.oO Tailwind

I’ve recently been working on a very exciting project and on said project we’ve been looking at way in which we can leave a lasting impression with regards to practical accessibility (will post about this concept later).

I was thinking about 2 things, firstly the accessibility and inclusive design angle and secondly the potential to join up Multimap with my other client.

This started me thinking about APIs and the fact that they are mostly used to ‘mash-up’ data services into new uses, then I saw this post on Google Blog that crystalised my thoughts perfectly. Typically, mash-ups take a data feed and mash-it-up with something else to create a new lens on said data. See Craigslist. But of course there are a smattering of mash-ups that have just been about using the same data but changing the interface. The best example I can think of is the various Amazon mash-ups out there that provide an alternative way of browsing their catalogue.

So what if we were to take APIs for mapping services and concentrate not on functional calls but on display parameters? We could create accessible versions with just a little bit more consideration and high contrast, reduced contrast options would be easy to create.

This is an unshaped thought, but something to mull over.

You gotta love people’s dedication. I picked up on this Wikipedia / Map mash-up via Delicious and am amazed at how dedicated people are to adding content. Even the most obscure things have been added in my area.

I always thought the sort of people to discover this stuff would do it just to ‘play’ but from the amount of content added, much like Google Earth (which I haven’t played with for ages btw), it seems that people actually do love contributing to a kind of shared cause.

Now, go map the world!

Of course after my post on geotagging hacks for Flickr they’ve gone and actually added the functionality on a new ‘Maps’ tab in the Flickr Organiser. This was of course inevitable seeing as Yahoo own Flickr and a brand new shiny mapping service and it’s been somewhat successful if this article on Flickr Blog claiming 1 million geotags in 24 hours is true.

!!!!!!!!Blimey o’reilly!!!!!!!!

I remember showing someone how to link from a Flickr picture and ‘fly down’ to the location it was taken using Google Earth, they thought I was a hyper geek (which I have a tendency to be at times) and we had a long discussion about the technology adoption curve and that this stuff won’t bite the mainstream for a .

Now, don’t get me wrong, as far as I know Flickr isn’t a photo site for the masses, it’s user base are more tech savvy than your average Joe (this is all speculation and rumour filled btw - does anyone know WHO is using Flickr or where I can find out?). So 1 million geotags in 24 hours isn’t a sign that photo sharing has moved into a new era just yet, but hey, exciting stuff?
I’ve been working on a couple of projects recently covering both mapping and photo -blogging, and am even working on a geotagging offering for a.n. other photosite. More later.

But this is an exciting area for user experience professionals as I think it taps into a core human trait - collecting. And going further, it’s changing, fundamentally, how we share our memories. It used to be that we’d spend hours writing witty captions in photo albums, which while like a book these are nice to thumb through, they’re hard to share to geographically spread out family members.

Now it’s all about EXIF and metadata, GPS and tags.

I mean I can already stream my photos into a wireless picture frame in my parents house, if I were generous enough to buy them one of these wireless Flickr enabled photo frames
Bring it on.

I’ll have a good play with the Flickr Geotagging option and let you know what I think.

Yahoo! have been busy creating a free mobile application called Zonetag which will automatically append location data to pictures taken on your mobile phone. Apparently it’s possible to post mobile snaps to Flickr in two clicks.

Zonetag is only for Nokia Series 60 at the moment and seeing as I’m strutting a Sony-Ericsson w810i, I’ll need to find someone who’ll let me play, but as I understand it Zonetag adds cell tower information to the images you upload to and then you have to ‘lon’ and ‘lat’ it.

It’s an interesting one this. Bit clunky, but interesting.

If you consider what the mobile manufacturers have done to sales of the iPod, and with the recent release of Sony’s 3.2 Megapixel Cybershot phone, I’m starting to get some serious clamouring for my beltspace.

Okay, so camera phones are a long way from replacing a decent variable lens digital, but the point is that the technology is changing the way people take pictures. They’re not so precious about them, they are more disposable. They’re ’snap-happy’.

Quick to share features such as Zonetag are key for people to communicate and express themselves within their social and professional networks. Whoever makes it easy, will be winning the battle on my belt.

Found at both The Map Room and Yahoo!.

At the moment I’m involved in redesigning a well know online mapping service. I’m a bit of a photo sharing Flickr nut anyhow, but digging into the map/geospatial blogosphere I started finding more and more articles and posts on people who were Geotagging their pictures. Infact, I’d known that this has been going for a while but hadn’t yet stuck my head under the bonnet (or hood if you’re reading this Stateside).

‘Geotagging’ basically means one of two things, a) you can add longtitude and latitude information to your associated tags, or b)that the ‘long’ and ‘lat’ info is embedded into the images’ EXIF data. But seeing as I don’t have a GPS enabled camera (that automatically does b) for you) I have been using some Flickr / Google mashups to hand crank the geo data.

First up is GMIF which is a Flickr mashup that places a GMAP button on your toolbar on the Flickr website. Clicking it allows you to use a Google map to locate the place where you took the picture and then ‘Tag it!’. As you tag it the long and lat coordintaes are added. Nice and simple.

So what’s the point of tagging it if all you see are some 15 digit numbers in the images tag set?

Well, second up is FlickrFly from Flickr user RobRoyAus. This is a cool little tool that enables the geotagged image to be located and ‘flown’ to using Google Earth.

Proper geeky, but really cool if you ask me. It’s certainly been good for showing family where my daughter first made a sandcastle.

I shall be painstakingly geotagging my worthy pictures over the next few weeks because I’m not buying a GPS camera soon with a second baby due to arrive and week now.