collectively, the sites I checked show the potential of geotagging--but also the rough spots. My top pick is Flickr, with Picasa and SmugMug tied for second place. But each site has different strengths and weaknesses, so look carefully before you make any commitments.

One of the main reasons I picked Flickr as tops is because the Flickr maps interface can sift data better. For example, you can see a high-level view of all your geotagged photos, and you can filter that view with parameters such as your photos, your friends' or contacts' photos, anyone's photos, and most important in my opinion, specific tags. That's a handy interface when trying to find photos of, say, Yosemite National Park, but you can't remember which of several trips a particular photo is associated with.

Flickr displays pictures as unevocative pink dots, but the photos themselves are shown on a strip below.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

In contrast, Picasa and SmugMug draw maps that only reflect the contents of a particular group of photos--called galleries at SmugMug, albums at Picasa, and sets at Flickr. (Google Maps can show Picasa images of a particular area to Google account holders who install a Mapplet application, though.)

Flickr also lets you take a set-based view of a map, with a scattering of pink dots representing your pictures. Indeed, it's probably the most likely way somebody might want to use a map to show off pictures of a recent trip, for example.

SmugMug, though, has what I found to be the slickest geotagging feature out there: fly-through slideshows of a gallery. With this ability, the site automatically shows a gallery's sequence of photos, displaying thumbnails along the way on a map and a red line connecting them.

It's a bit rough around the edges--I'm guessing because the technical difficulties of combining external Google Maps data with its own thumbnails--so it can be herky-jerky at times and with missing map elements. And for slideshows, thumbnails are hardly the best way to showcase sweeping vistas. But there's no question in my mind that the feature imparts a sense of traveling through a place, a sensation that regular slideshows completely lack.

Where Picasa has the edge over Flickr and SmugMug is in showing thumbnails of each image on the map, not just a dot or pushpin, which I like better even though thumbnails can get pretty crowded. It also shows larger pop-up versions than Flickr does. And for people who are geotagging their photos through the Web site, I think Picasa's interface is the best.

I also like the way Picasa, on an individual photo's page, includes a map showing where it was taken. But in part that's because there's a big panel of verbiage to the right of the screen on which that kind of real estate is available. A more photo-oriented site might not have that space to spare.

SmugMug lets you tour a gallery of photos on a map--a cool if still rough-around-the-edges feature.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

Another major advantage of Flickr is its handling of location privacy--geoprivacy in Flickr parlance. Naturally you might not want to share with the world the location of your living room, and your pernickety aunt might be even touchier. Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield prohibited geotagging of images of a party at his house.

Happily, Flickr lets you set the geoprivacy of each image, though doing so is awkward. I'm glad the Organizr lets me change this setting, but why isn't there a geoprivacy option in a photo's privacy settings window or in the map that's shown when you click the photo?

There are some other options out there that deserve a look. Google's Panoramio has a reasonable approach to virtual tourism if not necessarily the best interface for storing your photos--it seems like a ripe candidate for some integration with Picasa.

Loc.alize.us likewise is an entertaining way to browse geotagged photos; it's a glitzy interface built on top of Flickr photos and Google Maps.

Like Panoramio, Locr, a German company, lets you upload your own photos. Like SmugMug, it's got a slideshow ability, though its photos are large and its map, a strip on the left edge with pushpin locations, is more an afterthought. That makes for a nicer slideshow than SmugMug's thumbnails, but there's not too much of a sense of place to it. And I can't help thinking when I see sites like Locr, though, that it must be tough building a critical mass of members when there are bigger photo-sharing sites already with major momentum.

For a journey-oriented site Everytrail lets people upload whole GPS track logs and label them with points of interest and photos. It's also got a handy feature that can show others' Panoramio pictures. It's a good way to look at trips people have taken in a particular area.

Locr shows individual photos fine, but doesn't handle groups with much aplomb.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

I found Everytrail's interface a bit difficult and unintuitive at times, but it does have the advantage of being able to piggyback on Flickr: I successfully imported my bike trip Flickr set into an Everytrail map--though the klunkiness of the process was evident by the fact that I have three copies of each photo, and I can't figure out how to get rid of the duplicates. Also, when I inadvertently uploaded the wrong day's track log for a batch of photos, I had a hard time figuring out my error.

In the months that I've been trying this out, though, geotagging has been improving. I'm certain that these sites will improve as geotagging photos in the first place gets easier, more people try it, and programmers hammer away at the computational and user-interface challenges.

Another area with potential is software to deal with geotagging on computers. Mostly that's limited today just to utilities to marry geographic data with image files. But the rudimentary geotagging support in Adobe Systems' Lightroom and Apple's Mac OS X 10.5, which both can show a photo's location on a map, is a harbinger of things to come. Better geotagging abilities on people's computers will fuel improvements on the Web and vice-versa

Correction: I updated the blog to correct a misspelling of Don MacAskill's name.

This is how SmugMug now looks on a 1280x1024-pixel monitor. It looks pretty good, unless you're the frog.

(Credit: SmugMug)

SmugMug, a site popular among photography aficionados, has been retooled with a more adaptable interface and overhauled video-sharing technology.

The new interface, which the Mountain View, Calif.-based company calls SmugMungous, automatically displays one of nine different sizes of a photo on the screen, with a patch of thumbnails of related images to the left side. The reason for the SmugMungous name: the largest of these images is 1600x1200 pixels, enough to fill up very large monitors.

In addition, the new site comes with an iTunes subscription option so that friends and family can automatically download videos or sync them with iPods, he said.

But the company also wants to make it easy for the photo buff with a 30-inch flat-panel display to share images with friends and family with comparatively tiny monitors. The appropriate image is automatically displayed according to how much real estate the Web browser shows, and it updates automatically if the window size is changed, said Chief Executive and founder Don MacAskill.

"Our customers tend to be photographers with big cameras and big monitors, but they may be sharing with friends with 15-inch monitors at 800x600," MacAskill said. "The goal is so grandma can see it at home without you having to coach her to maximize her browser."

This is SmugMug's apperance on a screen with only about 800 pixels of width to spare.

(Credit: SmugMug)

I gave the feature a quick test drive, and found that it worked fine and with snappy performance. I liked it a lot better than Flickr's options, which involve clicking on an "all sizes" button then on again to select one of a handful of preset options--and worse, doing so moves you away from a the page where you do anything interesting such as read comments or click through a user's photo collection. Google's Picasa Web Albums, though, offer images that scale automatically according to available real estate, but I find the interface much more cluttered than SmugMug's.

Previously, users had to manually select different photo sizes with tabs that popped up over the image. "It's safe to say those links will be going away. When you click on image, you can still manually switch sizes if you want, but we're pretty good picking the size for your particular screen resolution," MacAskill said.

The other half of the SmugMug change is the addition of H.264 video streaming, a much more modern standard than the MPEG-1 technology earlier supported. "Our video support before was just terrible," MacAskill said.

Moving to the new standard opens up video viewing options including Sony's PlayStation 3, Apple's iPhone and iPod, Apple Quicktime software, and shortly, Web browsers with Adobe Systems' widely used Flash software. The newest version of Flash, released this week, supports H.264, but Smugmug is "not quite done with our player," he said.

As with the photos, the video also scales automatically according to screen size. The highest resolution is high-definition 1280x720 video, but I had to actively select that option to override the site's preference for a smaller size; the sliver of screen real estate lost even to narrow window frames around the video was enough to lower my 1280x1024 monitor's usable width below 1280. MacAskill said the company might adjust that behavior.

MacAskill wouldn't offer predictions about how the new features would directly affect the company beyond offering, "I imagine some users may upgrade to power users so they can get video." However, he said the upgrade is in line with the company's core strategy to keep customers happy so they'll keep paying the mandatory subscription fees and recommend the site to others.

Customer satisfaction is crucial because the company depends on word of mouth for its marketing, supplemented only by Google advertising. So far the formula has worked: SmugMug has been profitable since its founding in 2002, and annual revenue has grown beyond $10 million, MacAskill said. Unusually for a Silicon Valley company, the company hasn't given an ownership stake to outside investors in return for money to fund the business during its early stages.

MacAskill hired the company's second employee, his father, Chris MacAskill, and started the company "basically as a side project so afford to buy ramen and corn flakes," he said. "We took three servers from an old company, bummed some data center space off a buddy, threw some code together, and crossed our fingers."

The company now is up to 29 employees--including MacAskill's two brothers, mother, sister, and aunt--and stores more than 225 million photos.

Judging by a Microsoft job ad, the software giant wants to add a Flickr-like service to its online efforts.

According to text from the ad, republished by Long Zheng's istartedsomething blog, the company is looking for a program manager for a new division of its Windows Live effort.

"This feature team is building a next-generation photo and video sharing service that will compete with Flickr, SmugMug and other photo web solutions today. This is a 'v1' opportunity," the ad said. And video will be a part of the effort, too: "This role will work across the new Windows Live division with teams like Spaces, SkyDrive, Messenger and Hotmail to construct a winning strategy for Microsoft in photo and video sharing."

Evidently, Microsoft sees the effort as an online extension of its current desktop technology.

"The Digital Memories Experience team (DMX) is helping people make deeper connections with those they care about. We want to give you the ability to effortlessly share your memories, be that a simple slideshow of photos and videos (e.g. evolution of the Vista Slideshow or of Photo Story), a carefully authored experienced (evolution of Movie Maker), or a fully interactive cinematic multimedia experience (a narrated 3D path through a Photosynth that you can control)," the ad said.

And the service will be available from many computing devices: "We want to make it easy and fun to enjoy your photos and videos, whether that is on the PC in your office, the Media Center in your living room, the XBox in your entertainment center, or on your mobile device when you are out and about."

(Via Harrison Hoffman's Web Services Report.)