Showing posts with label photos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photos. Show all posts

Thursday, May 10, 2007

VeniVidiWiki -- Wiki Map Travel Guide


VeniVidiWiki: travel guide

VeniVidiWiki.eu is a Google map wiki mashup for attractions around the world. Anyone can add a POI (point of interest) to the map and provide as much as possible of the following information:
  • Name of place/poi
  • Category - those shown above are listed as POI with Video -- so they all have a video link; the full list of categories is listed on the left
  • Description
  • Website, and
  • Photo and/or Video links
The wiki has a large number of sites, and crashed a few times when I was trying to view a lot of them. But in general it is quick and easy to navigate, and worth exploring to learn more about attractions in a place you may want to visit.


Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Trippermap.com - Making Flickr.com Geotags Easy!


I got an email today from some place called Trippermap.com. At first I thought it was spam and almost deleted it. But instead I opened it a took a look. -- and I am glad I did. Trippermap.com used to be called Flickrmap.com, and I do recall signing up for their service a while ago -- a little before Flickr.com added its own geotagging function. However, at that time I did not really feel like going through and adding geotags to my many Flickr pro account photos -- which now numbers almost 22,000 (most of which are "public").

Well, apparently the Trippermap folks have been updating their tools and I think the current version is great! What they sent me in the mail was a link to my Trippermap, which automatically locates any photo that I have tagged with a city and country. Not all my photos have that, but many do -- and I think it would be quite easy to add those tags to sets of photos in Flickr. I copied the code from the Tippermap site and plugged into my homepage (near the bottom) and now I have a nice size map tagged with icons for many of my public photos , along with a photo bar and java-based viewing function. I have tried a few other Flickr photo bars, but never really liked the results. This is the first one that I will probably keep on my website!

In addition to the basic city and country tag approach to locating photos, Trippermap also provides a Google Earth tool that allows you to use satellite images/maps to locate one or more photos more precisely, and then add the latitude and longitude coordinates direct to your Flickr site photo for searching and viewing using Flickr's map link. A video Tutorial is provided on the Trippermap.com on how to do this.

The free version of Trippermap only comes with a blank outline map of the world, on which photo icons appear, and only shows 200 Flickr photos. Trippermap Premium costs $9.75 year and includes full color Google Maps, all your photos, and Trip Route/Itinerary creation by drawing lines from one photo icon to the next. (Each icon, by the way, can include an unlimited number of photos.) They convinced me to go for the Premium account.


NEW: After posting the blog above, I received an email about Panoramio.com you can geolocate your photos via drag and drop interface and using Google Maps and you can watch uploaded photos inside Google Earth with a KML file (http://www.panoramio.com/panoramio.kml)." - I visited the site, but you cannot really tell what it does without registering, which I was not ready to do (and there was no Bugmenot.com). However, there were some cool sample travel maps on their blog page, and you can also search without registering (type in the name of a place to get a map with geotagged photos).

Sunday, November 12, 2006

EveryTrail - GPS and Photo Travel Blogging


If you are into GPS, then Everytrail.com is fairly simple concept. If you are not into GPS, you may become more interesting after checking out this interesting website.

Everytrail.com allows users to mashup their GPS tracks and geotag them with photos and short comments. Comments are indeed quite short, so it is not really a full travel blogging application. Instead, the focus is on sharing your treks with the world on a Google Map -- preferably a satellite image. The image draw as a line tracing the route, and the user adds photo and text icons. Zooming in and out is a breeze, making this a is a very nice way to virtually experience a place!

The treks that were up on the site when I visited seemed to be very limited in the number of photos and comments that they included. I wonder if there is a limit. I tend to take a lot of photos on most any trip that I take -- several hundred a day, of which I keep about half. It seems that a high density of photos taken at ground level, combined with the Google satellite image, and short text comments, could go a long way to provide a virtual travel experience. Visitors can also comment on the trails.

Evertrail.com is a fun site, worth checking out.